At first glance, it doesn't seem like the answer to a very human desire in technology: control.
Control over logic, over data, over infrastructure; control so as not to rely on a “black box” SaaS; control to integrate anything, even the rare. And, in many cases, that control is real: n8n has a powerful ecosystem and a huge community.
The point is not to argue if it doesn't work: yes, it does.
The point is What price does an organization actually pay when it decides that its critical automation will also be a system that it must operate, secure and govern.
On day 1, the conversation is usually about “capacity”: how flexible it is, how many nodes it has, how easy it is to connect to APIs. On day 180, the conversation is about “responsibility”: who maintains, who monitors, who audits, who responds when something goes wrong.
Here is the cost that hardly anyone calculates at the beginning: the cost of converting automation into operation.
n8n shines when there is a technical team eager to build: model flows, touch APIs, make transformations, adjust conditions.
But that same virtue often pushes a dangerous pattern: the flow ends up “containing” the business process, and the business process ends up depending on a set of workflows that live in a tool.
When that happens, the cost doesn't come at once. It is filtered.
To sustain this with quality, you need real governance, not good will.
The official n8n website itself offers hosting documentation and, quite honestly, it is made clear that self-hosting n8n requires technical knowledge: configuring servers/containers, managing resources and scaling, securing servers and applications, and configuring n8n.
That paragraph, read through the eyes of IT Manager, is not a tutorial: It's a TCO notice. Because “self-hosted” doesn't just mean “I run it”. It means:
And the most expensive thing is not the server. It's the lifecycle.
The practical literature on self-hosting at n8n It usually lists what ends up being inevitable: reverse proxy, SSL, backups, monitoring, etc. (even third-party guides consider this as part of the package).
It's not that it's “wrong”: it's simply the price of sovereignty. The real question is: Does your company want to buy that sovereignty... or does it want to buy results?
n8n is “low-code” in interface, but its operation and governance tend to be “high-responsibility” when used for critical processes.
A concrete example: environments and change control.
n8n implements “environments” on top of Git: to use it, you link instances to a repo and work with branches.
And, even more important for reality: the documentation itself warns that You don't have to see n8n's source control as full version control; requires basic knowledge of Git to set it up and doesn't cover all Git functionality.
This is gold for the TCO discussion:
This is exactly the type of hidden cost that doesn't appear in the feature comparison.
n8n handles credentials and documents that data stored in credentials is encrypted using an encryption key.
In addition, it offers integration with”External Secrets” and clarifies permission nuances: for example, that certain external secrets should only be configured in the credentials of an owner/admin and explains permission effects when running workflows in production.
This shows two things at once:
In companies, the problem is rarely “can it be encrypted?” The problem is:
And there The cost returns to being human: It depends on your team doing it perfectly every time.
When an automation fails, the business doesn't ask “what node did it fail on?” The business asks “why wasn't this processed and who fixes it?”
If you automation strategy It makes the technical team the center of everything, three things happen:
this It's not a criticism of n8n: this is a typical phenomenon when the tool is powerful, but the usage model becomes dependent on the technical equipment.
Weavee stands precisely on that pain: reduce technical dependence, accelerate construction, and bring automation to the field of manageable business processes.
The key differential it's not “has more nodes” or “it has more features”. It's the approach:
It's not that “n8n can't”, what really happens is: a change of responsibility.
n8n is great when:
In fact, n8n's own pricing emphasizes a model based on “workflow executions” with unlimited steps, which reinforces that it is designed to produce and scale use with another logic.
But if your organization wants results without turning each automation into a permanent technical burden, it is reasonable to seek a more business-oriented and governance approach.
Do you want to take the first step with Weavee?