How to Set up N8n Self Hosting In 5 Minutes (Hostinger VPS Setup)

If you love NADN but wish you had more control or you could use it for even cheaper, then self-hosting is the perfect solution. Setting up hosting used to require specialized technical skills, but now it's possible to set up without any prior knowledge in under 5 minutes with just a few clicks. I'm Matt and in this video I'll show you step by step how to set up self-hosting for NADN with a VPS or virtual private server. I'll also show you how to update NADN so you always have the latest version. First, let's set up our server. We're using Hostinger because they offer a one-click NAN template and plans starting under $5 per month. You can also use the link in the description to get an extra 10% off your first purchase, including any add-ons. But just a heads up, the discount only works during sign up. So, grab everything you need up front. When you click on the link, you'll land on this page here. Go ahead and click the purple claim deal button on the left side and it'll scroll you down to take a look at the hosting plan options. In Hostinger's documentation for N8N, they recommend using the KVM2 plan or higher for spec reasons. However, you can get by with the KVM1 plan and then upgrade later as you need to. So, for the maximum savings for our video, I'll go ahead and choose the KVM1 plan. For your situation, I recommend taking a look at the specs for each plan and then picking the one that matches your needs. Then click choose plan. Next, you'll be asked to select the plan term. You can choose between 1 month, 12 months, and 24 months. Keep in mind, if you do the one-month plan, it starts at $7.99 per month, but then after that first month goes up to 13.99. Plus, they don't let you use that 10% discount that you get by clicking on our link. For the best possible deal, I recommend using the 24-month plan. This gets you hosting for 24 months at $4.49 per month. Scrolling down, Hostinger also gives you the option to add daily auto backups. For the best possible savings, you can leave this turned off, but if you do need to protect your data, I do recommend toggling this on. The 10% discount you get from clicking our link does apply to the auto backups. So, if you think you might want auto backups, now would be the time to add it in. For our video, though, again, for maximum savings, I'll leave it checked off. Scrolling down further, you're prompted to select the server location. If your automations are primarily for you and your company, pick the server closest to you. If, however, your automations primarily serve another audience, pick the server closest to your audience. In my case, I'll select the United States. Scrolling down further, you can see select operating system as an optional step. While it says it's optional, for our setup, we actually need to do this. So, in the search OS field, type in N8N and then select N8N from the options below. Next, click the purple confirm button in the pop-up window. Scrolling up, we can see the order summary in the top right. So, our subtotal here is $17.78 for a 24-month term. While that is a little bit of money upfront, if you compare that to the cost of using N8N Cloud, their cheapest plan is $20 per month if you choose the annual plan. So, for 24 months on N8N Cloud, you could expect to spend $480. So, at $17.78, that's $372.22 in total savings over 24 months, or $15.51 per month. If you did decide to add in the daily auto backups, that's still $3742 in total savings or $12.81 per month. After you've got all your options dialed in here, go ahead and click continue. Next, you'll need to register for your Hostinger account. Go ahead and plug in your email address and create a password or use Google to sign up. After you register your account, you'll be taken to the checkout page. Plug in your address and payment information and then continue. After you submit your payment, you'll be taken to a confirmation page with a countdown. You can click the button to continue or let the countdown run down and it'll take you to the next page. Next, there's a brief onboarding survey. It'll ask if you want to use Monarch's malware scanner. This is optional, but there's no harm in using it and there's no extra cost, so I recommend leaving it checked. Then click continue. Next up, you'll be prompted to create a root password. Now, keep in mind that this is a password for the virtual server, not the hostinger account. So, make sure to write this down or store it in a password manager for safety. Optionally, you can add an SSH key to access your server without a password. But for our purposes today, I'll just click continue. You'll get one final page that gives you a summary of everything you've just selected and then you can click finish setup if everything looks good. Hostinger will then take a few minutes to set up the VPS. When it's finished processing, you'll get this confirmation screen. Go ahead and click manage VPS. You may be presented with a short survey on this next page, but it's not crucial to the setup process at all. You can answer this or skip it. So, I'll just scroll down and skip it. And just like that, your virtual private server is all set up. Next, let's set up N8N on our server. To do this, click the manage app button in the top right. On the next page, you'll be prompted to set up an N8N account. Go ahead and complete the form with your email, name, and a new password. Then, click next. N8N will give you a short onboarding questionnaire. Go ahead and answer the questions, and then click get started. N8N will present you with a pop-up saying you can get paid features for free forever. If you want to take advantage of this, go ahead and enter your email and then click send me a free license key. Next, you'll get a confirmation popup that says your license key is on the way. This could take a while to show up in your inbox. The first time I did this, it took over an hour. However, in most cases, it shows up within a few minutes. In your inbox, you should see something that looks like this. Your free N8 license key to unlock paid features. Go ahead and click that to open it and then click the activate license key button. And here now you can see that we're on the community edition and our account has been registered. So now N8N is all set up and running on our server. And if you wanted to test this back on the overview page of N8N, you could click start from scratch to build a small automation or click test a simple AI agent example to play with their demo workflow. Now that N8N is all set up, we'll want to verify our Hostinger account. Go back to your inbox and then look for the email from Hostinger that says verify your email address. Click to open it and then click verify email. And you can see here it takes me to a page that shows the VPS is running. Next, I'll show you how to update N8N on your server. Back in the overview section on Hostinger, in the top right, click browser terminal. Hostinger will open a command line interface or CLI. If you've never worked with one of these before, it can look kind of scary, but trust me, this is really straightforward. To download the latest version of N8N, click into the window, then type docker compose pull and hit enter or return on your keyboard. Hostinger will then download the newest version of N8N to your server. This may take a while to process, but you can watch the progress on the CLI. When it's done, it'll look something like this with a bunch of green check marks and everything will say pull complete. Next, we have to stop and remove the older version of N8N. To do this, type in docker compose down. Then hit enter or return. Again, you'll get some text showing that Hostinger is processing this request. When it's done, you'll see some form of confirmation like this where it says removed and there's a bunch of green check marks. Next, we need to start the newest version of NAND. To do this, type in docker compose up-d. And it's important that it's formatted exactly like this with a space between docker and compose, a space between compose and up, and a space between up and the dash, but no space between the dash and the d. When you've got it exactly like this, hit enter or return. And you can see there's a confirmation here that the new version of N8N has started. When you're done updating N8N, you can simply close out this tab. And just like that, in under five minutes, we are now self-hosting NAND on our own virtual private server and saving tons of money. If you haven't already, go ahead and click the link in the description below to sign up and get your extra 10% discount. Happy automating and I'll see you in the next video.