Providers
What is the LoopMessage iMessage API?
LoopMessage is a long-standing iMessage API with public documentation, a free sandbox, and the lowest published entry price in the category — a shared sender at $20 a month. Dedicated lines start around $59.99. The trade-off at the entry tier is that the number is shared rather than yours.
The pricing
| Tier | Price | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Sandbox | $0 | Test the API. Capped at 5 contacts. |
| Shared sender | $20/month, from | A pooled number — the cheapest real entry |
| Light | $59.99/month, from | A dedicated sender, lower volume |
| Regular | $99.99/month, from | Dedicated, higher volume |
Shared versus dedicated
- Shared is fine for transactional sends — a confirmation, a one-time code, a status update nobody needs to reply to weeks later.
- Shared is wrong if you want to be saved as a contact, because the number is not durably yours.
- The 5-contact sandbox cap is enough to validate an integration and not enough to trial a campaign. Worth knowing before you plan a test.
The crossover point
At genuinely low volume — a few dozen messages a month — LoopMessage is dramatically cheaper than the alternatives. Once you need a dedicated number the gap narrows to a difference that should not drive the decision. Work out your monthly volume first; it settles this faster than any feature table. The per-line arithmetic.
Further reading
Go deeper
Sendblue vs LoopMessage
Two of the most established iMessage APIs, with genuinely different pricing models. Which one is cheaper depends entirely on how much you send.
8 min readStrategyThe economics of a per-line plan
Why iMessage providers charge per phone line rather than per message, what that means for a small sender, and how to work out whether a line pays for itself.
7 min read