Unpopular opinion: moving from Zapier to n8n was the best ops decision I made this year

We used to run about 45 zaps at my last job, paying like $600 a month. When I moved to a new SaaS company in Austin, I inherited this wild mess of 30 zaps that kept breaking. A buddy told me to try n8n and I laughed it off at first. But after 3 weeks of fixing one broken zap after another, I switched everything over in a weekend. The self hosted setup was a pain for the first 2 days but now I'm running 60 workflows for zero monthly cost. Who else has moved off the big automation platforms and seen a real difference?

3 comments

3 Comments

hannah3201mo ago

Woah hold up, I gotta side with @king.val here a little bit. N8n looks great if you have time to mess with Docker every time something breaks, but $600 a month for 45 zaps that mostly work is pretty standard for a business. Not everyone wants to trade their sanity for free hosting.

max2231mo ago

$600 a month for 45 zaps that still break sounds like a nightmare dressed up as a convenience. I moved my personal projects off Zapier after they charged me for two months of a dead zap that I forgot to turn off. Now I just run everything on a $5 VPS and have way more control, even if I did spend a whole Saturday yelling at Docker. It's funny how these "set it and forget it" tools make you forget how much you're paying for something that barely works. But hey, at least the Zapier CEO can afford a third yacht now.

king.val1mo ago

Honestly, you're acting like Zapier is the devil or something, @max223. It's just a tool, and yeah it overcharges sometimes but most people barely hit their limit anyway. Ngl, spending a Saturday yelling at Docker doesn't sound like a huge upgrade to me.