A good developer is a lazy one, by automating everything.
Now complex automation is available for non-developers thanks to NoCode plateforms: Zapier, Bubble, Make, or IFTTT. However, you must pay for each flow/action executed, and that's annoying.
Two open-source alternative solutions are available to host on your own server:
N8N
Link to the Github repository: https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n
You can create automation flow with 400 integrations (list of integrations). If you need help, the community is quite active with 55385 members.
Advantages for developers:
- You can code in JavaScript or Python, with Conditional logic and branching
- Use external NPM or Python libraries.
- More than 1000 templates are already available.
- Create your own API integration, a rich documentation and tutorials are available
Deployment guides are available for the most known Cloud providers, and guides to deploy on your own server with Docker-compose: https://docs.n8n.io/hosting/installation/server-setups/
Automatisch.io
Link to the Github repository: https://github.com/automatisch/automatisch
Described as the "Open source Zapier alternative", Automatisch is a Nocode emerging solution, but growing daily with +4000 stars on Github and they are supporting currently 48 integrations (list of supported apps).
Advantages for developers:
- Easy to deploy and maintain with Docker: https://automatisch.io/docs/guide/installation#docker
- Easy to create automation flows
- You can create your own integration, it is well documented: https://automatisch.io/docs/build-integrations/folder-structure
- If you need any help, the two founders of the project are available anytime on Twitter/Discord/Linkedin to chat.
Conclusion
If you want to automate, I would recommend to use:
- N8N for building technical and complex flows, for instance adding conditional logics and code.
- Automatisch.io for building flows without needing a lot of technical knowledge.
Have a great day!