I wanted to inform you all that we have decided to simplify the different flavours that n8n comes in. This means that we will:
Sunset the self-hosted Team plan. (The features will still be available on our Cloud version and no existing Team plan customers will lose the functionality they’re paying for)
Stop the development of the Desktop version of n8n
Team Plan
There are three reasons for this decision:
We found that people interested in our paid self-hosted features typically work at larger organizations and want something more than the self-service model of the Team plan
For smaller organizations, the Cloud plans are much more popular than the Team plan
We are a startup with limited resources and focus is super important. So we want to reduce complexity generally and keep our paid offering as simple as possible
If you’re a small company or NGO who was planning on using the Team plan, please email us at [email protected], and we’ll sort something out for you. In case you are already on the Team plan, we’ll be in touch and will make sure that this change doesn’t negatively impact you.
We will always stay committed to making n8n available to as many people as possible and so give all access to the most powerful automation tool in the market. That means that the community version will always keep on improving and the work will not stop. Growing adoption by larger organizations with a large number of users will help us do that as they subsidize the community version’s development.
Desktop version
In the end, this also comes down to focus and resources. Usage of the Cloud and self-hosted versions of n8n is growing very quickly, and Desktop is being left behind.
Even though we will not develop it anymore, we make the source code available for the community here to use as they see fit: https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n-desktop-app
Thanks a lot to all of you for your continuing support!
I think it is a good idea to focus the resources on more important things.
Desktop version was awesome, but I personally never used it myself really (except for the once checking it out). Also with clients if they want to have a go before setting up their own server I always tell them to use the cloud version.
So having the source be open to the public lets others hopefully carry the load and keep it updated for the people that do use it.
I understand why you are getting rid of the teams plan for self hosted, however I do have a lot of clients that simply use self-hosted because of the capabilities it offers. Most important the custom nodes.
So I don’t have a lot of clients using the cloud, there is some but they also use self hosted for those flows where they need custom nodes. (and are probably going to move off cloud some day)
There is no real good way for smaller clients to pay for n8n while self hosting, even when they do want to.
The Enterprise plan is at that point simply too much and they don’t need all those nice features. So they simply do not pay.
No idea what the workload is for you guys having the 2 plans. (excluding all the other licenses like embedding)
But it seems a bit of a shame to not allow smaller self-hosted clients to get a license without the enterprise features and pay a fair price for their use of n8n. Everyone wants n8n to become sustainable of course.
Hi @BramKn, that’s really helpful context — thanks for sharing it. Would your customers have what they needed if they could load custom nodes on Cloud? That’s certainly on the roadmap.
(We’re also planning on changing the Cloud trial to not require a credit card, so trying out n8n should become easier.)
I know custom nodes have been on the roadmap for cloud. Sadly I don’t think it will happen anytime soon, because of course the security risks and such.
Smaller clients would be perfectly happy on cloud I think. Some of them will still want to be on own hardware as they deal with sensitive data.
Great news that the trial should be usable without CC in the future. This will help some of the people to create a POC for their management to approve on.
I work in a small-scale startup myself, and I can understand the path that you are going in. While I have used the desktop version for small-scale and low-powered workflows, I felt the need to opt for a cloud version.
And we are still looking for you guys to integrate some enterprise nodes like Sharetribe and other build tools like that. So, we are just using the self-hosted version for now to handle our organizational work. Once we get to use n8n more, we’d also migrate to the cloud version.
Great to hear about the simplification of n8n’s different flavors! I completely agree that reducing complexity is important, especially for a startup with limited resources. It’s fantastic to see that n8n is committed to making the automation tool available to as many people as possible, and the community version will keep on improving. Personally, I found myself using the Desktop version mostly for local testing, but I always preferred working on the web version of n8n. So in a way, I’m happy that the focus is now solely on the web version.
Thank you for simplifying my n8n workflow! Keep up the amazing work! I can’t wait to see what’s next!
All, thanks a lot for your support, is really more than appreciated!
Yes totally understand @BramKn and I agree. For that reason should those companies as mentioned simply reach out to us. We will then make sure to help them.
I love the speed of improvement in n8n and that you really take a lot of usability barriers out along the way. n8n is such a breeze to work with compared to let’s say make.com that I keep thinking “oh in n8n this would be so much easier” (testing cause company wanted me to evaluate make).
I use the Desktop version mostly for local things
auto-moving images to a folder if they contain a certain keyword
daily maintenance of clearing out my desktop and downloads folders
bulk downloading + renaming videos from Airtable, so that I can upload them manually to dropbox
The power of the Desktop version is that I can develop workflows for others to run and do stuff locally on their machines, but so far that has been only an idea of mine that I haven’t put into action. Also, I could use shell scripts for that, but n8n is just so pleasant to develop workflows in.
I do think the power of n8n is on cloud / self-hosted, and because I was able to self-host and use with little to no limit on my own infrastructure without substantial financial investment put me in the position of now having chosen n8n cloud as automation solution for the company I work at rn. Transitioning them away from Zapier and away from make.
As long as you don’t unnecessarily castrate the free self-hosted version, I’m happy. I think it’s one of the strong reasons I’ve been such a fan of n8n, not even looking for any other options cause I don’t have any needs that are not met.
Thank you so much for all your efforts, I really really enjoy using n8n and appreciate everything you do!
Thank you very much @leprodude for your feedback, and really great to hear that you are so happy with n8n. That is very appreciated! And to be clear, it is not planned to unnecessarily castrate the free version at all! Rather we continuously keep on improving it as we always did. A
Regarding the Desktop version. In the end, did it simply make it easier for people to run n8n locally. But it is still possible to do everything you mentioned above with the “regular” n8n version locally. You just have to install Node.js on your machine. Then you can install n8n via “npm install -g n8n”, and then start it running “n8n”. It should then theoretically even directly pick up all the workflows and credentials which you created and used in the n8n Desktop version. I hope that is helpful!
It’s great to focus on the most important things. I haven’t used a Team plan, but I’m sure folks using it will understand, and you’ll provide a decent transition for them, as you’ve stated.
As for the desktop app, I’ve used it a lil bit, but never really understood the point of using it. Actually, I’m still oblivious why it existed, lol. I guess it could be used as a full time working laptop or PC instead of making a full-blown server, but I’m not sure if there are many folks having this case.
Anyway, n8n is an amazing tool, and I sometimes sound like a n8n shill since I promote it almost anywhere automation related lmao.
What does this mean for the community version? We are exploring it for our use cases, we are running it on premise from Docker because we need to make http calls to our local services.
Will we still be able to run/use it in this way (from Docker)?
I’m glad that I have learned self-hosting n8n 1 month ago.
Although I believe the desktop version is quite important for promotion, after all, the barrier of having everyone bind their credit card first is relatively high.
Regarding the credit card. Totally agree. For that reason did we invest now quite some time to allow credit card free trials. As far as I know, should it go live this week or next.
