📧 [New Email Course] Avoid 5 Critical Mistakes When Self-Hosting n8n in Production

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Hey n8n community!

I’ve created a free 5-day email course that shows how to turn a basic n8n installation into a reliable production setup - without complex infrastructure or Kubernetes knowledge. It’s all about preventing common issues that can lead to failed workflows, lost data, and late-night emergency fixes.

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I want to make sure this course reaches the right people, so let me be clear about who will benefit most.

This course is perfect for you if:

  • You’re already running n8n in production or planning to
  • You want to make your n8n setup more reliable without over-engineering it
  • You understand basic DevOps concepts but aren’t a specialist
  • You have basic Docker experience (can work with docker-compose)

This probably isn’t for you if:

  • You’re new to server administration or Docker. In this case, n8n Cloud is a much better choice - it’s cost-effective and handles all the infrastructure complexity for you
  • You’re an experienced DevOps engineer running complex setups with Kubernetes, queue mode, or distributed workers. You likely already know these concepts and have more sophisticated solutions in place

The course covers five common mistakes I keep seeing in production setups:

  • SQLite in production
  • Unreliable backup strategies
  • Missing error monitoring
  • Workflow backup issues
  • Over-reliance on external services

Each day, you’ll get practical solutions that work on a single VPS - no complex infrastructure required. Everything is explained with examples and configs.

Interested? Check it out here: mini-course.parsedventures.com

Questions? Drop them below!

12 Likes
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Hey @Ed_P,

Thanks for sharing this email course! It looks like a valuable resource for the n8n community. A few quick thoughts:

  • The course seems perfectly targeted for intermediate n8n users who want to level up their self-hosting game

  • Appreciate that you’re being upfront about who will (and won’t) benefit from the course

  • The focus on practical, straightforward solutions for common production pitfalls is exactly what many users need

Quick question: Will the course cover any recommendations for scaling n8n as workloads grow?

Looking forward to checking out the mini-course!

Cheers,
Daniel

1 Like
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Thanks for the feedback, @Daniel_Willitzer

An easy advice is to buy / upgrade to faster VPS (aka scale vertically).

n8n in queue mode or multi-server setup (horizontal scaling) is outside of the scope of this course. It’s more involved and tbh I’m not sure there will be enough readers for that topic. It seems that the majority of users would be perfectly fine without the complex setup.

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Thanks for sharing this course. I’ve spent many hours figuring out how to deploy n8n to Kubernetes to have a scalable installation and hit many walls. I’ll check the course material!

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Thanks a lot for your feedback!

Just to make it clear: this course does not cover Kubernetes and any horizontal scaling, it’s about:

practical solutions that work on a single VPS - no complex infrastructure

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I’ve tried this. I run N8N on Kubernetes and because it writes (credentials, configurations and other files) to disk, you need a shared file system for it. I’m using UpCloud’s Managed Kubernetes and File Storage to do this. With the free control plane you can pay as little as $8/mo per node.

Full disclosure: I work at UpCloud but I’m also an N8N fan, so I’m working on a guide to do this.

https://developers.upcloud.com/1.3/20-managed-kubernetes/

https://developers.upcloud.com/1.3/25-file-storage/

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Hi Miguelángel. Thanks a lot for your feedback.

The main idea was to show a simple setup, Kubernetes were not intended.

But as your comment may be helpful for the future users - thank you for that!

1 Like