n8n & Open-Source Automation vs. Big Tech Lock-In

LOCKED I spent $4,000 on automation tools that locked me into a single ecosystem—until my co-founder showed me n8n running on a $5 VPS. We were scaling our customer onboarding process across three SaaS platforms. Zapier’s premium plan was choking on multi-step workflows, and every “fix” meant another monthly subscription. Our data was trapped in silos, and the vendor had zero incentive to let us leave. One late night, I audited our stack and saw that 70% of our workflows were just basic CRUD operations and webhooks—stuff that open-source tools could handle for free. The next morning, we migrated our first 3 workflows to n8n self-hosted on a DigitalOcean droplet. In 30 days, we cut automation costs by 94%—from $2,800/month to $168/month—and our workflows run faster because they’re not queued behind other startups’ tasks. No more “we’ve reached our task limit” alerts. The lesson: Ownership isn’t just about code; it’s about choosing tools that don’t hold your business hostage. What would you have done differently? 👇
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