I like building software, but some problems don't need new software. They need the tools a team already uses to talk to each other. That's where n8n comes in.

What n8n is

n8n is a workflow automation tool: you connect a trigger (a form submission, a new row in a sheet, a webhook, a schedule) to a series of steps that read, transform and send data. It can be self-hosted, which matters when the data is sensitive.

Workflows that pay for themselves

These are the kinds of workflows I build for sales and marketing teams:

  • Lead capture. A website form creates a contact in the CRM, sends a tailored welcome email and posts a summary to the team chat.
  • Follow-ups. If a lead hasn't replied in three days, a reminder lands with the right salesperson.
  • Reporting. Every Monday, pull the week's numbers from several tools into one summary email.
  • Content. Draft social posts from a new blog article with an AI step, then queue them for human review.

Keep a human in the loop

AI steps are great at drafting, sorting and summarising. They shouldn't send anything important unsupervised. I route AI output to an approval step, a message with "approve" and "edit" buttons, before it goes anywhere public.

Build them to fail loudly

Automations break quietly: an API key expires, a field gets renamed. Every workflow I hand over has an error branch that alerts someone, and a short note explaining what it does and who owns it.

When to write code instead

If a workflow grows dozens of branches, needs complex business rules or handles high volumes, it has outgrown a visual tool. That's the point to turn it into a proper service. Until then, n8n gets the job done in an afternoon instead of a sprint.