Is it better to self-host automation tools like n8n instead of paying for more subscriptions?

One approach is to instruct Claude (or whatever AI tool you're using) from the start that you don't want more subscriptions and instead want something self-hosted that you control. This led to setting up a self-hosted version of n8n, since it's open source, running on a private Digital Ocean droplet. This avoids ongoing subscription costs since the infrastructure is owned outright.