I’m using n8n for a basic personal project, mainly used for learning and automating a task. I’ve set it up locally using Docker to create and test out my workflows, and now I’m at a stage where I’d like to deploy it on a server so it can run seamlessly without my system being on. I’ve checked some videos, Reddit posts, etc., and am quite confused about what to use, so I wanted to get advice from someone who is actually using it. Requirements/info:
3 simple workflows that will mostly run 2 times a day each (excluding occasional manual runs). I’m using Google Sheets, LLM calls, an API or two, etc.
A server that doesn’t go to sleep with inactivity
Easy to set up (I’m not very technical, so the simpler the better.)
Free or cheap (Less than or around 300-400 a month ideally.)
If paid, then there needs to be a hard budget cap I could set. I thought about seeing tutorials and setting up GCP/AWS, but I’m really not comfortable with uncapped billing, so I dropped the idea. Too paranoid based on what I’ve seen happen at a previous workplace and the other horror stories I’ve read. A personal project isn’t worth that stress to me.
Allows some flexibility for more workflows.
I checked Render, and there are issues with their instance spinning down on the free version. I think there was a workaround where I could ping the server every 15 minutes, but I dropped it for some reason (usage cap? I don’t remember.) Hostinger is too expensive after the 1-month discount, and I don’t want to commit to 12 months as of now. I think Digital Ocean requires a domain, and I’m not planning to get one for this.
As of now, I’m thinking of 2 options
Railway’s $5 tier
Getting a 1 year n8n cloud starter plan from one of those shady sellers, which will cost me approximately 300 a month
I’m pretty sure that the videos I saw were sponsored as well, and had the creators pushing their referral codes. The black friday deals seemed great at first until I checked the duration and regular prices, so that’s a pass.
I use AWS for my n8n hosting. I usually do that in free tier ec2-micro instance as there is not so much heavy workflow. I usually get a bill around 6 INR a month, that is some tax and some other charges.
I’m okay if you want to host your n8n, I load up another VM and set that up without any cost🤝
Thank you so much! I ideally want to try and set up something independently (mostly for the learning/experience), but I’ll let you guys know if I need the help in a day or so
You could give Oracle’s free tier a shot. If I remember correctly, they provide an Ampere (arm) instance with 24gb of ram as part of their “always-free” tier. Been using it to run Pangolin for a month now and no issues so far.
Also, apparently Oracle is known to shut down your instance without warning, but they don’t do that if you “upgrade” to a pay-as-you-go account. You can just keep using their always-free resources so they don’t bill you.
Yeah, the process is a bit finicky. I’ll put some pointers below for anyone who might find it useful.
The only requirement for this is that you need a standard credit card. Oracle uses the address on your CC to verify ownership, even for the free account. $1 / 1 SGD will be debited and refunded right after. When upgrading to pay-as-you-go, they charge ~$100 / 100 SGD which will be refunded.
Make sure the address you enter is exactly the same as the one on your credit card. AFAIK this is what causes the verification to fail the most, and Oracle issuing a block on the email used to create an account.
If you see an error while creating an account (I don’t remember the error I faced), don’t re-attempt it in another tab. Best to just wait it out, a couple days, and try again.
After you have the account signed in, I found rssnyder’s guide on github helpful for creating an instance.
I found Dale Nguyen’s article quite detailed for an n8n setup. @Syzygy
Thomas Wilde’s tutorial if you want to set up Pangolin.
