This article talks about a free self-hosted open-source alternative to Zapier, IFTTT, Flow, and Tray.io. n8n is a workflow automation tool that lets you automate custom tasks. This tool allows you to create node-based workflows where you can select starting, intermediates, and end nodes (services) and create custom workflows.
Currently, you can create automate custom workflow with n8n but you have to deploy them manually, in other words, workflow automation is self-hosted. But a hosted version of n8n is under development which will be released in the near future. The hosted version would be identical to services like Zapier where you just have to log in and activate the workflow, no manual deployment needed.
Also read: Free IFTTT Like Service to Perform Automated Tasks on PC
Self Hosted Open Source Alternative to Zapier, IFTTT, Flow, Tray.io
n8n is a nice alternative to other workflow automation services. It is as practical as others if not more but the process of creating and deploying workflow is comparatively complicated. To create an automated workflow, you need nodes, connections, and triggers. For more information, you can check out the n8n documentation.
This tool supports lots of popular services which are frequently get automated for ease. You can check out a list of all the services along with triggers and nodes here.
From the list of supported triggers and nodes, you can fetch the workflow codes. Each node or trigger shows you all the available options and you can pick the workflow code for the required feature. For example, in case of GitHub, you get options to get the workflow code for File, Issue, Repository, Release, and User.
This way, you can fetch the workflow code for notes and trigger and create your custom workflow on the self-hosted n8n editor. After creating your custom workflow automation code, you can post it on n8n and get it listed in the workflow library.
Start automating your tasks with n8n here.
Wrap Up
n8n is a nice open-source alternative to other popular workflow automation services like Zapier, IFTTT, Flow, Tray.io, etc. Since it is only self-hosted at the moment so creation and deployment of workflows are a bit complicated. But n8n provided detailed documentation to help you through that process. Also, a hosted version is in work which makes it easy to create and deploy the workflow just like Zapier but free.
