Migrating from Make.com to n8n: A Developer’s Practical Transition Guide

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Why Developers Are Moving From Make to n8n

If you’ve ever scaled a Make.com scenario beyond its comfort zone, you know the feeling: limited control, hidden retry logic, and vendor lock-in. It’s a fantastic tool for MVP-style automations, but when reliability and transparency become essential, many developers look toward n8n.

n8n brings what Make often lacks:

• A Git-friendly JSON-based architecture

• Full control over execution logic and error states

• Self-hosting options for privacy and compliance

• Strong developer tooling and extensibility

If you’re handling critical flows — think onboarding, lead processing, AI middleware, or internal operations — then migrating to n8n isn’t just beneficial, it’s strategic.

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Step 1: Audit What You're Running on Make

Before jumping in, review your existing Make.com scenarios. Map out what they do, how often they run, and which systems they touch. Identify:

• Which flows rely on external APIs or sensitive data

• Where logic is duplicated or overly nested

• Which scenarios are business-critical vs nice-to-have

Classify them by complexity. Some are quick wins; others may require deeper architecture redesign.

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Step 2: Rebuild Smart, Not One-to-One

You don't need to replicate everything exactly. Take advantage of n8n’s capabilities:

• Use IF and Function nodes for clean decision logic

• Replace routers with structured flow control

• Add alerting and fallback paths with error triggers

• Restructure linear flows into maintainable components

This is also a great time to embed GitOps or CI/CD principles into your workflow automation — something Make simply doesn’t support.

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Step 3: Test in Parallel Before Fully Switching

Don’t kill your Make flows too early. Set up parallel workflows in n8n and use test payloads or mirrored traffic to compare results. Monitor timestamps, outputs, and execution logs.

Introduce logging at critical steps and consider notification flows for errors. The key is to gain confidence that n8n behaves predictably before going live.

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Step 4: Prepare to Scale

Once migrated, make your automation future-proof:

• Use queue mode in n8n for high concurrency

• Switch to PostgreSQL for larger data loads

• Integrate observability tools like Grafana

• Version workflows in Git and use linting tools

Where Make was “plug and play,” n8n is more “engineer and evolve.” But that tradeoff is exactly what makes it a long-term fit.

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When Should You Stick with Make?

For lightweight, non-critical workflows — think newsletters, small data syncs, or one-off marketing flows — Make is still perfectly fine. Not every flow needs infrastructure-level robustness.

But when your automations are touching PII, managing leads, powering AI agents, or driving internal systems, you need something built for resilience and control.

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Final Thoughts

Migrating from Make.com to n8n isn’t about changing tools — it’s about upgrading how your team builds and operates automation. It’s a shift from visual convenience to scalable infrastructure.

At Scalevise, we help businesses design, rebuild, and harden their automation stack using n8n — with compliance, maintainability, and scale in mind.

Want to migrate your workflows without breaking everything?
Read our full migration guide