Maxime Warnault shows how to host n8n for free on a $24/month DigitalOcean droplet using Coolify. You get unlimited workflows instead of the $24/month SaaS limit, set up DNS with Cloudflare, deploy via Docker, and apply a free license key.
Chapters
In this video, I'm going to show you how to install n8n using Coolify on a DigitalOcean server. So n8n is generally $24 a month, and you get 2.5K workflow executions, and you only get 5 active workflows. So for the exact same price, we can have unlimited workflows and unlimited executions using a DigitalOcean server. So the one that I picked is a 4GB, 2 CPU, and 80GB of storage, which cost me $24 a month. But instead of paying N8N directly, I will install this using Coolify and have unlimited workflows and unlimited executions. So let me show you exactly how to do that. So go to DigitalOcean and you will get a droplet. And when you get your droplet, the first thing you need to do is to connect to the console. So click on the console, it's going to connect, and you should have received an email with a password. So what you're going to do is copy this password, and this is the first thing that they are going to ask you to do is to change your password. So paste this password here and then put the password that you want to have in here to connect to your server using SSH. Okay? So use a password that you will remember, and then just like that, you can now log into your server using SSH.
Okay?
So the next thing we are going to do is to install Coolify. So let's go to coolify.io, and we are going to self-host Coolify as well. So this is completely free. All we have to do is to copy and paste this line of code and it's going to be done for us. Okay, so this is going to take about 5 minutes. So in the meantime, what I'm going to show you how to do is how to create a subdomain for Qualify.ai and a subdomain for N8N so you can have access to it using your own subdomain. So in my case, I have a domain using system2scale.io, and I went to Cloudflare DNS records. And on the DNS records, what I've done is I have added two new A records. So these two, the first one is Qualify, and it actually leads to the IP address of my droplet in DigitalOcean. So you just copy this and you go back to Cloudflare and you create a new record. With Qualify, you lead to the, your DigitalOcean server, and you do the exact same thing, A record, NN to your DigitalOcean server. Okay, so make sure that the proxy is gray and DNS only. You do not want to use Cloudflare proxy because Coolify already has a proxy that is going to be used for making the link to your, to your server. Okay, so once you have this, you're done, and I'll show you how to connect this domain both in NNN and Coolify. So let's see where we're at. So Docker has been installed successfully. Now what it's doing is it installed Coolify. So Qualify has been installed successfully and waiting 20 seconds to give us the IPv4. So now that we have this IP, we can actually create an account inside of Qualify. So I'm just going to go ahead and do that. I'm going to choose my own password. All right, and I'm going to register. And what you need to do here is you're going to click on Skip Onboarding. Okay, everything is already done for you. You don't need to do anything. You don't need to— like, this is as easy as this. Okay, so the first thing you want to do is go to the settings, and here in under Instance Domain, this is where you want to type your qualify.yourdomain.com. So, don't forget to add HTTPS in front of it, otherwise it's not going to work. So, https:// we're going to use qualifi.systems2scale.io.
Okay.
The instance, we're going to name it Qualify. And basically, that's all we have to do. We save this, and this is going to propagate, and in 2 minutes we can log into this URL. Okay, so let's make sure we have HTTPS here, not HTTP. All right, it's a big difference. So yeah, I'm going to try to log in to that. So it's not working yet, but it's going to work in a second.
Okay.
All right. So let's go back to— just making sure that it's HTTPS.
Okay.
Let's go back to project in the meantime. And what we'll do is we're going to add n8n. So the name of the project is going to be n8n. Continue. This is going to create a production environment. You can add another one. I just don't. I just go with production. And here you can add a new resource. So we're going to paste N8N and select N8N. And basically this is pretty much all we have to do here. We'll just— before you deploy, I want to show you how to connect your domain. So here we're going to do server name N8N and then services. So we can save that. Services, this is where we're going to set up the domain name.
Okay.
So we are going to do https://an8n.systems.to/scale.io. Okay? And this is going to be an8n.
Save.
Okay, let's see if this one is working now. Qualify.
Not yet.
Did I miss the Qualify?
Okay. All good.
Um, so we save this, and then we really want to make sure that it's HTTPS here as well, otherwise it's not going to work. So HTTPS, N8N, and the subdomain that you have created. Okay, so we're going to deploy, and this is going to install N8N for us in here. Let's try that again. So now we can log into Cullify using the domain that we have selected. Okay, so I'm going to type my password, and just like that, I just got into the same instance of Cullify but using my own domain. Okay, so So let's see what it did here. And it then started. So seems like it's working. So here you should see running. Okay, so unhealthy state, this doesn't mean the resource is malfunctioning. So now you can see it went away and we should be able to access it using this URL as well. So it is working. So now we can do We can create the first account which is going to be granted with admin access. Cool. We're going to click on Next, Confirm, and we're going to want to receive the free license key to have unlimited workflows. So, what we're going to do is go to Settings, Go back to my emails, and I should have a new email from 8NN. All right, enter activation key, activate, and we now have unlimited workflow, unlimited execution on our server, and we just installed NNN using Coolify on a DigitalOcean droplet. So if you guys have any questions, let me know in the comments below, and I will talk to you guys soon.
