I tried to set up n8n previously

I was mostly unsuccessful. I tried their hosted option and struggled to automate anything. It looks like it should be easy with the visual style of working. There are nodes on the screen and you link from one to another. Starting with triggers which lead to nodes which grab data and then nodes to make things happen. It’s the filling in of the settings of the nodes with which I struggled. Each node needs different settings and I found it difficult to get that part right. However I have seen a few video tutorials recently with all the info on how to set n8n up, either as a self hosted service which can be on your own computer or hosted on Hostinger. You have to pay for the Hostinger per month, which is not that expensive. On your own device it is more complicated but completely free.

Let’s try the Hostinger option

I can always close it after a month or two if I don’t find it useful. The harder part will be to find things to automate. What do I need to automate? Will it be useful and worth the hassle of setting it up. I did use IFTT previously and looked at Zapier. The cost of Zapier put me off. The IFTT was OK until the limitations on the free version made it less useful.

I’m still wondering about if I want to spent the money on the Hostinger option. I set up the free 14 day trial with n8n instead and I’ve been following a course by Nate Herk. I’ve already run into problems with the first automation. Something is not working and I don’t know how to fix it. There are just so many settings for each of the nodes and it really isn’t intuitive at all. After spending quite a bit of time following this tutorial and getting nowhere, it is disappointing. Maybe I’ll try the next automation in the tutorial and see how I feel after that.

Success

I used Perplexity AI to ask how to fix the problem I ran up against and was able to sort it out and continue the tutorial. I added the chat node and got it working with OpenAI. Woo Hoo! The automation looks into a file I added and answers questions based on the information in that file. It does a really good job and uses the AI to make the answer extra informative. Maybe I could get into this and it will be worth getting the Hostinger VPS after all.

Started on the Next Project

A bit frustrating to get just part way through this one and things were not working. Feel like giving up on n8n. The problem is that I’d need to spend money on other AI tools to add in these n8n automations and I don’t really want to do that. Maybe I will watch more of the tutorial and see if I can see some use in taking n8n further.

It’s not easy

For the moment I have given up on n8n. What I really need is to spend a week learning it and doing nothing else. Not going to set up Hostinger for a VPS for a year until I get comfortable with n8n.