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Module 12 · ship · advanced

Self-hosting and Client Delivery

After this module you can run n8n in production for yourself or a client: HTTPS, Postgres, backups, monitoring, and a clean handoff.

What it does

  • deploy/: a production stack: docker-compose.prod.yml (Postgres 17 + n8n + Caddy with automatic HTTPS), Caddyfile, .env.example, a nightly backup.sh (workflows, encrypted credentials, database dump, rotation), and a handoff-checklist.md for client projects.
  • Uptime Monitor workflow: every 5 minutes (or GET /webhook/ops/health), checks a list of URLs and reports which are down. The API returns 200 when all are up and 503 with reasons otherwise, so external monitors can use it too.

Flow

Every 5 Minutes ─┐
Health API ──────┴→ Sites to Check → One Item per Site → Check Site (never errors) → Evaluate → All Checks → Summary
                                                                                         → Called via API? → Respond (200/503)
                                                                                                     └→ Anything Down? → Send Alert

Verification status (all on n8n 2.43.6)

  • Uptime Monitor: 200 when up, 503 + error message when a site is down (5/5 checks).
  • Production stack: started locally (Postgres 17 + n8n + Caddy on https://localhost), /healthz returned 200 through Caddy, no Postgres version warning. Postgres 16 triggered "outside the supported range", hence 17.
  • backup.sh: workflow export, database dump, archive and rotation ran on that test stack. The credential-export line was not executed during testing (syntax checked only).
  • Compose config, Caddyfile and script syntax validated by ./test/test.sh.

Files

File Tier Purpose
lesson.md Free Deploy to a VPS step by step
workflow/starter.json Free Monitor triggers + settings
workflow/learner.json Learner Uptime Monitor
deploy/ Learner Production compose, Caddyfile, env template, backup script
deploy/handoff-checklist.md Learner Client delivery checklist
exercises.md Learner Practice tasks
solutions.md Learner Exercise solutions
notes.md Private Learning log
sell/ Private Offer, video script, blog post