Automation has become an extremely valuable skill for any technical team. It helps eliminate repetitive tasks, accelerate business operations, and lets you focus on creative or strategic tasks.
Whether it’s moving data between apps, when something changes, or triggering the process of building a smart system that runs on its own, automation can save hours every week.
The problem is that most automation platforms make you choose between flexibility and simplicity.
Tools like Zapier are easy to use but limited when you need customization. Writing your script in Python or JavaScript gives you full control but takes more time to build and maintain.
N8N changes this balance. It is an open source workflow automation platform that provides both control and simplicity.
N8N lets you automate anything from simple tasks to complex systems using a visual interface. You can drag and connect nodes to create workflows or write code when needed. It’s built for technical teams who want freedom without losing ease of use.
In this article, we will learn how to build and deploy your own automation workflow using N8N. In the end, you’ll have a working automation server and the knowledge to build smart, self-running workflows for any use case.
Table of Contents
What does the N8n do?
N8N connects apps and systems you already use.
Each connection is called a node, and each node performs an action. You can combine multiple nodes into a workflow that runs automatically.
For example, you can create a workflow where submitting a new form to Typeforms generates a Slack message and stores the data in Google Sheets. You can then add logic to send the email only if certain conditions are met.
This approach allows anyone to build automation, yet remains developer friendly. You can use JavaScript or Python within a workflow for custom logic, import an NPM package, or connect to any API that doesn’t already have a prebuilt node.
The platform supports more than four hundred integrations out of the box, from GitHub and AWS to OpenAI and Telegram. This large library of ready-to-use nodes means you can integrate most of the tools you use every day without needing to write any code.
N8N is open source
The open source nature of N8N is what makes it stand out.
Most like automation tools Zippier There are closed systems that hide their inner workings. With the N8N, Source code Publicly available. You can host it on your own server, edit it, and inspect how everything works.
This is important for both privacy and flexibility.
When you host N8N yourself, your data never leaves your environment. This is especially useful for industries such as finance, healthcare, and security where sensitive data must remain private. Teams can build automation without sending information through third-party servers.
Being open source also means you’re never locked into one vendor. You can add your own nodes, grow the platform, or even contribute to the community.
A fair code license ensures that while the project remains sustainable for the developers who maintain it, it remains accessible to anyone who wants to use or modify it.
How to get started with N8N
Getting started with the N8N only takes a few minutes. If you already have Node.js installed, you can launch it from your terminal using the command:
npx n8n
This will launch N8N natively and open the visual editor http://localhost:5678.
You can too Deploy N8N with Docker Using some simple commands. If you want a consistent setup where your data and workflows are saved automatically, Docker is often the easiest option.
Once the editor is open, you’ll see a blank canvas where you can drag and drop nodes. For beginners, the best way to learn is to build small workflows.
Building an N8N workflow
Let’s create a simple N8N workflow.
Step 1: After logging in, click “Create Workflow” above. This will open an empty workspace. Give your workflow a name like “Email to Email”. You will be creating a simple sequence of steps, where one action leads to another.
Step 2: Every workflow in N8N starts with a trigger, which decides when the workflow runs. In this example, we will use a schedule trigger so that the workflow runs once a day.
Click the plus icon to add a new node and find “On Schedule”. Select it and select the option that says “every day”. You can set the exact time you run, for example, every morning at 9am. This means that once your workflow is activated, N8N will automatically start it daily at that time.
Step 3: Now that the workflow knows when to run, it needs to know what to do. The next step is to fetch the latest articles from the blog’s RSS feed. Click the plus icon again to add another node and search for “Reading RSS”.
In the URL field, type a link to a blog feed eg https://blog.cloudflare.com/rss/. Click “Execute Node” to test it. You should now see a list of recent blog posts with their titles, descriptions and links. This confirms that the feed is working properly.
Step 4: Sometimes you don’t want all the items from an RSS feed. For example, you may only want the top three posts. To do this, you can add a function node between the RSS and Email actions. In this node, insert a short JavaScript snippet like return items.slice(0, 3);. This will trim the list and keep only the first three results. You can also choose to skip this step if you want to send all posts in an email.
Step 5: The next step is to send the RSS feed items to your email inbox. Add another node and search for “Email”. You can use your preferred email service such as Gmail or Outlook, or configure it manually using the SMTP settings.
For Gmail, choose “Send an email.” For settings, Get your oauth keys In the Subject field from Google, type something like “Daily Blog Updates”. In the message field, you can add RSS feed data using expressions such as {{ $json("title") }} - {{ $json("link") }}.
When the workflow runs, it will automatically replace these variables with the original titles and links. You can check the email by clicking “Execute Node” and checking your inbox.
Step 6: Once you’ve added all three nodes, Schedule Trigger, RSS Feed Read, and Email, you need to connect them in this order. Arrows show data flow.
Click “Execute Workflow” to test everything. If the setup is correct, you should receive an email with the latest blog posts. When you’re satisfied with the results, turn on the workflow by clicking the toggle switch in the top right corner. It will now run automatically every day without you having to open the N8N again.
As you get comfortable, you can start chaining multiple services together, add conditional logic, or add custom code nodes for specific cases. The live execution view helps you see how data moves between nodes in real time.
N8N is running in production using Seola
When you’re ready to move on from testing, the N8N gives you two main options. You can host it yourself using your own infrastructure or use their managed cloud version n8n.io.
Self-hosting gives you full control and is usually preferred by technical teams that want to integrate with private APIs or keep sensitive data in-house.
You can choose any cloud provider, such as AWS, Digitalisan, or others, to set up N8N. But I will use Siola.
Seoul is a PAAS provider designed for developers and dev teams to consistently ship features and updates in the most efficient manner. It offers application hosting, database, object storage, and static site hosting for your projects.
I’m using Siola for two reasons:
Each platform will charge you to create a cloud resource. Siola comes with a $50 credit for our use, so we won’t incur any costs for this instance.
Seoul has one Template for N8Nso it simplifies the manual installation and setup for each resource you’ll need to install.
Login Click on Seela and Templates. You can see N8N as one of the templates.
Click on the “N8N” template. You will see the resources required to deliver the application. Click on “Deploy Template”.
You can see that the resources are provisioned. Once the resources are provisioned, go to your N8N application and click on Current Deployment.
Wait a few minutes. Once the deployment is complete, you will see a green check mark.
Click on “View App”. You will get cloud url like https://n8n-9u6kc.sevalla.app/.
You now have a production-grade N8N server running on the cloud. You can use it to build your own automations in your self-hosted cloud environment.
Where N8n is powerful
Most users start with simple automations. But the real power of the N8N is revealed when you start building complex, multi-part workflows. You can create sequences that include APIs, data transformations, and logic-based decision making.
For example, a marketing team could build a system that captures mentions on Twitter, ranks them with an AI model, potentially integrates into a CRM, and sends Slack alerts for high-priority mentions.
A developer can create a workflow that automatically triggers pipelines when code is merged into a branch.
Because the N8N supports both no-code and full-code modes, you never outgrow it. As your automations become more advanced, you can still use the same platform to manage them.
AI-Driven Automations
The N8N is also built for the era of AI. It comes with native support for integrating major language models and such tools Lingchen. This means you can create AI workflows that use your own data and logic.
Imagine setting up a workflow that reads new support tickets, summarizes them with an AI model, and routes them to the right team. Or one that takes blog posts, generates summaries, and automatically posts to your social channels.
You can visually design these workflows while letting AI handle the heavy lifting.
Because N8N allows you to control how and where AI models are called, it gives teams flexibility without sacrificing data security. You can integrate your own OpenAI key, run native models, or use third-party APIs in the same environment.
The real value of the N8N lies in how it combines flexibility, transparency and control. It doesn’t hide complexity from you but gives you the tools to manage it better. You can start small with visual automation and grow into advanced logic and AI-driving workflows.
Since it’s open source, you’re never at risk of losing access to your automations. You can drive it anywhere, connect it to anything, and inspect everything that goes on under the hood. This level of freedom is rarely found in modern automation platforms.
For beginners, N8N is an opportunity to understand how automation works without the need to learn full-stack programming. For developers, it’s a scalable system that can power serious productivity workflows.
The result
Automation is becoming an integral part of every technological process. The challenge is to find a device that balances simplicity with power. N8N achieves this balance by being open source, extensible, and flexible enough for both code users and developers.
N8N is not just another automation app. It’s a complete, open, and developer-friendly platform built to make automation accessible to everyone.
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