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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

#61

Post by XCSme »

rkuodys wrote: post #58
XCSme wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently started using it, and as an experienced developer, I love it. It's really easy to automate tasks and schedule things. For example, I connected it to my UXWizz MySQL database, asked the AI in UXWizz to give me a query with the funnel conversions for today (visits/pricing/checkout/sales) compared to last week, copied that into n8n and made it send me an emoji-formatted daily Telegram message. I am now using…

Can I ask you why so many things with N8N is connected over Telegram it seems versus for example slack? Not a user of Telegram so I honestly am curious about this choice

Personally I hate Slack, it never works on my PC because of their organizations/workspace system, where you need a separate account for each community you are in. Also, it's really buggy and login often doesn't work, or switching accounts breaks things.

Telegram has a really good mobile app, and their BotFather makes it easy to create custom integrations. They display nicely a lot of notification formats (text/html/markdown) and it's free.

Slack is too bloated to simply use for notifications.

Re: N8n – Flexible AI workflow automation for technical teams

#62

Post by handfuloflight »

aerhardt wrote: post #37
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…

Zapier has fundamental issues in control flow and exception handling in my experience. Custom apps aside, how do Zapier and n8n compare in your experience?

Can you give a specific example re: Zapier?

Re: N8n – Flexible AI workflow automation for technical teams

#64

Post by victorbjorklund »

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'm a developer but use N8N. One reason is not having to build and maintain integrations with lots of API:s for workflows that are just run once in a while. Like building an integration with Slack that will get data from 5 API:s and save it in google sheets and send you an email.

That would require writing lots of code while here it is much easier with N8N. Anything complicated or needing lots of useage I would go for programming

Re: N8n – Flexible AI workflow automation for technical teams

#65

Post by tinco »

simple10 wrote: post #49
cluckindan wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not open source though.

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

It's dual licensed in a way, but neither license is open source. The OSI messed up in not coming up with an answer to the SSPL, and now ambitious projects that would have traditionally gone with an open source license like AGPL are now foregoing open source entirely and just slapping a sustainable use license on it.

So yeah, you can use n8n for free, but that doesn't make it open source. It is a source available license.

Re: N8n – Flexible AI workflow automation for technical teams

#66

Post by tinco »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #10
preya2k wrote: post #8

If you’re looking for an Open Source alternative, give Windmill a try.

Just to clarify. The reason why you aren't saying N8n is open source because of its license right? I haven't read its license but it does seem to me to have quite some restrictions. And whereas Windmill seems to be agpl + apache. So that is what you are mentioning, right?

Typically when people say open source they mean that the source code can be used , modified and made public for any purpose. There is an organization called OSI that maintains a ratified list of licenses that are compatible with the ideals of the open source movement. Although the OSI has been compromised by the big cloud providers and no longer serves the public interest, the list can still be relied on as a good sign that the license you're looking at is open source.

Re: N8n – Flexible AI workflow automation for technical teams

#67

Post by zarathustreal »

handfuloflight wrote: post #62
aerhardt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zapier has fundamental issues in control flow and exception handling in my experience. Custom apps aside, how do Zapier and n8n compare in your experience?

Can you give a specific example re: Zapier?

Are you asking for an example of control flow?

Re: N8n – Flexible AI workflow automation for technical teams

#68

Post by aerhardt »

handfuloflight wrote: post #62
aerhardt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zapier has fundamental issues in control flow and exception handling in my experience. Custom apps aside, how do Zapier and n8n compare in your experience?

Can you give a specific example re: Zapier?

Once you’re down a logical branch, there’s no coming back to the main branch. It’s hacks all the way down from there to do things that are extremely simple in a normal programming language.
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