Hi Luiz, tell us a bit about yourself.
I'm 35 years old and live near São Paulo, I've been a developer for almost 20 years. I started on desktop with Visual Basic 5 and Delphi 5 and then spent the last 14 years working with PHP/WordPress (last two years with Laravel) and the last nine years with Ruby on Rails.
In 2016 I started a company called Powertic, where I offer hosting and support for an open-source marketing automation system called Mautic, where I still work today.
In open-source tools world, I’m responsible for organizing the official Mautic Meetups in São Paulo and I am also a Community Leader and organize the official meetups for Elementor, a famous page builder for WordPress.
I have always worked with education, conducting training courses and specialized courses in email marketing tools and system integration.
How and why did you start using n8n?
My interest in the n8n started earlier this year, in February. I was looking to resolve customer dissatisfaction issues with the other automation tools pricing model, which we use to feed leads into Mautic and also manipulate the API. We usually enrich contacts and synchronize Mautic with a CRM as well.
In addition, Powertic has an Administrative Panel for Mautic and an email validation system called EmailFirst, which uses several n8n integrations: processing information in the background, index update, export of statics to MongoDB, manipulation of files on S3, etc.
Today most of our systems' background processing has been moved from Laravel's job system (Horizon) to n8n, where I can closely monitor performance and make improvements without having to rebuild my systems.
Given the problems of the pandemic, I started to look for work with n8n and I believe that this will be my main service in the coming years, as Brazil has a huge demand for open-source systems, especially in those systems that appeal to business data applications.
Have you tried other automation tools before?
During the development of the Powertic Panel and EmailFirst, I used huginn and airbyte, but I needed to process and enrich information, standardize data, for example, and that's where I encountered many difficulties with these tools.
The fact that n8n works directly with the raw data in JSON was the biggest attraction for installing and testing the tool, and the Function, Set, and SSH nodes were the factors to choose the tool.
Now talking about our customers, we spent a few years providing support and consulting for Zapier and Integromat. These tools solved some of our needs, like contacts synchronization and data enrichment, but we always ran into the limitations of components, and there's also the cost issue.
Today, n8n is our biggest bet for this need for data synchronization between Mautic and several other systems.
What kind of workflows are you building with n8n?
The biggest use case is Mautic's integration with CRM systems, email validation, contact enrichment by searching other databases or e-commerce information.
In addition to synchronization, I use MongoDB a lot to set up a small "data lake" with information that comes from different places (e.g., e-commerce, landing pages, zoom meetings, payment gateways) to keep a history of leads. I use this data from time to time to, for example, update information on leads on Mautic or score leads.
Mautic's API is very useful for several actions, but I've also been using NocoDB in my projects to have more freedom to do queries and inserts/updates in Mautic data (MySQL).
Which integrations do you use the most?
I use MongoDB, Mautic, HubSpot a lot for lead integrations here at Powertic. That's why I've also been making some contributions to the Mautic and MongoDB nodes.
Besides, I use the SSH node a lot to automate the maintenance of our servers and the HTTP Request node to access the IP Blacklist API and send notifications for our IP monitoring services.
Do you use n8n workflows also for personal use?
Yes. I'm a long-time Todoist user and I've been using the Todoist node a lot to automate some of my everyday tasks, for example organizing my reading list from my favorite blogs, or capturing completed tasks from certain projects and sending them to my time tracking sheet.
Do you have any tips for someone who wants to try n8n?
The n8n desktop app is the simplest way to get started. The n8n workflows page helps a lot to understand the mechanics and how to connect nodes.
How do you see yourself using n8n in the future?
I have been providing n8n consultancy and training here in Brazil and the tool has been well received.
I believe I will use n8n even more in the marketing areas and also as a system integrator, connecting APIs and saving valuable information in data lakes. This is a use case that I intend to explore a lot in the coming years.
Is there a feature you would like to have on n8n that currently does not exist?
I would love to have a workflows change history, evaluate changes, and even go back to a specific revision.
How can readers get in touch with you?
Anyone who wants to know my work can visit the Powertic website. Furthermore, I have a newsletter about n8n and low-code tools at luizeof.dev. If you want to chat about n8n, please contact me via email.
n8n users come from a wide range of backgrounds, experience levels, and interests. We have been looking to highlight different users and their projects in our blog posts. If you’re working with n8n and would like to inspire the community, contact us 💌
