Hello Guys,
I am trying to use Webhook and Gmail node. However sometimes, I am getting an error in my webhook stating
This happens especially n8n Desktop application is closed.
Does this mean that I need to keep n8n Desktop Application open all the time? Is it possible if it can run in background?
Can I install Desktop application in my other Windows Laptop and login with same id to use my workflows in this another laptop?
Thank you in advance.
Hi @pratik,
You’re spot on here. When the n8n desktop app isn’t running, your webhooks won’t be processed and you’ll be seeing 404 errors.
Does this mean that I need to keep n8n Desktop Application open all the time? Is it possible if it can run in background?
The desktop app isn’t great if you need 24/7 availability as desktop computers don’t run permanently. Though I know @Jon did create a little Windows service keeping the app running in the background, so in theory you could do that.
However, there is another issue here if you require high availability. The tunnel used to make the desktop app available to the internet doesn’t have a guaranteed uptime. It is not suitable for production use and might become unavailable without a warning.
Can I install Desktop application in my other Windows Laptop and login with same id to use my workflows in this another laptop?
You would need to copy your workflows to your other machine first. Also two separate instances can’t use the same tunnel URL (so you would need to update the webhook URLs in your external services whenever you switch).
For a production setup with permanent URLs you would want to either self-host n8n on a server your control (documented for example here) or check out n8n cloud. Using one of these approaches you can simply access your n8n instance through your browser from any computer.
Thank you so much for quick and detailed reply.
I may need someone’s help to set up Self-host. After having initial look at its guide, I could not find basic server requirements.
Can you provide details of minimum server requirements for self-hosting?
Just to add, I am non-technical / non-IT guy. I do not understand how to set it up.
n8n itself doesn’t need a lot of resources meaning the server size will depend on the exact workflows you’ll be running and the data they process. If you’re not quite sure about this yet my suggestion would be to start with a small VPS from a hoster that let’s you easily change the configuration if needed (Hetzner Cloud is where I host my personal n8n instance, but there are many more). Free services like Oracle Cloud will also do the job.
Setting up a server is a bit bit tricky if you haven’t done this before though. I wrote a little tutorial specific to Oracle Cloud a while back which you can find here if you want to go down that route.
For a more straight-forward experience you might want to pick n8n cloud instead, the setup here consists of picking a username and entering your payment details.