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N8n – Flexible AI workflow automation for technical teams

n8n.io

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Re: N8n – Flexible AI workflow automation for technical teams

#41

Post by Everdred2dx »

jasongill wrote: post #21

n8n has been good but not great in our organization (and we pronounce it "Nathan", to answer someone else's question). It's effectively a self-hosted version of Zapier and has quite a few built-in integrations. It's a bit more annoying to use than Zapier (but the price is right), and the AI features are currently about like the AI features of every other product: basically sufficient to tell investors "we do AI!" but…

It’s early days but check out Tracecat. I’ve been playing with it a bit and love it!

Re: N8n – Flexible AI workflow automation for technical teams

#43

Post by orliesaurus »

EcommerceFlow wrote: post #5

I have a friend that uses them, but I took a separate route and just decided to learn programming basics, at least enough to be able to vibe code. I'm thinking why not just use APIs?

I think you did the right choice, but not everyone wants to take the longer route, so this is why n8n exists!

Re: N8n – Flexible AI workflow automation for technical teams

#44

Post by sharpfuryz »

nico wrote: post #13

Can someone talk about their experience using n8n? I’ve seen it in passing a lot lately, but I wonder what some good successful use cases are

It depends on what you need. For use cases like "export data from HubSpot, transform it (join by id, normalize), and load it into Google Spreadsheets," it works great. I've tested it for marketing automation, but it requires skill to configure properly.

Re: N8n – Flexible AI workflow automation for technical teams

#45

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

claytongulick wrote: post #31
jasongill wrote: post #21

n8n has been good but not great in our organization (and we pronounce it "Nathan", to answer someone else's question). It's effectively a self-hosted version of Zapier and has quite a few built-in integrations. It's a bit more annoying to use than Zapier (but the price is right), and the AI features are currently about like the AI features of every other product: basically sufficient to tell investors "we do AI!" but…

How would you compare it with Node Red? I've just poked at them, but my impression was that Node Red much more capable. IIRC one of my issues with n8n was the lack of streaming ability, which kills it for large datasets.

I evaluated both at one point, and n8n is a "we have NodeRed at home" product. Didn't see the point.

Re: N8n – Flexible AI workflow automation for technical teams

#47

Post by scrollinondubs »

greatpostman wrote: post #7

I’m suspicious about n8n being able to abstract properly to allow for dynamic agentic workflows. Anyone have actual experience?

Can you clarify "dynamic agentic workflows?" I use their agent node and it works great but what are you trying to do with it? FYI they just added native support for MCP in the latest release both for exposing their workflows as a MCP server and consuming MCP servcies easily via their MCP client tool: https://docs.n8n.io/integrations/builtin/core-nodes/n8n-node... https://docs.n8n.io/integrations/builtin/cluster-nodes/sub-n... That should make things interesting because they have a fairly extensive library of templates which can now easily be converted to MCP servers and be more easily invoked agnatically by LLMs.

Re: N8n – Flexible AI workflow automation for technical teams

#48

Post by Towaway69 »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #45
claytongulick wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you compare it with Node Red? I've just poked at them, but my impression was that Node Red much more capable. IIRC one of my issues with n8n was the lack of streaming ability, which kills it for large datasets.

I evaluated both at one point, and n8n is a "we have NodeRed at home" product. Didn't see the point.

For me, NodeRED is far more low-level with switch nodes being the equivalent to a case statement. A change node being equivalent to doing assigments of variables.

n8n is far more high level with google sheet nodes communicating with postgres database nodes. There is far less ability to do manipulate the data being passed around - as many said Zapier-like.

NodeRED is used for home automation and talking to devices that are connected to the network and providing nice dashboards of things happening. Another big use case is IIoT. So it less focussed on integration of SaaS services and more on devices integration and inter-communication between devices.

Plus NodeRED has a great collection[1] of third party nodes that can help in connecting to new devices. Installing nodes is based on npm but is completely automated.

[1] https://flows.nodered.org/search?type=node

Re: N8n – Flexible AI workflow automation for technical teams

#49

Post by simple10 »

cluckindan wrote: post #33
simple10 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can highly recommend n8n. I prefer it over Make.com, Pipedream, Zapier, etc. for automations and AI agent tasks. Basically, anything you want to automate but don't want to spin up a custom code server each time. The main reasons I switched to n8n are it's open source, meaning I can run it locally without limits, and it supports code nodes in javascript and python. Make.com used to drive me bonkers when it took 10+…

It’s not open source though.

True. It's dual licensed. Most of the features are available in the self hosted / local version.

Re: N8n – Flexible AI workflow automation for technical teams

#50

Post by mdaniel »

Everdred2dx wrote: post #41
jasongill wrote: post #21

n8n has been good but not great in our organization (and we pronounce it "Nathan", to answer someone else's question). It's effectively a self-hosted version of Zapier and has quite a few built-in integrations. It's a bit more annoying to use than Zapier (but the price is right), and the AI features are currently about like the AI features of every other product: basically sufficient to tell investors "we do AI!" but…

It’s early days but check out Tracecat. I’ve been playing with it a bit and love it!

Be aware of its AGPL license: https://github.com/TracecatHQ/tracecat/blob/0.34.1/LICENSE
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