Self-Host n8n On Your Own VPS Server! EASY SETUP! ⚙️ (Ubuntu 22) FREE Zapier & Make.com Alternative🤖

What's going on everybody Josh here and in today's video I'm going to show you how you can actually host n8n on your own VPS server yesterday I showed you how you could actually host it on your Home Server this ways definitely a lot better um if you're not familiar with M n8n it's an alternative to make.com in zapier but essentially if you host it on your own server you have unlimited executions it's 100% free just paying for the server so without

Ado let's Dive Right [Music] In All right so quick overview of n8n um and if you haven't checked out my video yesterday and you're new to this I would definitely suggest that before you're actually going to go host it on your own server just so you get kind of familiar with the process but here is the website it is um a really great tool it gives you actually a bit more freedom than a lot of the other tools they have great

Documentation here so pretty much walking you through the uh different steps as well as they have a Discord Community Etc and reason why I okay I don't know why it does that sometimes it keeps redirecting me to the homepage but yeah anyways the reasons some of the reasons why I actually started looking into to na well I've heard about it for a long time I've heard there's you know great things about it um really good for building out automations you get

A bit more freedom but I'm definitely a huge make.com fan as well and yes we use zapier too uh zapier is definitely the more costly solution um you know it's been around for a while some people did get grandfathered kind of into lower pricing but um it's still pretty expensive and then make.com well I've been building a lot in here recently and we've been using it a lot but for example once it actually loads up you'll see here the that this

Month I've actually I'm on the $40,000 op or 40,000 operations plan and I'm currently at $ 114,000 so been using a lot of extra uh operations as you can tell so wanted something that you know has a bit more freedom and so NN is what we chose now there is a lot of different ways you can go about setting it up and hosting it in your own server right and I would definitely suggest checking out the docs if you want to

See all the different ways in this video I'm going to show you one way this is how I'm going to do it this is um definitely you know it's a good way to do it for sure there's different ways some ways are leverage different other tools maybe a bit more costly this way is probably going to be one of the cheapest ways you could do it with the highest quality reason being is because I well me me personally I like using

Contabo for their vpss which I found are you know for the specs you're getting like if you compare this to other VPS like literally go compare this pricing to other VPS um websites whether it's hostinger this that name cheep this whatever you're going to completely like for the uh for the specs like for example if we go to Cloud vpss right here you can get vdss if you want or bare metal if you want to pay works like you don't really

Need that for this um right now at least if you wanted to up if you had to upgrade that later like if you're some huge company and you have a million things on na you could do that but um yeah right now I am on I believe either this one or this one so you can literally pay five bucks I mean or 12 13 bucks uh per month there are a few additional add-ons like if you want to change the server

Location um it could be like a buck extra um as well as there's like a setup feed for some for some of them um but yeah it's super super cheap five bucks for four uh CPU cores 6 GB of RAM either 100 GB nvme or uh 400 sdd um one snapshot 32 terabyte traffic and I've use these guys for many things for hosting like mail servers this that um other self hosted apps and it's um they're very they're solid like they're

Solid um especially for the pricing like you really can't beat it um so yeah six core GB uh CPU 16 gigabyte RAM 200 nvme or 400 for 12 bucks two snapshots it even gets higher and higher as you can see here but for this you can just really select one of these two um especially if you're starting out like let's say for example I select this you just go through the obviously the checkout process um make sure you got your drink

Of your nice cup of coffee as well guys on this uh beautiful um was it Wednesday morning and um yeah so you could select you know it shows your best latency you could either select the sdd or the nvme either one really um and for our builds today we're going to be using umuntu um you could really use 22 or 20 doesn't really matter yes you could host n on other uh os's as well but we're going to use unbuntu um

You would just select your password uh here you don't need anything and then you don't really need to do much down here you only need one IP um and then yeah you you don't need the SSL we're going to do that by ourselves and then you just click next purchase it Etc right so once you do that we're actually going to load up the terminal here all right so what you do I'm not going to walk you through all the like

Every single basics of getting into your server but you would just do SSH um SSH rout at and then your server IP and then you're going to put in your password it's going to say welcome to contabo right and this is where we can literally start this is a completely fresh server right here all right um I hate when that does happen um and also too guys there could be some troubleshooting in this I'm like I'm saying I'm I'm personally not

Like a complete professional at this like I'm not you know some you don't have to know some Advanced code you don't have like even if this is your first time it's okay um this as beginner friendly as you can get I'm going to walk you through step by step and show you as well how me as someone who's not a like a professional actually is able to do this right so I've done many uh self-hosted things before um some like a

Lot more advanced than anyn but um and back in the day like a lot of it involved a lot of troubleshooting and whatever now it's super super easy obviously because we have ai so I'll always like have my AI pulled up on the right hand side and I'm just why would I even try doing anything else I'm just going to ask it what exactly to do what exact prompts to do so I literally have that right here here and just so

You guys can do this this is my prompt and this is on perplexity please walk me through step by step prompt by prompt for setting up na an the right way for self-hosted on Ubuntu 22 I will be pointing the domain to na an. executive.com make sure to include all the variables and setting uh when setting up including web hook URL give a detailed setup so anyone could easily do this first try don't leave anything out this is a new umuntu

Install all right so I'm going to walk you through what it actually gave me for the prompts you can follow along or use that prompt yourself and yes there could sometimes obviously AI is not 100% perfect all the time so there may be some troubleshooting but we're going to start by doing Pudu app update and sudu appt uh upgrade yes right so we're going to run that right like I said this is a fresh uh Ubuntu install next we're going to

Install walk ER and Docker compose okay so um yes you can host na an on um node js um as you'll see here like uh let's see using hosting n so this is on the docs and yeah you could just follow along the docs realistically like if we go to server setups let's see Docker compose um install docker optional nonroot user access install Docker compos DNS setup create Docker compose file okay um API [Music] true entry web interesting redirect um ports

Na and Docker environment NP there's actually a pretty honestly this is a I mean it's their their document page this is a lot more indepth than the one uh perplexity gave me I think so I may actually use this um for PR and I may even like copy you could just copy this as well and I'm going to say this is on n's host uh posting [Music] documentation incorporate this into the setup to have the most efficient one possible all right

When I'm doing this I really don't like to me personally like I'm I'm obviously cognizant while I'm doing it but I don't really like to do too much thinking on this um I just especially now like I've done setups in the past where you have to kind of especially if you're not an expert you got to really think and you got to really whatever now I just let AI just do it it's just so much more simple in my opinion just

To allow AI to do all the thinking um sometimes obviously it's not perfect at the moment so you're going to have to troubleshoot Etc um but yeah anyway so that is loading over there let's check on our terminal okay so we got the sudu update um so now we're going to remove old versions of dark we don't really need to do that but whatever we'll just do it okay well um here I'll show you what the I may as well show

You what I'm actually running here okay so here we got this perplexity and I'll pull this right here get a side by side view exactly what I'm doing and copy these prompts word for word so install Docker and Docker compos remove any old versions of Docker I mean this is a new uh in fresh install so we don't really need to do this but I did it anyway so sudu app get remove Docker Docker engine docker.io container run uh and then

Install necessary packages let's do that okay yeah we haven't installed so unable to locate package Docker engine install Docker engine well that's down here all necessary [Music] packages wait so here sud app update sud app get certificate girl there we go I don't know what it ran here for to say that anyways um oh it's probably because I tried removing it okay um so that is just install necessary package so pseudo app update pseudo app get install yes CA certificates curl

Um G nub uh G lsb-release okay then we're going to add Dockers official GP g e so we're going to paste that sud to make directory e strings curl Docker umuntu g g Pudo um gpg Das dmore um and then the string here so boom and then set up Docker repository so we're going to copy that paste Echo here Etc right so I will um as well well I'll link these instructions in the description cuz I know you guys probably aren't

Just like typing it out as I'm doing it right so the goal of this is to there could be some in uh inaccuracies in these instructions or stuff that we find that doesn't work so I'll I'll link once we're done this video the updated um one uh instructions that I use to get it to work right and then of course you can change it if needed customize it if you want now we're going to install the docker and engine right here

So sudo appt update sudo appt get installed Docker CE Docker C CLI container doio right as that's installing we will sip a nice uh cup of coffee here yeah make sure you're drinking completely black coffee um really will get you ready to set up an and then when you're ready you'll be ready to get some automations going so after that's uh installed we are going to install Docker compose so Docker compose will be sudo app yet install yes Docker compose plugin

All right so we'll just wait until this is done so now we're going to install Docker compose boom okay so optional nonroot user access run the following documents to allow non user to run Docker commands um let me just check here is that what it says and here pull this up right here as well this um so let's see gold Docker compose yeah no we don't need to do that so set up DNS so ensure your DNS nan. executive.com points to

The IP address of the ambunu server I'm not going to show you how to do that just go to for me it's Cloud flare you can do this in your name chap or your GoDaddy just look up how to point a DNS name server to an IP address you should probably already know how to do that if you're doing this tutorial if if you don't I would go check that out and then maybe come back anyways um so yeah we did

That already next we're going to create our Docker compose file so it's make directory sln and CD and then we're going to uh who why it go there there we go okay so and we're going to CD change directory into that new directory we created and we're going to create our Docker compose file right here boom and we're going to open it up and then we're going to make our Docker compos file so me just copy this and I'm going to

Um cross check it with n NS let's see here go like this boom restart always API true secure Docker true exposeed false here here here here well we're missing this no this is here okay it could be the exact same n an image doer n n Port oh I I should also tell it um okay I'm just going to copy the one from the N1 in I think that should be good boom make sure here boom boom boom okay so copy

Paste to go back copy this paste okay then you're going to click control o and then enter and then control uh X exit okay next we are going to um create our environment variables okay you're planning on reading and running files with n an for example using read write files for dis node you'll need to configure the data directory for those files if you're running na an as a root user add this under volumes for the na service file if you're

Running here that create envirment variable think we're good on that um create environment variable so copy this and we're going to do Nano do environment okay and then add the fallowing content replacing the placeholders with your variables so here here here SSL email um okay I don't like B docker okay let me check the variables [Music] here what did it give me here think I'm going to use these um user do I need the user and password I don't think I

Do domain so we can do domain name I'll show you the ones I'm putting in in just a second okay I completely missed the variables right here we're going to need to change this I'm just realizing this actually no okay no we're good these are variables that are being passed through through the environment that makes sense okay subdomain domain that makes a lot of sense okay okay so now I'm going to paste this in which is my domain subdomain uh time

Zone and SSL going to click crl o enter and then contrl X so I set the the Nano environment set those variables and I did Nano Docker compose and I just copied exactly what was here on the documentation and same thing for what is here on the Docker composed file so I just use the exact ones on the N website I'll link this n docs in the description create data folder so create the data volume that's design defined as Nan data

Nan will be saved uh will save the database file from SQL light and description key in this volume so let's do that create the volume from Tri back a data okay let me just see if they suggest anything else in here doesn't look like it okay so we'll try this um darker compose running okay so now we're going to try loading it um think I did get a security issue whatever um I believe that's because I don't think we set up

The SSL executive drive.com going to move this over here while I set this up you can just add your owner uh first name last name and then password okay the next I'm going to show you second now we're set up within n8n so actually very simple um we can just do here here here here here get started boom now we're in NN I'm not going to show you exactly how to use n an let me check something here so boom um

Home I'll be doing more videos on na and automations this where like you can start your workflow there's templates here here this is the n website so you can copy over templates very simple um variables all executions settings help the documentation forms course about n quick start um go to settings real quick so usage and plan you can see we're on unlimited all right don't worry about paying for make.com or zapier scenarios or anything like that I mean yes I still

Probably want to use them um because you probably don't want to use any for everything um unless you do but um yeah I'm still going to be paying for make I'm still going to be paying for zap here but this is just really really cool really cool alternative for a lot of things and I'll keep you guys posted as I'm using it more and more as to what I like what I don't like about it um comparative to um like zapier

Or make and um yeah anyways you can check all your information here in these settings I'm going to go ahead and start a workflow perfect okay so this is really good I'm really happy we want I'll tell you why because I had an issue when I start when I did this yesterday and I'll tell you what the issue was it was that once I did all this this and let me just check something real quick um [Music] here but looks like

The SSL is working fine now there's no security issue so that's good wow this is a way better setup than the one I did yesterday so I was playing around trying to set it up yesterday and I encountered an issue basically set this whole thing up it was on the domain Etc then when I would go to the web hook um it would show the web hook URL like same as it's whether it's test or production but it would show it

Like this so like it would show it like with the URL and then it would say 5767 or whatever the port is like this and and I couldn't go to the port like if I go to the port here I don't yes it would look like this but I could go I would be able to moove the port and then go to the web hook like this so if I go test we'll put this as a post listen and then if

I go here good work wait let me copy oh I meant to do a get sorry workflow has started got this data here right so everything's working um but yeah before when I was having that issue like I was saying it was because um yeah it was still no matter what I would do in an it would show those that that that uh that um the port here so I could get around it for the web hook but when I was

Actually trying to do authentification for apps like air table because when you set up stuff within n8n like if I want to do an air table um like get record for example your credentials you're going to have to create credentials and you can't do access token because this one's depreciated you're going to to go to O oo 2 and then it's going to give you that oo redirect URL right here and mine had the port in it still right the way

I set it up yesterday so when I actually put my client ID and the client secret and then it actually verified it would go to the uh URL with the port and it actually wouldn't work so I couldn't connect any air table or whatever because of that issue with the URL the way we just set it up here in this video I'm put the L the exact honestly I just really followed the documentation um it actually worked way easier than the

Than what uh perplexity you gave me yesterday perplexity made me set up um n Jinx and SSL and I think some of the info it gave me for the doger compos file and the N Jinx was different or something and I think that's why did the whole issue with the port um but yeah if you follow it this way and for setting up the docker compose it's actually I mean it's pretty obvious that the na documents would have it perfect this

Is the perfect way this is the perfect way very very simple very simple that's actually a lot simpler than I made it yesterday so I'll link to this document in the description below and re-watch this video if you need to it's very simple even if you're a beginner um an is something that I'm very very excited to actually get into and start building on with these unlimited executions like it was very annoying having to keep buy different um make scenarios especially

Because I've been doing a lot of automations recently and if you're new to this channel make sure to subscribe because I have a lot of value whether it's on make and it and whatever the case may be I'm going to show you guys some really cool builds as well as literally give you guys the either blueprints or this or that or like show you how to get access to them Etc stay tuned for that if you want to stay up to

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Be I would highly recommend checking out my book client acquisition code this is not some fluff book or ebook that was generated by AI this is something that uh was been in the works for like two to three years and it's h super in-depth value packed no fluff just actionable advice how to leverage AI how to leverage automation into your business to acquire more clients through Facebook LinkedIn Twitter running paid traffic social media YouTube Etc all the nine yards so I

Definitely recommend checking that out link for that will be in the description uh clientacquisition code.com other than that guys I hope you got some value from this video if you did drop a like drop a comment let me know what you want to see next as well as if you have any questions about this setup let me know but other than that guys happy automating keep hustling keep grinding and of course guys accelerate your stride see you in tomorrow's video