| Functionality | 7 <p>While Drip does not have the full suite of marketing automation features, we still really love the wealth of features that they do have within their emails, campaigns, and automations tabs. They're the perfect example of 'do one thing well'.</p> | 4 <p>Loops focuses on delivering email marketing essentials for startups. This includes excellent functionality for creating email series, developer-friendly APIs for sending transactional emails, and simple functionality for managing mailing lists. However, this means that compared to other marketing tools, Loops lacks a lot of functionality, e.g. running A/B tests, creating custom forms/ surveys, analytics.</p> |
| Ease of Use | 10 <p>Drip is one of the most beginner-friendly apps we've tested so far. Each of the tabs is clearly labelled, meaning that even complete beginners to email marketing won't struggle to find their way around the software.</p> | 8 <p>A limited set of features, combined with ample, step-by-step guidance in the platform means Loops is intuitive and easy to use. For example, compared to most other tools, it is refreshingly simple to build a email series to new users.</p><p>However, as it's been designed for startups, do note that Loops is still more technical in nature, offering features like components for designing emails and requiring knowledge of coding for transactional emails/ certain customizations (e.g. dynamic images), which may be a bit daunting for non-technical users.</p> |
| Look and feel | 8 <p>Like many of the marketing automation platforms we've tested, Drip also has a slightly longer loading time for each feature. This isn't a dealbreaker however, as the times are barely noticeable.</p><p><br></p><p>Other than this, Drip's interface is simple and clean.</p> | 8 <p>Loops is a simple, modern, uncluttered interface that is a joy to use. Key functionality and info are extremely easy to locate, and page loads are also lightning fast.</p> |
| Customisability | 8 <p>There are great customisation options within each of the categories of functions: email writing, automations, segments, and analytics.</p><p><br></p><p>In particular: the drag and drop email builder is easy to use, and the templates are also highly customisable. Conditional segmentation is also supported, helping you focus on the segments that have the highest potential for conversion.</p> | 2 <p>Loops only offers basic customisability. For example, you can only create segments based on their properties/ engagement with your campaigns - but not based on how they interact with your website/ app, nor bring in custom events.</p><p>For client-facing assets, compared to traditional drag-and-drop email builders offered by most marketing automation platforms, Loops's Notion-like editor only allows you to make light stylistic & formatting changes to emails. You're also unable to customise signup forms to collect info besides data.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 9 <p>We love Drip for its ease of setup. Given that it's so beginner-friendly, you'd find it difficult to draw out your basic setup process to more than 30 minutes. In addition, fully customising (e.g., setting up workflows or integrating with your existing tools) takes at most 1 day, and all the functions are extremely self-explanatory.</p> | 8 <p>Because of its simple and intuitive interface, Loops is extremely easy to setup. Basic setup is blazingly fast (less than 10 minutes), and fully customizing should take less than 2 hours, with minimal help from customer support and self-serve help materials.</p> |
| Customer Support | 5 <p>As a smaller app, Drip does not have the option to use live chat for customer support. However, they do have a responsive email team, as well as a good self serve help centre.</p> | 8 <p>Loops offer high-quality, sincere support. Within the app, you can directly email or book in 20-minute calls with Loops' Founders. Personalised live chat with Loops' developer team is also available during US business hours.</p> |
| Integratability | 8 <p>Drip integrates with most key business software, spanning accounting and analytics to e-commerce and event management. It also covers most of the apps which we've deemed most crucial (e.g., Shopify, Woocommerce, Typeform, etc).</p> | 6 <p>For now, Loops only offers a slim set of core integrations required by startups e.g. Stripe, Webflow, Segment, HubSpot, Zapier. It's still missing common integrations seen in the category, e.g. with ecommerce platforms like Shopify. However, it does have a high-quality API for any custom integrations, especially with your own application.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 10 <p>Drip's data is highly exportable. Unlike some of the other tools we tested – where users are only able to export contacts – Drip also allows users to export analytics, email campaigns, account information.</p><p><br></p><p>The ability to export analytics is truly standout, not least because most marketing teams will be able to analyse the data elsewhere (e.g., in Excel), without being bound to the Drip dashboards.</p> | 6 <p>You can export your list of audience (contacts) into CSV format via self-serve. However, since Loops doesn't have a dedicated reporting module, it doesn't seem possible export campaign performance data out of Loops. Other info can be exported via Loops' API.</p> |
