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N8n raises $180M

blog.n8n.io

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Re: N8n raises $180M

#191

Post by hirako2000 »

turnsout wrote: post #66
hirako2000 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

n8n in my experience using it for 2 years now, and compared to similar solutions as there are many doing quite the same thing: it is just a very good product. It's stable. It has a gazillion integrations out of the box and is architectured as a module system so it's easy to create your own. It is very community centric, with community workflows and also integration modules people kindly publish on GitHub. Oh, it's op…

This is so helpful, thank you. I've been evaluating n8n as a way to build things quickly for clients, but I do wonder about what happens when they want to turn the automation into a full app. I wish there was a first-party way to export an n8n workflow as a plain Python script or set of scripts. Have you ever had to migrate a project from n8n to code?

Yes I migrated workflows which I felt should be promoted as critical/production. Also because I wanted to scale that independently. https://applycreatures.com started as product backed by n8n. It enabled rapid backend tweaks to focus on the frontend. Once MVP was completed, it was time to migrate. I had the code in JavaScript so the core logic could simply be moved over, but a lot of boilerplate code had to be written to create a full fledged nodejs API. It confirmed that n8n was a good decision for early, prototyping the solution.

Most of my workflows remained in n8n, those that are unimportant or turned out unnecessary to the application. It saved me days for each, not having to build an app backend and cicd for those.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#192

Post by hirako2000 »

sneak wrote: post #126
hirako2000 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

n8n in my experience using it for 2 years now, and compared to similar solutions as there are many doing quite the same thing: it is just a very good product. It's stable. It has a gazillion integrations out of the box and is architectured as a module system so it's easy to create your own. It is very community centric, with community workflows and also integration modules people kindly publish on GitHub. Oh, it's op…

n8n is not open core/open source. it is not free software at all.

I defined it as open (core) source. Because that's what it is. Or source available. Both terms are precise.

But what I explained is that contrary to many open core projects, n8n public sources form a (generous) comprehensive solution, aside a couple of features that should have been public sources, the solution stands as a grea, with little to no limits, platform. Unlimited users, no cap on workflows, no cap on number of nodes etc etc.

Also, their licensing is good, you can pay and get the extra features and do what you want, including modifications if I'm not mistaken. That's free software without the free beer aspect, I never claimed it was free software or pure open source.

I'm also all for free software, but this is the sort of solution that doesn't fit well with the open source philosophy , making it rare to see open sourced. That's all.

Now that they raised significant money, the situation will slowly change to prioritize monetization, I guess.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#193

Post by nickthegreek »

xienze wrote: post #108
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh, it's open (core) source. And while certain (just a couple of) enterprise features should have been made open to qualify as being called open source, it's very close to that. It is absolutely not open source. The "Fair Source" license that n8n invented has two related qualifications that make it not open source: > You may use or modify the software only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commerci…

> It's not open source if you can't use it professionally or sell work derived from it. Does anyone _really_ use these low/no-code platforms to create products? I was always under the impression that you'd primarily use something like this for "internal business purposes" i.e. little internal utilities that you can't justify spending serious development time on. Which the license lets you do.

n8n reddit is overrun with get rich quick workflows.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#194

Post by primitivesuave »

detaro wrote: post #71
primitivesuave wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

N8n is extremely popular among CS educators. I imagine at least a few thousand of those stars are from students who learned to code with n8n.

interesting! In what kind of contexts/classes is it used?

I used to sell software to CS teachers, and noticed n8n really explode in popularity with that group around 2015-2018. Along with Node-RED, it is a fantastic paradigm for teaching practical applications of computer science, rather than simply having students solve leetcode-type problems.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#195

Post by sneak »

hirako2000 wrote: post #192
sneak wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

n8n is not open core/open source. it is not free software at all.

I defined it as open (core) source. Because that's what it is. Or source available. Both terms are precise. But what I explained is that contrary to many open core projects, n8n public sources form a (generous) comprehensive solution, aside a couple of features that should have been public sources, the solution stands as a grea, with little to no limits, platform. Unlimited users, no cap on workflows, no cap on numbe…

It’s not open core (which is a type of open source), it’s not open source, and it’s not “not pure open source”.

It’s not open at all. It’s a nonfree license.

It’s neither free as in freedom nor free as in beer.

You’re not “all for free software” if you carry water like this for a proprietary nonfree source-available package such as you are here.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#196

Post by dpflan »

helsinki wrote: post #173
dpflan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have paying customers? Putting money into customer acquisition and retention is where a lot of money can go versus R&D.

No, I don’t. I built it inside of my employer’s walls (hedge fund), so I’d have to rebuild it from scratch in order to acquire paying customers (not a bad idea).

True, from scratch, may need to be cautious regarding re-creating it having built it on your employer's time and machinery/property, check your employment contract. Still very cool that you built this!

Re: N8n raises $180M

#197

Post by raheelrjunaid »

seer wrote: post #133

While n8n is amazing for the odd office automation and giving semi-technical people an enormously powerful tool to get things done, it seems it can’t really replace a real backend, and mostly because of the n8n team choices than any technology. We were trailing it and wanted to essentially switch our entire backend to it - and technically it seemed to be able to do the job, but their licensing turned out to not be a…

To add onto your concerns, their form nodes and file-blob node are limiting to say the least.

I wrote a post on it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45558489

Re: N8n raises $180M

#198

Post by Bhushan2005 »

BoredPositron wrote: post #2

5000 n8n workflows that made me millions. 1 n8n workflow that made me 5k per hour... It's an okay product I appreciate that it's selfhosted with good documentation but they absolutely destroyed their brand with excessive affiliate marketing and now nothing of substance is left if you search for it anywhere.

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