Great idea, terrible software

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1

Hello everyone,

N8N really is a great idea.
However :slight_smile: its current implementation is complete garbage, at the very least.

In our office I and my colleague designed all sorts of process automation, we pretty much automated everything e-commerce related with WinAutomation, now MS Power Desktop, Selenium and some python scripts here and there. I know about process automation. I am playing with N8N for the last 3 days. Result: I have not created 1 (one) working automation.

The process logic is absolutely flawed - keys, nodes etc. WTF
Why are you making everything so complicated? Over complicated even. For most of the things that you need to launch 5 nodes to create one simple action? Who needs that?

For a simple write to text file action you have to use at least 3 nodes. And that is just the beginning. Good luck with fetching data from previous nodes. Data management is just pure nightmare, try to work with csv data and large files and you will see. Loops? LOL. The most inadequate loop creation I have every experienced. RAM usage is hell at times. Integrations seem promising though, that was the main reason I decided to give it a try.

The documentation is with very basic info, even the inbuilt nodes are not described in an easy and understandable way, examples are silly, I have to look in the forum for everything. I mean - for very simple stuff.

If I am willing to become a paying customer which was eventually my goal and move from all the automation software that we use to N8N - that will never happen at the current state of things. I cannot imagine a company which needs centralized automation that will choose it for production purposes when you have to create very own nodes because some of the current ones are not working as intended. Plus the team learning curve.

I expected good software and lost 3 days and I am frustrated now, sorry.

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Hi DanBoyDan,

Sorry to hear you’ve had a frustrating time. It’s a complicated challenge building an automation platform, and for sure there are still rough edges. I really appreciate the feedback about what was frustrating though, this might help us find things we haven’t encountered.

On that note, would you mind giving me some info on the troubles you had with CSV files? And any insight into how loops if failing you would also really help?

Both the company and our wonderful community are working hard to make n8n better, but it’s still early days.

Sorry you lost time, and thank you for the all the insight you can give! :pray:

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One year later and couldnt agree more. I thought this was dev friendly but it actually feels more restrictive. Also why does opening a module need to cover the entire screen?

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Hi @Ethan_Fox

Welcome to the community!

On the community we of course like n8n, otherwise we weren’t here. So if we can help you out please let us know what you are struggling with.

For me I know it was a bit of a learning curve in the beginning because of how items work and such. But when I understood this I fell in love with the tool and how easy it is to develop automations.
So yes the first bit can be quite bad, but it is for a good cause.
The 2 courses available now, do actually explain pretty well how things work and should help you over the first bump. :slight_smile:

Oh and yes, if we had more flexiblilty in some of the UI that would be great of course. :slight_smile:

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The timeout issues, working on Thunderclient but not working inside code and giving timeout errors, even though I have set the timeout to 2 minutes

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Learning curve? What learning curve? :sunglasses: