Searches for n8n automation rose 125% in six months, by Fiverr's Business Trends Index data. I build on n8n daily and it runs most of my own business. This post is still not a sales pitch for it, because recommending the wrong platform is how automation budgets die.
When Zapier wins
Zapier wins when the job is one trigger, one action, and the person maintaining it is not technical. Form fills to CRM. Payment received to Slack message. If your whole automation surface is ten of these, Zapier's per-task pricing is cheaper than anyone's time and you should not hire a consultant at all.
When Make wins
Make wins in the middle. Visual scenarios with a few branches, moderate volume, and a team that wants to see the logic laid out. It is genuinely good at medium complexity, and its pricing holds up until volume grows or the logic gets stateful.
When n8n wins
n8n wins on three fronts, and they are the fronts that matter to a business between 10 and 500 people with real operational load.
Data control. Self-hosting means regulated and privacy-sensitive work stays on your infrastructure. We run a PHI-safe deployment for a US healthcare practitioner that could not exist on a shared cloud automation platform.
AI-native workflows. Agents, retrieval pipelines, and voice AI are first-class in n8n. A voice lead-qualification system we built for an EU hospitality business qualifies, books, and updates the CRM in one workflow.
Cost at volume. n8n charges by execution, not by task step. A workflow that touches twelve apps costs the same run either way. At SMB volumes the difference compounds into thousands of euros a year.
The honest price of n8n is operational. Somebody has to own the server, the updates, and the error handling. That is either your team, deliberately, or someone like us.
The question that beats the platform question
The buyers who get value from any of these tools ask a different question first. Not which platform, but which process. What is the system for, in one sentence. Where does it learn from its own output. Who owns it on day 91. Answer those and the platform choice usually makes itself.
That question set is the core of the Diagnostic. Sixty to ninety minutes, a written action plan in 48 hours, €1,000, credited against any build. And if the answer turns out to be Zapier, the plan will say Zapier.
The full n8n practice, with prices on the page, lives at the n8n consulting page.