The short answer
If you want a visual builder that both engineers and non-engineers can work in, with a large library of integrations and the option to host it yourself, use n8n. It's the most capable tool of its kind, and Sanoma doesn't try to replace it.
Sanoma is for a narrower job: the workflows that touch money, customers or access, where someone should approve a change and every call should be on record. They live as code in your own repo, a policy decides who has to approve each change, and every call to a vendor is recorded.
Sanoma is also early. Below, each thing we describe is marked available (it works in the source-available repo today), in development or planned.
What n8n is good at
- Visual and code together. You can drag nodes, then drop into code where a node isn't enough.
- You can host it yourself. Your data and credentials stay on your own servers.
- Integrations and community. A large library of built-in nodes, many community ones, and an active forum.
- AI workflows. Agent nodes with tools and memory, in the same editor as everything else.
Where teams run into trouble
These come from public posts on GitHub, n8n's community forum, Hacker News and Reddit, read in October 2026. They are individual reports, not a measure of how often anything happens.
Upgrades break things. The most common complaint, especially from people hosting n8n themselves, is a workflow that stops working after a version upgrade. One GitHub issue after an upgrade has 80 comments. An engineer whose ops and finance teams build on n8n said "they make a lot of breaking changes." Some reports of workflows lost after an upgrade are disputed in their own threads, where commenters point to how the server was set up.
Version control is a paid add-on. Git sync comes with the Business and Enterprise plans, and n8n's own docs say it isn't full version control. The free Community Edition has none. "Version control is bad," one startup engineer wrote. Another, who moved off n8n, said "I'm now happier with cron jobs/GitOps to manage my automations."
Green runs that did nothing. A builder who says they have debugged a dozen such cases put it as: "the workflow runs green, no errors, execution shows — and nothing actually happened."
A different approach
n8n is built around "when this happens, do that," drawn as a graph. Sanoma is built around "this is how our tools should be set up, and these are the rules for changing it," written as code.
- Plain files, plain git. Workflows and policies are TypeScript in your repo, so you get diffs, pull requests and full history on any plan, with the tools you already use. Available.
- Runs survive crashes and long waits. Each vendor call is a durable step. A run that waits days for an approval or a launch date carries on after a restart and doesn't repeat what it already did. Available.
- A policy check before every vendor call. n8n lets you add human review where you choose, such as before an AI agent uses a tool. Sanoma has one policy, written in Cedar with rules like "publishing a post needs the marketing lead," that runs before every call to a vendor, so a workflow can't leave it out. Available.
- A record of every run. Who started it, each call with the policy's decision and the vendor's reply, and each approval. Available.
- Checking the tool matches the file. Reading each setting back and flagging any difference, including changes someone made by hand in the vendor's own dashboard. This is the piece aimed at the green run that did the wrong thing. Available for GitHub and Stripe; more vendors planned.
When to stay with n8n, or use both
- People who don't code build the workflows. Stay with n8n. Sanoma draws each workflow as a graph but has no visual editor, so changing one today takes someone comfortable with TypeScript and git.
- You need the integrations now. n8n connects to far more tools than Sanoma does today.
- The job is moving data. Syncing records, enriching leads, sending reports, AI agents that draft and summarize: n8n is the better tool.
- Use both. Keep n8n for data plumbing. Move the few changes that touch money, payroll or access, the ones you'd want someone to approve, into Sanoma once it supports the tools they live in.
Sources
n8n's facts are linked in the table below. The user reports come from public posts we read in October 2026; every quote links to the original.