When we used automation tools like Zapier at my previous job, we found that it became incredibly expensive very quickly, and we had only too few options to self-host business automation when data had to reside on prem.

There are open-source automation tools that we think are too technical like Huginn and Node-RED or developed under less permissive open source licenses like N8n.

So we decided to build an open source automation tool under a permissive license (MIT) with a simple user experience that doesn’t require technical knowledge, and can be self-hosted. We plan to make money from the cloud version and a future enterprise edition with advanced features - maybe advanced roles and permissions.

The current version includes a visual designer for automation flows which can run on schedules (Cron), by Webhooks, or by triggers from external apps—25 apps and counting, including Stripe, Calendly, Google Sheets and others (we’re building these rapidly).

The app is customizable, you can add custom steps using HTTP requests or you can write Node.js code and bring in your npm packages.

If you’re curious about how it works, here are the docs: https://www.activepieces.com/docs

We’d love to hear HN’s thoughts on what we’re building! Thanks!