Today's Deep-Dive: Automatisch

Welcome to the deep dive, your shortcut to knowledge.

We break down complex topics.

You get exactly what you need.

Before we jump into today's subject, taking back control of your workflow

is a quick thank you to our sponsor.

This deep dive is supported by Safe Server.

Safe Server is great for hosting your software,

managing your infrastructure, and they really support you

through that digital transformation.

If owning your data stack is important to you,

find out more at www.safeserver.de.

OK, let's get into it.

Today, we're looking at a tool promising big productivity games

without all the technical headaches, workflow automation.

Specifically, Automatish, that's A-U-T-O-M-A-T-I-S-C-H.

It's pitched as the open source alternative to giants like Zapier.

And our mission today isn't just to explain what it is,

but really dig into why its focus on self-hosting and open source

is, well, a potentially massive strategic edge,

especially if you're concerned about data privacy

or getting locked into vendors.

That strategic angle is absolutely key.

Because right now, automation often feels, well, inaccessible.

It's either super complex, needing specialist teams,

or you're reliant on these quite expensive cloud tools,

where you essentially give away control over core processes.

Right.

Automatish tries to bridge that gap.

It aims for enterprise-level power,

but without that enterprise cost, and crucially,

without losing control.

OK, let's keep it simple for someone maybe new to this.

Say I use five different online tools daily.

How does Automatish actually link them?

What does the automation look like in practice?

Sure, so Automatish is basically a business automation

tool built on a low-code idea.

Think of a visual drag-and-drop interface

where you set up triggers like, when this happens,

and then actions do this.

And no coding needed.

Exactly.

No programming required.

It connects your services, your CRM, email, social media,

whatever, and gets them talking to each other automatically.

Saves you time.

Can you give a really concrete example, something

people can picture immediately?

OK, let's imagine you handle marketing leads or customer

support.

Normally, maybe you copy a query from a web form,

paste it into Slack for the team,

then maybe create a ticket in Jira or Trello.

Tedious, right?

Yeah, and easy to make mistakes or forget a step.

Precisely.

With Automatish, you set it up once.

The moment that form gets submitted,

boom, the automation runs.

It can post to Slack, create the Jira ticket,

maybe even update your CRM all instantly.

It just removes all that manual, error-prone shuffling of data.

That makes the no-code benefit crystal clear.

You're swapping lots of small, repetitive daily tasks

for one initial setup.

Now, we know Zapier and IntegraMap now

make our huge players here.

How do Automatish's creators, Ali Barayan and Irmar Furukh-Aydan,

position their tool against these big names?

They really lean into affordability and independence.

Zapier and tools like it are very capable,

but they operate on this cloud-based subscription

model that can get seriously expensive,

especially as your usage grows.

Right, the costs can ramp up quickly.

Yeah, the Automatish team saw businesses

getting priced out of automation they really needed.

So they built their tool to integrate

with all the popular services, but crucially,

without forcing you into paying ongoing fees

to a proprietary platform just to run your core workflows.

So it connects the same essential services,

but the difference is strategic where it runs and how it runs,

which brings us nicely to its core advantages.

Let's start with data control tied to self-hosting.

Why is running this on my own server suddenly so important?

This is probably the biggest differentiator,

particularly for anyone in a regulated field.

Self-hosting means the actual data flowing

through your automations, customer details,

financial info.

Maybe health data stays entirely on your systems

under your control.

But wait, isn't running it on AWS or Google Cloud

still my infrastructure in a sense?

Don't they have amazing security teams?

That's a fair question about security infrastructure, sure.

But the issue here is more about legal control and data

jurisdiction.

If you're handling sensitive user data,

especially in sectors like health care or finance,

strict rules apply.

Like GDPR in Europe.

Exactly like GDPR.

It imposes strict rules about where data resides

and who can access it.

If your automation data sits on a US company's cloud server,

for example, that data might fall under US laws and access

requests, no matter where your company is actually based.

OK, so even if I'm, say, a German company using a US cloud

provider, my data might not be fully under German or EU

legal protection.

That's the risk.

You're effectively sharing potentially sensitive

information with an external provider whose infrastructure

is outside your direct legal jurisdiction.

For many businesses under GDPR, that's simply not allowed.

Self-hosting completely sidesteps that problem.

The data physically stays where you put it under your rules.

That makes the compliance angle incredibly clear.

It shifts self-hosting from just a tech choice

to a legal necessity for some.

Absolutely.

But hold on.

Doesn't running it myself just swap Zapier's monthly bill

for the hassle and cost of managing my own server?

Self-hosting isn't free either, right?

You need someone to maintain it.

Excellent point.

It's about the total cost and the ROI model.

Yes, self-hosting has infrastructure and maybe

some maintenance costs.

But crucially, those tend to be more fixed costs.

OK.

With many proprietary cloud services,

the cost is variable and scales with usage.

Run 10,000 tasks a day on Zapier,

and your bill can skyrocket.

With self-hosting, whether you run 10 tasks or 10,000,

your infrastructure cost remains largely predictable.

It avoids that punitive scaling cost

and gives you long-term financial independence.

I see.

Fixed cost predictability versus potentially

exponential variable costs.

Right.

That's a strong argument, especially

for growing businesses.

So what's the second big advantage flowing

from this independent model?

That would be avoiding vendor lock-in.

We hear this term a lot, basically,

getting so deeply tied into one provider's technology

that leaving becomes incredibly difficult, disruptive,

and expensive.

Yeah.

We've all felt that somewhere, maybe even

just their personal bank.

Switching feels like a nightmare because everything's

tied together.

Exactly.

And in business tech, that lock-in is risky.

What if your cloud automation provider suddenly

doubles their prices or deprecates

a feature you rely on?

You're stuck.

You either pay up or face a massive, costly migration

project.

Which no one wants.

Right.

Because automatage is self-hosted.

You own the infrastructure.

You own the data format.

If, down the line, you decide it's no longer the right fit,

moving to something else is significantly easier.

You have the flexibility because you never gave up

control in the first place.

That's pure strategic sense, protecting the business

from being held hostage later.

OK, third advantage, it's open source.

Why should a typical business user, not necessarily

a developer, care that the code is open?

It boils down to transparency and trust, really,

because automatage is open source.

Anyone, your developers, external security auditors,

curious users, can actually look at the code.

They can see exactly how it works, how it handles data.

It's not a black box.

So thinking back to that sensitive data,

if security is paramount, I might actually

trust software more if its workings are

open to public scrutiny by potentially thousands of eyes.

Precisely.

It's not built behind closed doors.

It's continuously reviewed, tested, and improved

by a whole community.

And that community is active.

The project has something like 13,300 stars

and 1,000 forks on GitHub.

That's significant engagement.

It means more eyes, finding bugs, suggesting improvements,

making it more robust over time.

That level of community input is definitely reassuring.

So if someone listening is interested,

maybe wants to try it or even contribute feedback,

where do they go?

The usual places for open source projects,

really, GitHub is the main hub for code and issues.

They also have a Discord server for community chat

and a presence on Twitter for updates.

If you had a problem setting up a workflow,

the GitHub Issues page is the best place

for support or reporting bugs.

OK, good to know.

And let's talk about actually getting it running.

You mentioned self-hosting.

The source material implies the installation

is quite straightforward.

Yeah, they've clearly designed it for ease of deployment,

primarily using Docker.

If you're comfortable with containers,

it's not some complex, days-long setup.

So what does it involve?

The documentation lays out basically three command line

steps.

Get clone to get the code, cd, automatic

to go into the directory, and then

Docker compose up to build and start the services.

That should get it running locally pretty fast.

Wow, OK, that does sound quick.

Three commands to potentially take back

full control of your automation.

But a really critical security note

here for anyone trying this.

The docs mentioned default login details.

Yes, absolutely crucial point.

For convenience during initial setup,

they provide default admin credentials dot user

at automatish.io and the password sample.

You must change these immediately

after your first login.

Don't skip this.

Do not skip this step.

Leaving default credentials exposed

is a massive security risk.

Go straight to the settings and set a strong, unique password

for the admin account.

Secure your setup right away.

Excellent advice.

Always secure the defaults.

Yeah.

Now, just briefly, let's touch on how they structure

the project itself.

They use a dual licensing model, which can sometimes confuse

people new to open source.

Can you clarify the two editions?

Sure.

It's a common model.

They have a single code base, but essentially two

different versions derive from it.

First, there's the Automatish Community Edition, or CE.

That's the free open source version

licensed under the AGPL 3.0 license.

Which means the code stays open.

Right.

The AGPL ensures that if you modify and distribute it,

you generally need to share your changes, too.

It keeps the core transparent and community driven.

And the other edition.

The second is the Automatish Enterprise Edition, EE.

This is their paid commercial offering

under a separate enterprise license.

It likely includes additional features, support,

or scalability options targeted at larger organizations.

This model lets them fund development

while keeping the base product freely available.

And they keep development manageable by?

By maintaining just one main code repository.

Any files or features specific to the paid enterprise

editions simply have EE included in their file name.

It's a pretty clean way to manage both versions side

by side and be transparent about what's

core open source versus what's part of the commercial package.

That makes sense.

A fractal structure.

OK.

So let's circle back and summarize the core appeal

for our listener.

Why seriously consider Automatish

over the established players?

I think it comes down to three main things.

First, you get powerful automation

without needing to code, which saves huge amounts of time

and potential errors.

Second, you gain maximum data control and easier compliance

through self-hosting absolutely vital for certain industries

and anyone concerned about data sovereignty.

And third, you benefit from generally lower long-term costs

and flexibility.

You avoid vendor lock-in because it's open source

and you control the deployment.

It's fundamentally about reclaiming

strategic independence over your core processes.

Strategic independence, that's a powerful idea.

And it leads perfectly into a final thought

for you, the listener.

If business automation is genuinely

becoming a basic utility, almost like electricity,

how much risk are you really comfortable with?

By outsourcing the ownership of those critical data

flows to a third-party cloud service

versus owning that infrastructure,

owning that control yourself, Automatch

presents a clear option to take that ownership back.

It's a fundamental question about control versus convenience.

And I think every business leader

needs to weigh that carefully now, especially

with data regulations tightening globally.

A huge thank you again to Safe Server

for supporting this deep dive.

Safe Server is ready to help host your software

and support your digital transformation journey.

Thanks for diving deep with us today.

Thanks for diving deep with us today.