OquMail vs Loops: Free Business Email vs SaaS Email Marketing

Loops is an email platform built for SaaS: onboarding sequences, product updates and transactional emails in one editor, priced by contacts. OquMail is a free business email host with mailboxes and a small send API. Founders compare them when setting up a new product and discover they need both a marketing tool and real inboxes.

Quick summary

• Mailboxes: Loops none; OquMail up to 15 free
• Free plan: Loops a free tier limited by contacts; OquMail free plan with 3 domains and 5 GB per mailbox
• API: Loops API for contacts, events and transactional sends; OquMail send API with from, to, subject and html
• DNS guidance: Loops DKIM and tracking records for its sending domain; OquMail MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC with live verification
• IMAP/SMTP: Loops none, it is not a mail host; OquMail IMAP and SMTP for any client

Who each is for

Loops is for SaaS teams that want a no-code editor for lifecycle emails, user event triggers and simple transactional sends without a developer for every change. OquMail is for founders and small teams that need name@yourdomain.com for staff and a plain API for receipts, at no cost, with DNS guidance so mail lands in the inbox.

Feature comparison

• Mailboxes: Loops none; OquMail up to 15 free
• Free plan: Loops a free tier limited by contacts; OquMail free plan with 3 domains and 5 GB per mailbox
• API: Loops API for contacts, events and transactional sends; OquMail send API with from, to, subject and html
• DNS guidance: Loops DKIM and tracking records for its sending domain; OquMail MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC with live verification
• IMAP/SMTP: Loops none, it is not a mail host; OquMail IMAP and SMTP for any client
• Storage: Loops contacts and event history; OquMail 5 GB per mailbox with delivery logs

Where Loops wins

• Lifecycle sequences triggered by product events without writing code
• Beautiful editor that founders and marketers can use
• Contacts, segments and campaigns in one place for SaaS
• Transactional emails editable by non-developers

Where OquMail wins

• Real inboxes with webmail and IMAP for support@, hello@ and staff
• Free for 15 mailboxes and 3 domains
• Complete inbound and outbound DNS verified in one dashboard
• Per-message delivery logs for the mail you send through its API

Total cost at 5 and 15 users

Loops is priced by number of contacts, not team members, and its free tier suits a very early product; it never covers staff mailboxes. OquMail is free at 5 and 15 users and handles modest transactional traffic. A common setup is OquMail for the team and Loops for onboarding and product marketing on a subdomain.

The free third option: OquMail

OquMail covers the reply side that Loops does not: when a user answers an onboarding email, a mailbox on your domain receives it, with IMAP for the team's mail apps. For simple receipts and alerts, OquMail's send API with a Bearer key is enough until lifecycle marketing becomes a real programme.

• Free plan: up to 15 mailboxes, 3 domains, 5 GB per mailbox, no credit card
• Webmail included; IMAP/SMTP for Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird and phones
• IMAP mail.oqumail.com port 993 (SSL/TLS); SMTP mail.oqumail.com port 587 (STARTTLS)
• Guided SPF, DKIM and DMARC with live DNS verification; MX is mail.oqumail.com priority 10
• Transactional send API at https://api.oqumail.com/api/v1/emails with Bearer API keys (from, to, subject, html)
• Per-message delivery logs so you can see the exact response a receiving server gave

Verdict by scenario

• SaaS with a growing user base and onboarding emails: Loops
• Pre-launch founder who needs a credible address today: OquMail
• Small product with a few hundred users: OquMail, add Loops when contacts grow
• Team with a marketer who wants to own emails: Loops for marketing, OquMail for inboxes

Common questions

Can Loops be my company email?

No. Loops sends marketing and transactional mail but does not host mailboxes. You still need an email host such as OquMail for staff addresses.

Should Loops send from my main domain?

Use a subdomain such as mail.yourdomain.com with its own DKIM so marketing reputation stays separate from the staff mailboxes on the root domain.

Does OquMail do onboarding sequences?

No. OquMail sends single transactional messages through its API. Sequences and segmentation are Loops territory.

Where should replies to Loops emails go?

Set the reply-to address on your Loops emails to a real mailbox such as hello@yourdomain.com hosted on OquMail. Users who answer an onboarding email are often your most engaged customers, and a reply that lands in a monitored inbox with IMAP on the founder's phone is worth more than any open-rate chart.