THIS WEEK: The marketing automation tools we actually use

MARKETING

Most marketing automation advice either assumes a big budget or recommends tools that are more impressive in demos than in practice. We've spent the last two years building a stack that actually works for a boutique agency our size. Total monthly cost: €100-200 depending on usage. Here's what we use and why.

n8n as the core workflow engine

The centre of our automation stack is n8n. It connects our marketing tools, handles lead enrichment, automates content distribution, and manages recurring tasks that would otherwise consume team time. We run the self-hosted Community Edition, which means we avoid per-execution pricing and keep full control over our data.

Most automation platforms charge per action or per workflow. Zapier bills for every individual action. Make counts operations across workflows. These models make costs unpredictable at scale. n8n uses execution-based pricing: one workflow run equals one execution, regardless of how many steps it contains. The cloud-hosted Starter plan begins at €20 per month for 2,500 executions, with the Pro plan at €50 per month for 10,000 executions.

The complete tool stack

The stack works because n8n sits at the centre, connecting data flows between tools.

1. Beehiiv handles newsletter campaigns with unlimited sending on paid plans, starting at €49 monthly for up to 2,500 subscribers.

2. Buffer manages social distribution at €6-12 per channel monthly.

3. Shield tracks LinkedIn performance starting at €25 monthly for personal profiles.

4. Notion organises everything from editorial calendars to campaign briefs. 

5. Slack keeps the team aligned with real-time updates triggered by workflow events. 

6. Google Sheets aggregates metrics from multiple sources through n8n connections (if you are tech-savvy enough, you can skip this and explore n8n native data tables). 

7. Brevo manages the sales pipeline alongside transactional emails, with a generous free tier for small teams.

What we don't use

We made a conscious decision not to use an all-in-one marketing platform like HubSpot. At our scale, the cost is difficult to justify, and a composed stack of specialist tools connected via n8n gives us more flexibility and better performance per euro spent. That said, if you're a larger team needing tightly integrated sales and marketing workflows, an all-in-one platform can make sense.

The honest trade-offs

This stack requires technical capability to set up and maintain, particularly the n8n self-hosted instance. We have engineers who handle that. For teams without that capability, the n8n cloud-hosted option removes the operational overhead at a modest monthly cost.

The other trade-off is upfront time investment. Building good automation workflows requires thinking carefully about your processes before you automate them. We spent roughly three weeks mapping our workflows before we started building. The return on that investment has been significant.

What this means

You don't need an expensive all-in-one marketing platform to run effective automation. A composed stack built around n8n, with specialist tools for each function, can deliver the same capability at a fraction of the cost. The key is investing the time to design the workflows properly before you build them.