You’re Paying Humans to Do What Software Should
How many hours does your team spend copying data between systems every week? Forwarding emails to the right person. Updating spreadsheets from CRM exports. Generating the same report every Monday morning.
Ten hours? Twenty? More?
A Salesforce study found that 90% of workers say automation tools have increased their productivity. But most SMBs haven’t automated a single workflow.
Not because the tools don’t exist. Because nobody told them how simple it’s become.
What n8n Actually Is
n8n (pronounced “n-eight-n,” short for “nodemation”) is an open-source workflow automation platform. Think of it as Zapier, but you can host it yourself, you own your data, and you’re not locked into a subscription that scales with your usage.
It has 400+ integrations out of the box. Slack, Gmail, databases, CRMs, spreadsheets, APIs. You connect nodes in a visual editor.
No code required for simple workflows. Full JavaScript support when you need it.
The fair-code license means you can self-host for free. Run it on your own server, your own cloud instance, or use their managed cloud if you prefer. No per-workflow pricing. No execution limits on self-hosted.
Why does that matter? A Zapier plan that handles 10,000 tasks per month costs around $70. A busy operations team hits that in days. With n8n self-hosted, the cost is whatever your server costs. Often under $20/month.
Five Automations You Can Build This Week
Forget the theory. Here are five workflows that take hours off your team’s plate.
Invoice processing
An email arrives with a PDF invoice. n8n extracts the attachment, sends it to an OCR service, pulls out the vendor name, amount, and due date, and creates a row in your accounting system. The whole thing runs without anyone touching it.
Before: someone opens the email, downloads the PDF, reads it, types the values into the system. Five minutes per invoice, forty invoices a day. After: zero minutes.
CRM-to-project-management sync
A deal closes in your CRM. n8n automatically creates a project in your project management tool, assigns it to the delivery team, and sends a Slack notification. No more “wait, did anyone set up the project for that new client?”
Weekly reporting
Every Friday at 4 PM, n8n queries your database, generates a summary of the week’s key metrics, formats it into a readable message, and sends it to your leadership Slack channel. Nobody builds it manually anymore.
Support ticket routing
A customer submits a support request. n8n reads the content, categorizes it (billing, technical, general), assigns a priority based on keywords and customer tier, and routes it to the right team’s queue. First-response time drops by 60-80%.
Employee onboarding
New hire starts Monday. n8n triggers on the HR system event: creates accounts in Slack, email, and the project management tool, sends a welcome message with login details, and notifies the team lead. What used to take IT two hours now takes two seconds.
Setting Up n8n: Faster Than You Think
Self-hosting n8n takes about 30 minutes. You need a server (a basic $10/month VPS works for small teams), Docker, and a reverse proxy if you want HTTPS.
The Docker Compose setup is straightforward. Pull the image, set your environment variables (database connection, encryption key), and start it up. n8n stores workflow definitions in a SQLite database by default, PostgreSQL for production use.
Once it’s running, you access the workflow editor through your browser. Drag nodes, connect them, test with real data. The visual interface makes it obvious what’s happening at each step.
For teams that don’t want to manage infrastructure, n8n Cloud starts at EUR 20/month. You lose the cost advantage of self-hosting but gain zero-maintenance operation.
Where n8n Beats Zapier (And Where It Doesn’t)
n8n wins on cost, self-hosting, and data control. If you’re in a regulated industry or just prefer not to send your business data through a US-based third party, n8n self-hosted is the clear choice.
Zapier wins on simplicity for non-technical users and the breadth of pre-built templates. If you have one marketing person who needs to connect Mailchimp to a Google Sheet, Zapier is easier.
For anything involving custom logic, database queries, or more than basic if/then routing, n8n’s code capability blows Zapier away. You can write JavaScript inside any node. You can call any API.
You’re not limited to what the integration catalog supports.
Calculating the ROI
Here’s the math we walk clients through.
Count the manual tasks your team does repeatedly. Estimate the time per task and frequency. Multiply by the hourly cost of the person doing it.
If your operations coordinator spends 10 hours per week on tasks that n8n can automate, and they cost EUR 35/hour fully loaded, that’s EUR 18,200 per year. n8n self-hosted costs under EUR 240/year to run.
The ROI isn’t theoretical. It’s a 75x return. And that’s before accounting for the errors eliminated and the faster turnaround times.
Start with the three highest-volume automations. Prove the value in the first month. Then expand.
For how automation fits into the bigger modernization picture, read our digital transformation playbook. And if you’re ready to invest in DevOps practices to support your automation infrastructure, we’ve got a guide for that too.
Want to automate your most painful workflows? Let’s identify the quick wins. We’ll map your manual processes, estimate the time savings, and build the first automations with you.
