A practical decision guide for picking the right automation stack for your business.
We get asked this every week. Short answer: n8n if you want to self-host and keep data in-house, Make if your team is non-technical and the data isn't sensitive, and custom code only when neither can hit your latency or compliance bar.
We default to n8n for clients who handle PII or run regulated workflows, because it can sit inside their VPC. We use Make for marketing teams that want to move fast and don't need source-control rigour.
Custom code shows up when we need true reliability — payments, dunning, anything that has to be observable and revertible. We've seen too many teams hit the ceiling of a no-code tool right when they need it most.
The good news: most businesses can ship 80% of their automations on n8n in two weeks, and graduate the remaining 20% to custom code over time. Don't over-engineer day one.
Want this for your business?
We can implement it for you in 2–6 weeks.
Book a 30-min strategy call — we'll come back with a fixed-fee proposal in 48 hours.
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