Self-hosted n8n automation
Your automations, on your own infrastructure.
No data leaves your building. No per-task fees. No vendor who can change the terms on you next quarter. I build AI agents and automations that run on your own servers, keep self-hosted n8n patched and secure, and move teams off Zapier and Make.
45+ production automations built · 30+ live n8n workflows · StreckDeck (Streck Ventures LLC)
The cost case
If you are paying Zapier or Make, the migration pays for itself.
For a team with no compliance requirement, this is the whole pitch, and you can check the arithmetic yourself.
Zapier or Make, today
$89+/mo
and it grows as you succeed
- Billed per task — the bill scales with your volume
- Task limits you hit at the worst possible moment
- Your data passes through someone else’s servers
- Pricing and terms are theirs to change
Self-hosted n8n, after
~$20/mo
a small VPS, and no per-task fees
- Unlimited executions — no per-task fee, ever
- Runs on your infrastructure, or a server you own
- Nothing leaves your network unless you send it
- You own the stack outright. No lock-in
A typical migration runs $1,500–3,500, depending on how many workflows move and whether I also set up and secure the server. On an $89/month bill the savings cover it in about two years; on a $300/month bill, in about six months. I will run your real numbers before you commit.
Handling patient, client or financial records? The $20 figure is not your number. n8n’s trust center lists no HIPAA attestation and no business associate agreement, so regulated data belongs on an instance inside your own cloud account. Audit logging and log streaming, which an auditor will ask about, need n8n’s paid Enterprise licence. You get a written price for a defensible setup before anything is built.
Who this is for
Some teams want self-hosting. Others have no choice.
A good fit
- Clinics and healthcare groups, billing companies, law offices and advisory firms — you hold data that should not go into someone else’s cloud or a public AI service
- Anyone running n8n on their own server who is not sure it is patched, backed up or locked down
- Teams already paying $100+/month to Zapier or Make, watching the bill climb
- Companies with an ops person who can describe the process that needs automating
- Agencies selling Zapier or Make that need self-hosting delivered under their own name
Not a fit — and I will say so
- Budgets under $300. The hours do not work
- “Build me an AI that does everything” with no defined process
- Anything needing 24/7 on-call availability
- Large health systems and banks with a formal vendor-risk programme. You need a firm with a compliance team, not one engineer
- Work I cannot deliver properly at my current capacity
Services
Six ways to work together.
Fixed scope, fixed price, stated up front. If a job does not fit one of these, describe what is being done by hand and I will tell you honestly whether it is worth automating, and whether I am the right person for it. That first answer is free.
Private AI
AI agents on your own server
from $1,500
Email triage, document extraction, ticket routing, CRM updates. Your data goes to the model you choose, or an open model runs locally so nothing leaves your network. A person reviews anything the model is unsure of.
Migration
Zapier / Make → self-hosted n8n
$1,500–3,500
Every workflow rebuilt and tested against real data, cut over one at a time while the old ones keep running, then documented and handed over.
Setup & security
Self-hosted n8n, done properly
$600–1,500
New install or rescue of an existing one: patched, behind SSL and a reverse proxy, on Postgres, access locked down, backups tested by restoring one. Your server and your account throughout.
Ongoing
Maintenance & security plan
$300–600/mo
n8n has had more than 20 critical vulnerabilities published since March 2026. Updates applied and tested, backups checked, monitoring and alerts, fixes to what I built. Larger retainers with new build hours by arrangement, when capacity allows.
Start here
Automation audit
$750–1,500
Your current processes mapped, the top opportunities ranked by hours saved, each scoped with a price. Credited against a build if you proceed within 30 days.
Builds
Workflows and systems
$800–4,500
From one workflow done properly to a multi-workflow system like lead capture to CRM to notifications. Error handling, documentation, and 30 days of fixes.
Selected work
Production systems, not demos.
These are in production — running on a schedule, handling their own failures, and around long enough to have broken and been fixed. The last one is client work you can click.
Call transcripts parsed into the CRM
Teams record their calls, but what gets said rarely ends up anywhere useful. I build n8n pipelines that pull each transcript, run a structured analysis over it, and write the result to a custom object next to the account record — with a weekly digest to the team channel. Daily schedule, deduplication, retries, and alerting when a step fails.
Competitor battlecards, refreshed automatically
Competitive research redone by hand every quarter is stale within weeks. I build two scheduled workflows: one regenerates battlecards across 30+ competitors on a fixed set of dimensions every week, the other watches pricing pages, hashes content to detect real changes, and emails the team only when something actually moved. No manual effort after setup.
MCP servers connecting six business systems
Model Context Protocol servers in Node.js for Salesforce, Gong, Monday, Zendesk, Zoom and Slack, plus a hosted platform on native OAuth2 — so assistants query live business systems directly instead of through copy-paste. Infrastructure work, and the piece most automation contractors cannot do.
Contractor site built to get found — howerenovations.com
A residential contractor with no website and estimate requests arriving by phone, where they got lost. Ten pages shipped: services, a filtered project gallery, three city landing pages, and five long-form answer pages targeting what people actually search before hiring. Underneath, structured data, a sitemap, and an estimate form wired to notify him the moment it lands — form to notification to a record worth following up is the same handoff I build as automation.
How I build
Most automation breaks quietly. That is the part you are paying for.
Failure is part of the design
Rate limits, fan-in races, partial failures, silent drops, duplicate runs. A workflow that works on a good day is a demo. Retries, deduplication, dead-letter handling and alerting are what make it something you can depend on at 3am.
You get the keys
Everything is documented and handed over. The server is yours, the workflows are yours, the credentials are yours. If you never speak to me again it keeps running, and any competent engineer can pick it up.
Background: 45+ production automations and 30+ live n8n workflows built in an AI enablement role at a construction SaaS company, plus a support and CRM SaaS product I built and ran in production from first commit to paying infrastructure. That is where the self-hosting experience actually comes from.
Free tools
Is my n8n version affected? →
Type in your version; see every published security advisory that affects it and the version that fixes it.
Zapier or Make vs n8n cost calculator →
Your current bill against self-hosted n8n, with a migration estimate and the month it breaks even.
Weekly health report for self-hosted n8n →
My template in n8n’s official library: version and patch status, the security audit, and every failed execution, emailed once a week. All my templates.
Get in touch
Tell me what is being done by hand.
Include your current tool and roughly what you pay for it, if you have one. I will reply with whether it is worth migrating, a rough number, and what I would need from you — or I will tell you it is not worth doing.
Or email directly: devon@streckdeck.com