Self-hosted alternative to IFTTT or Zapier, workflow automation tool reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- opensourcecolumbus · 2023-11-20 04:12 For quite some time, I had been searching for a workflow automation tool that can help me save time in building and managing all kinds of automation whether it is related to sending mobile notification when my doorbell rings or triggering social media actions based on the events in my local system or even more complex scenerios. After experimenting with multiple tools, I have picked Node-RED as the winner. It is not a panacea but I didn't find any better OSS project for this category. Here's the review [Originally posted on #OpenSourceDiscovery newsletter](https://opensou rcedisc.substack.com/p/opensourcediscovery-85-node-red) Project: **Node-RED** > A Node.js app for low-code workflow automation. Browser-based visual flow editor to integrate various devices, api, and services. * Source: https://github.com/node-red/node-red * Stack: Node.js * Author: Nick O'Leary 💖 What I like about Node-RED: * Highly extensible with support for fundamental actions that can cover almost all the use cases you can think for an automation platform * Lots of community-contributed workflows * Supports Raspberry Pi and BeagleBoard 👎 What I dislike about Node-RED: * Took significant time to setup my first useful workflow * Lower-level of abstraction led to more time in setting up and maintaining the workflows * Using and vetting community-contributed flows is not straightforward ⭐ Ratings and metrics * Production readiness: 7/10 * Docs rating: 6/10 * Time to POC(proof of concept): 2 week Note: This is a summary of the full review posted on [#OpenSourceDiscovery](https://opensourcedisc.substack.com) newsletter. I have more thoughts on each points and would love to answer them in comments. Would love to hear your experiences with Node-RED or any other similar project ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Moultrex · 2023-11-20 07:49 Did you tried n8n? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- adamshand · 2023-11-20 08:03 I moved a bunch of work stuff from Make/Integromat to N8N recently and was super impressed. Really recommend N8N! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- opensourcecolumbus · 2023-11-20 09:58 I tried n8n, pipedream, huggin as well. Either didn't like their license or tech stack or heavy system usage req. But I like their cloud solutions. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- opensourcecolumbus · 2023-11-20 10:00 Self hosted? What is your use case and what are some good/bad things about n8n for you? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Willing_Suspect_9091 · 2023-11-20 17:13 n8n is superb! Self hostable - yes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- adamshand · 2023-11-20 18:38 We're using the cloud version, but I did initial set it up selfhosted for the trail and it was pretty straight forward. We went with cloud only because we're a small team and one less thing to manage is good. We use Airtable as a company-wide database. N8N grabs data from vendor APIs and adds it to Airtable. It provisions user accounts to vender services. It runs various reports. There were a couple workflows I'd been struggling to build in Make for some time and got working in N8N in a couple hours. ## Good - The process of debugging nodes is clearer and easier than Make. - It just uses normal JS objects to pass data around, no weird terminology. - Can use custom JS to do whatever you want. - UI was faster and more responsive than Make - Much cheaper than Make - Support is excellent even on unpaid/selfhosted plans ## Bad - It's less pointy/clicky, some very basic understanding of JS is important. - Support team is small and seemed to be in one timezone (I often had to wait overnight for answers) - The range of APIs they natively support is smaller - There are fewer people asking/answering questions on the forums ---------------------------------------------------------------------- opensourcecolumbus · 2023-11-21 03:06 Thank you. V helpful.