There are two kinds of people — those who automate, and those who dig.

Listen, I spent THREE HOURS yesterday copying data from emails into a spreadsheet. Three hours! My fingers, my back, my eyes — all suffering. There has to be a better way, no? I keep hearing about these automation tools but every tutorial assumes I already know everything.

n8n. Self-hosted, free, visual workflow builder. You drag boxes, connect them. Data flows. Start there.

n8n is capable, but consider what your time is actually worth. If those three hours happen daily, that is fifteen hours a week — roughly four hundred in lost productivity. The automation pays for itself in two days.

See, THIS is what I need — someone telling me in plain language! So n8n is like a little flowchart that does the boring work? And Make, is that the same thing? Why are there two? Why can't there just be ONE tool?

n8n you host yourself. Make is cloud. Both do the same job. Pick one.

It does matter which. n8n gives you full control — no vendor lock-in, no per-operation pricing. Make charges per operation after the free tier. For a serious practice, n8n is the professional choice.