u/PerceptionFew5025

Hey r/n8n,

Working on a project where end customers get a workflow automation built and run for them — n8n powers it under the hood (self-hosted), customers never see n8n directly, and they pay a monthly subscription for the result.

Reading the Sustainable Use License, this looks like it falls outside "internal business use" since the product's value depends on n8n and paying customers effectively trigger the workflows. I've already reached out to license@n8n.io directly, but I'd love to hear from anyone who's actually been through this in practice:

- Has anyone here gone through getting a Commercial or Embed License agreement with n8n? Roughly what was the process/cost/timeline like?

- Is there a real difference in practice between "self-hosted instance you fully control" and "n8n literally embedded in a product," or does it boil down to the same thing (external users triggering workflows = commercial use either way)?

- For anyone who hit this wall early — did you negotiate, switch engines, or just bake the cost into pricing?

Not trying to find a loophole, genuinely trying to understand how this plays out for people building real products on top of n8n. Thanks!

It's 1AM right now. I should be asleep — I have school in 7 hours. But I just finished a build session and writing this is genuinely the only way I can wind down before bed.

Quick context: I'm 14, based in France, and for the last 5+ months I've been building SmartUpAI — a platform that lets any business create AI agents that automate repetitive tasks (following up with clients, sorting emails, updating a CRM) just by describing what they want in plain language. No code, no learning a complex no-code tool, no hiring a developer.

Why I started this

I kept seeing the same pattern: solo founders and small teams drowning in repetitive busywork, but every automation tool out there (n8n, Zapier, Make) requires you to actually learn the tool first. You have to understand triggers, nodes, conditional logic. That's a real barrier for someone just trying to run their business.

The idea: what if you just talked to an AI like you'd talk to an assistant, and it built the automation for you?

The build, briefly

I'm using n8n under the hood (it already solved the "how do I connect to 80 different tools" problem so I don't have to reinvent that), with an AI layer that interviews the user, understands what they need, and generates the actual workflow through n8n's official tool-calling system. I went through a few architecture pivots — at one point I was running a custom vector search system to help the AI pick the right building blocks, turned out it was overcomplicated and never even worked reliably in practice. Tore it out this week and replaced it with a cleaner approach.

Where I'm at now

Core platform works end-to-end: signup, agent creation through a chat interface, connecting tools like Gmail/Slack/HubSpot via OAuth, and activating the automation. What's missing: billing (no paying customers possible yet, which is obviously priority #1), and I'm mid-migration to a new AI model setup to cut generation costs significantly.

3 things I've learned so far

1. The unglamorous infrastructure work (proper git history, cleaning up dead code, securing backups) matters way more than I expected. I went weeks without committing code properly and it scared me once I realized the risk.
2. "Good architecture on paper" and "fiable in practice" are not the same claim. I keep having to remind myself not to assume something works just because the design is sound.
3. Scope creep is the enemy. It's incredibly tempting to add new features or switch tools before the current thing is even validated with a real user.

I'm planning to post here regularly (aiming for a few times a week) to keep documenting the journey — the wins, the dumb mistakes, the late nights. I'm also opening up a small Discord for anyone building solo who wants to swap notes or just stay accountable — link's in my profile if that's your thing.

Genuine question for this sub: for those of you who've built something solo — at what point did you decide you had "enough" to show real users, versus the temptation to keep polishing in private? I think I'm close but I'm not 100% sure how to tell.

Je construis SmartUpAI — une plateforme pour créer des agents IA sans coder

Salut,

Je dev en ce moment une plateforme qui permet de créer des agents IA pour automatiser son business — prospection, support client, reporting, etc. — sans écrire une ligne de code.

L'idée : vous décrivez ce que vous voulez, l'IA construit l'agent, vous connectez vos outils en quelques clics. Vous gérez tout depuis un dashboard centralisé en temps réel — statut des agents, logs, alertes. Et vous pilotez depuis votre WhatsApp ou Telegram.

Pas de setup complexe. Pas de prestataire. Juste vous et vos agents.

Lancement prévu septembre/octobre 2026. Encore en dev mais ça avance vite.

Curieux d'avoir vos retours — c'est quelque chose qui vous manque aujourd'hui ?