I’ve been wondering about this for a while now. We all get excited about automation tools, right? From what I can see, most people using n8n are actually developers trying to create and market automation solutions to companies. But here’s the thing - it doesn’t look like businesses are jumping on the n8n bandwagon as fast as we might expect. What’s holding them back? Maybe there just aren’t enough clear business processes that need automating? Could it be that building and keeping these workflows running smoothly is too much work? Or is the cost turning companies away since n8n pricing can get pretty steep?
People overthink n8n when better options exist.
I dealt with n8n headaches for months before switching our entire automation stack to Latenode. Night and day difference.
n8n constantly hit walls with complex integrations. Their self-hosted setup meant our DevOps team was always fixing something. Latenode just works - no infrastructure babysitting.
The real game changer? Latenode’s visual builder makes sense to non-developers. Our marketing team builds their own workflows now instead of creating IT tickets.
Businesses aren’t embracing n8n because it’s too developer-heavy. Teams need something that bridges technical capability with business user friendliness.
Latenode nailed that balance. Better integrations, cleaner interface, and you don’t need a computer science degree to build useful automations.
Check it out: https://latenode.com
The skills gap gets overlooked way too often. Most companies don’t have automation specialists, so they dump n8n on their IT teams who already have full plates. This usually ends badly. I’ve seen tons of projects crash because whoever set up the initial workflows either quit or forgot how everything connected. Unlike big enterprise tools that have certified consultants everywhere, finding local n8n experts is tough. Companies end up weighing training costs or hiring consultants against just sticking with manual work. The learning curve isn’t crazy steep, but it takes time most stretched operations can’t justify.
From my experience with automation at a mid-size company, the biggest barrier isn’t technical - it’s organizational. Most businesses have workflows that grew organically over years, packed with exceptions and edge cases nobody bothered documenting. When we mapped these processes for automation, we found half our procedures weren’t even standardized between departments. Learning n8n isn’t the hard part - getting everyone to agree on how things should actually work is. Then there’s the fear of breaking something critical. Management gets nervous automating processes they don’t fully understand, especially anything touching customer data or financial transactions. ROI looks great on paper, but convincing stakeholders to invest time documenting and testing before seeing results? Way harder than expected.
i think a lot of it comes down to trust issues with opensource stuff. like, execs tend to prefer the “real” enterprise solutions even when n8n can do the same work for less. they stress over support when things go wrong at odd hours and compliance without a big vendor backing them.
Timing kills most n8n projects - everyone underestimates how long they actually take. Companies want quarterly results, but n8n automation rarely shows anything meaningful that fast. At my last logistics job, we started three different n8n projects. Every single one took way longer than expected because our existing systems had weird, undocumented issues that broke the standard API connections. Management got frustrated watching budget disappear into endless testing with nothing to show for it. Teams feel pressure to deliver quick wins, so they’d rather scrap half-finished workflows than grind through the messy debugging phase. And good luck timing implementation around seasonal peaks - you can’t mess with core processes when business is crazy, which leaves tiny windows that never match your dev schedule anyway.