If you’ve ever looked into automating something in your business, connecting your contact form to your email list, sending yourself a text when you get a new lead, moving customer info from one app to another, you’ve probably run into Zapier.
Zapier works. But the free plan is pretty limited, and once you need more than a handful of automations running, you’re looking at $50 a month minimum. For a small business that’s still figuring out what automation is even useful for, that’s a hard sell.
There’s another option called n8n, and it’s worth knowing about.
What n8n actually is
n8n (pronounced “n-eight-n”) is a workflow automation tool. You build connections between apps. If this happens over here, do that over there. Same basic idea as Zapier, but with a few differences that matter.
It’s open source. You can run it yourself for free on your own server, or use their cloud version starting around $20 a month. Either way, it’s cheaper than Zapier for the same amount of work.
It’s also more flexible. Zapier is designed to be simple, which is great until you need to do something slightly outside the template. n8n lets you get into the actual logic of what you’re building. You can write small bits of code if you need to. You can build more complex automations without hitting a wall.
And it connects to a lot of things. Over 400 apps at this point, including most of the tools small businesses actually use.
What this looks like in practice
Here are a few automations that are easy to build in n8n:
When someone fills out your contact form, their info goes into a spreadsheet, you get a text message, and they get a confirmation email. All of that happens automatically, without you touching anything.
When you get a new invoice paid, it logs in your accounting tool and sends you a summary.
When someone books an appointment, it adds them to your email list and sends them a reminder the day before.
None of this is complicated in concept. The hard part is usually knowing what tool to use and getting it set up the first time.
The honest part
n8n has a steeper learning curve than Zapier. Zapier holds your hand pretty well. n8n is a bit more technical, and the interface takes some getting used to.
If you’re not comfortable with software in general, it might be frustrating at first. That’s not a reason to avoid it, but it’s worth knowing before you dive in.
If you’ve used any kind of flow-chart or logic-based tool before, you’ll pick it up faster than you think.
Where to start
The best thing you can do is look at automations other people have already built and see if any of them solve a problem you actually have. No point building something from scratch when the work is already done.
I put together a collection of free workflow templates built for small businesses. You can grab them, import them into n8n, adjust a few settings, and have something running in an afternoon.
Check out the free workflow templates here.
If you get stuck or want help setting something up, I can help with that too. But start with the templates. A lot of people get something useful running without needing any help at all.