n8n is our favorite no-code tool — fair pricing, code-friendly, self-hostable. We use it for some clients. But running n8n in production is itself a project. Here's when each approach wins.
| Feature | n8n | WorkflowTime |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Self-hosted free; Cloud from €20/month. Best price-to-power ratio in the no-code space. | Project-based or retainer. Higher upfront, but no infra management. |
| Self-hosting | Yes. Full control, but you operate the infra. | We handle hosting end-to-end (or deploy to your cloud). |
| Workflow building | Visual + code-friendly. Best of both worlds for technical teams. | All code. Maximum flexibility, no visual builder. |
| AI workflows | Has LangChain integration, AI agent nodes. Improving fast. | Native. Custom prompt engineering, evals, model routing. |
| Maintenance and updates | Self-hosted: you upgrade. Cloud: managed by n8n. | Fully managed by us — including security patches and dependency updates. |
| Custom integrations | Custom nodes via JavaScript. Active community. | Anything code can do. No 'unsupported integration' problem. |
| Observability | Built-in execution history. Limited dashboards out of the box. | Custom dashboards, alerts, SLO tracking, on-call rotation. |
| Vendor lock-in | Low (open-source, exportable workflows). | Low. You own the code. |
When you have an in-house engineer who can run it, when your needs fit n8n's node ecosystem, and when you want maximum control over hosting. Great for technical teams that want a tool, not a partner.
Yes. We often build with n8n as the orchestration layer, adding custom code for AI/document processing/complex logic. Gets you the best of both.
n8n is free; running n8n in production isn't. We provide the hosting, monitoring, on-call, integrations, AI logic, and ongoing iteration. The 'free tool' becomes a project that takes engineer time.
n8n is more code-friendly and fairer-priced for high volume. Make has a more polished visual builder. Zapier is fastest to start. n8n wins for technical teams; Make for medium-complex flows; Zapier for simple ones.
Not unless we should. If your n8n setup is working, we extend it. We migrate only when n8n is becoming the bottleneck (limits, complexity, AI requirements).