LoopNow vs Gupshup for conversational messaging
Gupshup is a large conversational messaging platform with enterprise scale. LoopNow is an India-first agent OS with a single bill for email, WhatsApp, voice and workflow.
One runtime vs point tool
LoopNow bundles email, WhatsApp, voice, workflow and GEO. If you only need one of those, the competitor may be cheaper.
| Criterion | LoopNow | Gupshup |
|---|---|---|
| Scale | SMB to enterprise | Enterprise-first |
| Pricing | Published INR plans | Platform fee + usage, quote-led |
| Voice | 14 Indian languages | Available |
| Included | Separate | |
| DPDP | Consent ledger | Platform controls |
| Self-serve | Free plan + calculator | Sales-assisted |
Competitor details checked 4 Nov 2026. Prices are exclusive of taxes; convert at ₹88/US$ where relevant.
We are not the right fit for everyone.
- You need very large enterprise messaging volume and a dedicated account team.
- You want a single CPaaS vendor for SMS, RCS and voice at scale.
- You are already contracted and the migration cost is high.
When LoopNow wins
You want one bill for email, WhatsApp, voice, workflow and GEO; Indian-language support; DPDP consent records; and AWS Mumbai residency.
Compare plans
The short version
- Gupshup is a large conversational messaging platform built for enterprise volume. LoopNow is an India-first agent OS that publishes its prices and sells without a queue.
- Gupshup’s pricing is platform fee plus usage and quote-led. LoopNow publishes INR plans from free to ₹24,999/mo, with Enterprise from ₹75,000/mo.
- Gupshup carries SMS, RCS and voice at enterprise scale. LoopNow bundles email, WhatsApp, voice, workflow and GEO into one runtime for smaller teams.
- Choose Gupshup if you need a single CPaaS contract at very large volume and a dedicated account team. Choose LoopNow if you want to start this week and self-serve.
- Written by LoopNow, checked on 4 November 2026. Commercial terms change and enterprise pricing is always negotiable, so confirm with the vendor.
Enterprise messaging scale against a self-serve runtime
Gupshup is a conversational messaging company with enterprise scale as its organising principle. The product surface covers the channels large organisations need to reach customers at volume, including SMS and RCS alongside WhatsApp and voice, and the commercial model reflects that: a platform fee plus usage, negotiated with a sales team, usually attached to an annual commitment. That model exists because enterprise buyers do not buy messaging the way a small business does. They buy a contract with volume tiers, service levels and an account manager who answers the phone.
LoopNow is the opposite shape on purpose. Pricing is published, the free plan needs no card, the calculator gives a number without a call, and a team can connect a number and send a message the same afternoon. That is not an accident of size, it is a product decision, and it comes with real trade-offs: fewer enterprise procurement artefacts, less bespoke contracting and a smaller account team. If your buying process requires a security review, a redlined MSA and a named account director, LoopNow will feel thin. If it requires a working pilot by Friday, Gupshup will feel heavy.
How each one prices, and why the shape matters
A published price is a product feature. It tells you what the vendor thinks its product is worth, it lets you model a budget without a meeting, and it makes renewal a comparison rather than a negotiation. LoopNow publishes five tiers: Free, Starter at ₹2,999, Growth at ₹7,999, Scale at ₹24,999 and Enterprise from ₹75,000 a month, all exclusive of 18% GST, with overage rates for email, voice, WhatsApp and AI credits. You can price a year of usage before you speak to anyone.
Gupshup’s model is a platform fee plus usage, quote-led. That is not evasive; it is how enterprise messaging is usually sold, because the cost depends on channel mix, destination and volume commitments that are specific to the contract. The practical consequence is that you cannot compare the two on a public page. You can only compare at your own volume, with your own mix, using quotes from both. If you are not ready to run that process, the published price is a genuine advantage because it lets you decide whether the conversation is worth starting.
The buying process is part of the product
Enterprise procurement has a rhythm: an introduction, a discovery call, a security questionnaire, a pilot statement of work, a redlined contract, a purchase order and a go-live date that everyone treats as aspirational. Vendors who sell this way are not being difficult; they are matching how their buyers budget. If you are a bank, a telecom or an insurer, a sales-assisted process is a feature, because it produces the contract artefacts your legal team needs and a person who is accountable when the volume spikes.
LoopNow’s self-serve path is a different promise: the free plan, the published calculator and a fourteen-day trial on paid tiers, with a migration handled in about 48 hours for a typical case. That suits a mid-market team that has budget authority in the room and no appetite for a six-week paper process. It does not suit an organisation that needs a bespoke data processing agreement before any data is processed. Be honest about which one you are. The cost of choosing the wrong buying model is measured in weeks, and it is usually larger than the difference in platform fees.
Channels: SMS and RCS at scale
Gupshup’s breadth across messaging channels is its structural advantage. A single CPaaS contract covering SMS, RCS, WhatsApp and voice is genuinely simpler for an enterprise than four contracts, and the routing logic between channels is a hard problem that a specialist solves better than a generalist. When a customer does not have WhatsApp installed, falling back to SMS with the same campaign identity is the kind of capability that only makes sense at scale, and Gupshup has built for it.
LoopNow does not sell SMS or RCS. It sells WhatsApp, email, voice, workflow and GEO, and it is honest about the boundary. For an Indian SMB or mid-market team, WhatsApp plus a phone call covers most of the customer journey, and email covers the rest. For an enterprise whose fallback chain includes SMS and RCS, the absence is a real gap that no amount of workflow flexibility closes. If your channel matrix has five columns, check how many of them LoopNow actually fills before you shortlist it.
Email is separate on one side and included on the other
Our comparison records email as included on LoopNow and separate on Gupshup, which is expected given each company’s centre of gravity. Gupshup’s business is conversational messaging, and email is a different discipline with different infrastructure, deliverability and compliance concerns. LoopNow includes marketing email and transactional sending because the same team usually owns both the campaign and the WhatsApp follow-up, and splitting them creates the consent mismatch that shows up in complaints.
The practical value depends on where email sits today. If you already run a mature email platform with a tuned reputation, adding LoopNow for WhatsApp and voice is a cleaner move than migrating email to get one invoice. If email is a shared mailbox and a spreadsheet, the included campaigns and the shared consent record are worth more than the feature list suggests. Either way, do not treat email as a free extra: it carries an allowance, an overage rate and an operational responsibility.
Consent and DPDP at enterprise scale
LoopNow keeps a consent ledger per contact and per purpose, with erasure workflows, a documented retention schedule and an exportable audit trail, and describes itself as DPDP-ready rather than certified. Gupshup’s comparison row describes platform-level controls, which is what a large CPaaS provider typically offers: account-level settings, opt-out handling and contractual commitments rather than a per-contact consent object you can inspect. Both approaches can satisfy an auditor. They produce different evidence, and the evidence is what a review actually examines.
At enterprise scale the question becomes operational. Who reconciles consent across four channels when a customer opts out on one? Where is the single source of truth, and how quickly does a withdrawal propagate to a queued campaign? A per-contact ledger answers those questions by design; a platform-level control answers them through process. Processes work when they are followed and fail quietly when they are not. If your compliance team is strong and your process is documented, platform controls are enough. If not, the ledger is doing work you would otherwise have to.
Support, uptime language and the account team
Enterprise contracts usually include a service level agreement with credits attached, a named account team and an escalation path that reaches a human at an inconvenient hour. That is a legitimate reason to pay a platform fee, and it is the part of an enterprise contract that a self-serve product cannot easily replicate. LoopNow publishes response targets by plan, up to 24/7 cover with a one-hour target and a technical account manager on Scale, and a named customer success manager on Enterprise. Those are response targets, not an uptime guarantee, and we describe them that way.
The honest comparison is not who cares more. It is what happens on the worst day. With a large CPaaS provider you are one account among many, but the escalation machinery exists and the contract says what it owes you. With a smaller platform you are a larger share of the vendor’s revenue, which often means faster attention and less bureaucracy, backed by a smaller team. Neither is strictly better. Ask both for the last two incident reports and read how they communicated, not just how fast they resolved.
Migration risk at volume
Moving a large messaging programme is a project, not a switch. Template libraries need re-approval, sender identities need to move, routing rules need to be rebuilt, and the reporting that finance relies on needs a replacement before the old dashboard is switched off. LoopNow quotes about 48 hours for a typical migration of contacts, templates, automations and the WhatsApp number, which is realistic for a mid-market account and unrealistic for an enterprise with a dozen integrations and a custom routing layer.
The risk is not the cutover itself, it is the quiet week afterwards when a fallback chain that used to catch failures no longer exists. If you move from a CPaaS provider to a narrower platform, you are removing channels from the chain, and every removed channel is a fallback you must replace with process. Plan the migration channel by channel, keep the old contract alive through one full billing cycle, and measure delivery on the new platform against the old baseline before you cancel anything.
Lock-in and the contract you sign
Enterprise messaging contracts tend to be annual, with volume commitments and overage terms that are negotiated rather than published. That structure creates a specific kind of lock-in: not technical, but commercial. If you commit to a volume tier and your business shrinks, you pay for messages you never send. If it grows faster than expected, the overage rate matters more than the headline. Read the commitment clause before the feature list, because it is the clause that survives a change of strategy.
LoopNow’s lock-in is different. Monthly plans, published overage, a spend cap on by default and an annual option that saves 20% with a prorated refund in the first 30 days. You can leave at the end of a month, and the export includes contacts with consent state, templates, run traces and workflow definitions. What you cannot take is the managed behaviour. That is a lower switching cost than an annual volume commitment, and it is worth paying a little more per message for if your volume is uncertain.
Where Gupshup is the right call
Gupshup is the right call when messaging is a core utility at very large volume and you need one contract across SMS, RCS, WhatsApp and voice. It is the right call when your procurement process requires a security review, a bespoke agreement and an account team, and when the cost of running that process is small relative to the contract. It is also the right call when you are already contracted and the migration cost is high, because a platform change at that scale is a programme, not a purchase.
There is a fourth case that rarely gets written down: when the routing complexity itself is the problem. If you are running fallback logic across four channels and three countries, a specialist CPaaS provider has solved problems you have not encountered yet, and the platform fee buys that accumulated knowledge. LoopNow does not compete on that. We compete on speed to a working agent, Indian-language voice and a published price, and those are different advantages for a different buyer.
Where LoopNow fits instead
LoopNow fits when the job is to put an agent to work across the channels a mid-market Indian business actually uses, without a procurement cycle. A clinic booking appointments in three languages, a D2C brand recovering carts over WhatsApp and email, a real estate team qualifying leads with a call after a form fill: these are workflows, not messaging utilities, and a runtime is the right shape for them. The price is published, the free plan is real, and the first workflow can be live in about 48 hours.
It does not fit when the messaging itself is the product, when SMS and RCS are mandatory, or when the contract has to satisfy an enterprise procurement function with a volume commitment. We are not going to describe those as edge cases to be worked around. They are the reason a large CPaaS provider exists, and a buyer who needs one should buy one. The useful question is whether you are buying messaging infrastructure or an agent layer, because the two products are priced and supported very differently.
How to compare them without a public price
If you want a real comparison, ask Gupshup for a quote at three volumes: your current month, your expected peak and your forecast for twelve months out. Ask for the overage rate above the committed tier, the notice period and the fallback charges. Then price the same three scenarios on LoopNow using the published plans and the overage table, with 18% GST added. The numbers will not be like for like, because the channel sets differ, so subtract the cost of the channels you would buy elsewhere to make the comparison honest.
Then compare what each quote includes beyond the meter: the account team, the security review, the incident reporting, the migration support. A quote that costs more and removes a quarter of internal work can be the cheaper option, and a quote that costs less and leaves you running the routing is not. Write the comparison down in one table, with the assumptions visible, and revisit it after the pilot. Most of these decisions turn on a number nobody wrote in the first spreadsheet.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Gupshup cost compared with LoopNow?
Gupshup prices with a platform fee plus usage, on a quote, so there is no public number to compare. LoopNow publishes Free, ₹2,999, ₹7,999, ₹24,999 and Enterprise from ₹75,000 a month, all before 18% GST. To compare honestly, request a Gupshup quote at your actual volume and channel mix, then price the same scenarios on LoopNow.
Does Gupshup do email?
Our comparison records email as separate on Gupshup and included on LoopNow, which fits each company’s focus on conversational messaging versus a broader runtime. If email is part of your journey, check whether Gupshup offers it natively today or expects you to keep a separate provider. Either way, keep one source of truth for consent across both systems.
Can LoopNow handle enterprise volume?
LoopNow runs from SMB to enterprise, and the Scale plan includes 1,00,000 contacts, 5,00,000 emails, 20,000 WhatsApp messages, 6,000 voice minutes and 30 agents, with Enterprise from ₹75,000 a month for private VPC and custom models. Whether that is enough depends on your volume. If you are sending millions of SMS messages a month, you are describing a CPaaS requirement rather than a runtime one.
Why is Gupshup’s pricing not published?
Because enterprise messaging is priced by channel, destination and committed volume, and a single public number would be wrong for most buyers. That is a normal model, not a red flag. It does mean you cannot evaluate it without a sales conversation, and it means the quote you receive is worth negotiating. Ask for the overage rate and the commitment clause, not just the headline monthly fee.
Is LoopNow self-serve?
Yes. There is a free plan with 1,000 contacts, 5,000 emails, 100 voice minutes and 250 WhatsApp messages, no card required, and paid plans start with a fourteen-day trial. You can price a year with the calculator before speaking to anyone. Enterprise is the exception: private VPC, custom models and a named CSM involve a scoping call and a contract.
Which is better for SMS fallback?
Gupshup, clearly. SMS and RCS sit inside a CPaaS contract and LoopNow does not sell either. If a WhatsApp message that fails to deliver must fall back to SMS inside the same campaign, that capability is a reason to keep a CPaaS provider. LoopNow can call the customer instead, which is a different fallback and not a substitute for SMS at scale.
What does migration involve if we leave a CPaaS?
Numbers, templates, sender identities, routing rules, contact data and reporting all move, and the routing logic is usually the hardest part because it encodes years of decisions. LoopNow quotes about 48 hours for a typical migration, which covers a mid-market account. For an enterprise with a custom routing layer, budget weeks and keep the old contract through one billing cycle.
Do both support Indian languages?
LoopNow runs voice agents in fourteen Indian languages, including Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu and Bengali, with handling for code-mixed Hinglish. Our comparison records Gupshup’s voice as available. Availability and quality are different claims, so test both with recordings of your own customers before you commit to a volume, especially for names, addresses and numbers.
Who should not choose LoopNow?
Enterprises that need SMS and RCS in the same contract, buyers who require a bespoke agreement and a named account team before any pilot, and anyone whose monthly messaging volume is large enough that a committed enterprise rate beats a published plan. In those cases a CPaaS provider is the right category, and the only question is which one.