A practical guide to integrations with n8n in 2025

Workflow automation tools seem to be everywhere these days, and it’s easy to see why. They promise to connect the different apps you use every day, get them talking to each other, and save you from mind-numbing manual work. One of the big players in this field, especially for folks with a bit of a technical streak, is n8n. It’s known for being powerful, flexible, and having a library of over 1,200 integrations, which can feel both amazing and a little intimidating.

Having that many connections means you can pretty much build any automated workflow you can dream up. But that much freedom can also be tricky to navigate. This guide is here to help you make sense of the world of n8n integrations. We’ll cover what it is, walk through a few popular things you can do with it, and also chat about why a general-purpose tool, for all its power, isn’t always the best fit for specialized jobs like AI-powered customer support.

What is n8n?

At its heart, n8n is a source-available platform built for creating automations, from simple to seriously complex. People often call it a "workflow automation tool for technical people" because it gives you a huge amount of control, even letting you host it on your own servers. If you're not a fan of being locked into a rigid, cloud-only system, that flexibility is a big deal.

To really get it, you only need to know a few terms:

• Workflows: This is just the name for the automated process you build. Think of it like a digital flowchart that maps out a task from beginning to end.

• Nodes: These are the building blocks of your workflow. Each node is a specific app (like Gmail or Slack) or an action (like reading a file or making an HTTP request). You connect these nodes in a sequence to create your automation.

• Executions: This is just a single run of your workflow. When a trigger kicks things off and your automation runs from the first node to the last, that counts as one execution. It’s also how n8n primarily measures usage for its paid plans.

The main draw is this building-block style, the option to self-host, and, of course, the massive number of pre-built nodes that let you connect to almost any service out there.

A look at the n8n user interface, which allows for building various Medium integrations with n8n.

The power of n8n's library

The real reason people get excited about n8n is its knack for connecting just about anything to everything else. Its library of over 1200 connections means you can create some really specific solutions without being stuck in one company's ecosystem.

A universe of connections

That huge number of integrations is nothing to sneeze at, and it covers a ton of different categories. This is what lets people stitch together all the different parts of their tech stack. Some of the most common categories include:

• AI: OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic

• Communication: Slack, Gmail, Microsoft Teams

• Data & Storage: Google Sheets, Airtable, Postgres

• Marketing & Sales: HubSpot, Pipedrive

Popular integrations to start with

The number of integrations is cool, but what you can actually do with them is what matters. Since every integration is a "node," you can mix and match them in countless ways. For instance, you could link a Google Sheets node to a Gmail node to automatically send out personalized emails whenever a new row is added to a spreadsheet. Or you could use a webhook to grab data from a web form and instantly push it into a CRM like HubSpot. These are the kinds of connections that help teams cut down on repetitive tasks across the board.

Common n8n integration examples

It’s one thing to talk about nodes and workflows, but it’s a lot more helpful to see what people are actually building. Here are a few common setups that show off what the platform can do for general automation.

Automating marketing and sales tasks

A classic example is making your lead management process smoother. You could build a workflow that kicks off every time a new lead is added in HubSpot. From there, the workflow could add that lead’s info to a Google Sheet for the marketing team to keep an eye on, and at the same time, send a notification to the sales channel in Slack so someone can follow up right away. This little automation connects three different tools and helps make sure no leads slip through the cracks.

Streamlining internal IT and dev processes

For more technical teams, n8n can automate parts of the development cycle. For example, you could have a GitHub node that watches for new issues in a specific repository. When a new issue pops up, the workflow could create a matching task in a Notion database and assign it to the right person. This keeps your project boards perfectly in sync with what’s happening in development, without anyone having to do it manually.

Building a simple AI question-and-answer bot

You can even get your feet wet with AI automation. It’s possible to connect a Slack trigger that listens for messages in a channel to an OpenAI node. You could then set up the OpenAI node with a simple prompt to answer basic, predefined questions.

This is a really cool project to start with, but it’s good to be realistic about what it is: a basic setup. While it's fun to build, creating a reliable, context-aware support bot that can handle tricky customer questions takes a lot more than just a few nodes linked together. And this is where the limits of a general-purpose tool start to show.

Integration	Category	Common Use Case
Google Sheets	Productivity	Acting as a simple database to log data from other apps.
Slack	Communication	Sending automated alerts and notifications to teams.
OpenAI	AI	Generating text, summarizing content, or powering basic bots.
HubSpot	Sales & Marketing	Syncing contacts and automating lead management tasks.

This tutorial shows how you can start building your first workflow for Medium integrations with n8n, such as creating a pizza order form that stores orders automatically.

When n8n integrations aren't enough for AI support

This brings us to a really important point. The flexibility of n8n is its biggest strength, but it’s also a weakness for certain jobs. Having a box full of parts, no matter how great those parts are, isn't the same as having a machine built for a specific purpose. When you're dealing with something as important as customer support, trying to build your own solution with a general automation tool can cause some real headaches.

• It doesn't understand your business: A generic OpenAI node has no idea what a support ticket is. It doesn't know your brand’s voice, when to escalate a ticket from a frustrated customer, or how to answer detailed questions about your product. To get it right, you have to write really complex, fragile prompts that are a pain to keep up-to-date.

• There’s no safety net: How do you test your AI on thousands of real customer tickets before you let it talk to actual people? With a DIY n8n workflow, you can't. There's no simulation mode, so you’re basically testing it live. That's a huge gamble when your customer relationships are on the line.

• It gets complicated, fast: Your first workflow might be simple. But what happens when you need to add different logic for different types of tickets? Or pull information from multiple knowledge sources? Or create custom rules for when to get a human involved? Your once-simple n8n workflow can quickly turn into a tangled mess of nodes that’s hard to manage, fix, and improve.

• You miss out on key support features: At the end of the day, n8n wasn't built for customer support. It’s missing features that are vital for good support automation, like the ability to learn from successfully resolved tickets, automatically spot gaps in your knowledge base, or give you useful, support-focused analytics.

Why a specialized tool like eesel AI is better for AI support

This is exactly why a specialized platform like eesel AI exists. It isn't trying to replace n8n for all your automation needs. Instead, it's built from the ground up to solve the specific problems of AI support automation, giving you a tool that’s designed for the job and just works.

Get up and running in minutes, not months

Building a reliable support bot in n8n can take weeks of development. With eesel AI, you can be up and running in minutes. It has one-click integrations for popular help desks like Zendesk and Freshdesk. You can connect your help desk and have a working AI agent without having to write code or piece together a complicated workflow.

Learn from real conversations and knowledge

Unlike a generic n8n workflow that starts from scratch, eesel AI is designed to learn from your existing support data right away. It automatically analyzes your past tickets, macros, and help center articles to understand your business and your brand voice. You can also connect it to all your knowledge sources, whether they’re in Confluence, Google Docs, or Notion, creating one unified brain that provides accurate and consistent answers.

Test everything with powerful simulations

Remember that "testing it live" problem? eesel AI solves that with a powerful simulation mode. Before your AI agent ever talks to a real customer, you can run it against thousands of your past tickets. It will show you exactly how it would have replied to each one, giving you solid data on its performance and a completely risk-free way to adjust its behavior before it goes live.

Keep full control over your automation

Just because it's specialized doesn't mean it's rigid. eesel AI gives you detailed control over your automation from a simple, clean dashboard. You can decide exactly which types of tickets the AI should handle and which ones it should pass to a human. You can also set up custom actions, like looking up live order data from Shopify or updating ticket fields, all without needing to be an automation expert.

A quick look at n8n pricing

It’s only fair to talk about pricing. n8n's cloud plans are based on how many workflow executions you use each month. The plans are set up to grow with you:

• Starter: $20/month for 2,500 executions.

• Pro: $50/month for 10,000 executions.

• Business: $667/month for 40,000 executions.

• Enterprise: Custom pricing for higher volumes.

This model is fine for tasks that run on a predictable schedule. But for a high-volume, unpredictable workload like customer support, an execution-based model can lead to costs that fluctuate and get surprisingly high. This is a key difference from platforms like eesel AI, which offer more predictable plans based on customer interactions, built specifically for support teams.

Choose the right tool for the job

n8n is an incredibly powerful and flexible platform. If you have a technical team and you need to connect a bunch of different apps for general business automation, it's a fantastic choice. The control and self-hosting options are hard to beat.

But when it comes to specialized, high-stakes jobs like customer support, a purpose-built tool is almost always the better way to go. The DIY approach with a general tool like n8n often adds risk, complexity, and ongoing maintenance that you just don't have to worry about with a platform designed specifically for that task.

So, if you need to connect various apps for general automation, n8n is a powerful option. If you need to automate your customer support with AI you can trust, give eesel AI a try for free today.