Self-hosted n8n with webhooks that just answer.

Step 1: order the VPS and set DNS

Choose Ubuntu 24.04 at checkout. The VPS is ready 30 to 60 seconds after payment. Create an A record such as n8n.example.com pointing at the IPv4 address, and an AAAA record from your /64 if you use IPv6. Caddy needs the record to resolve before it can get a certificate.

Step 2: install Docker Engine

Use the official repository so compose v2 is included. Full apt commands are on our Linux VPS pages; the short version:

apt update && apt install -y ca-certificates curl
install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu noble stable" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list
apt update && apt install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-compose-plugin
ufw allow 22/tcp && ufw allow 80/tcp && ufw allow 443/tcp && ufw enable

Step 3: write the .env file

Generate the encryption key once, store it somewhere safe outside the server, and never change it. It encrypts every credential in the database.

mkdir -p /opt/n8n && cd /opt/n8n
cat > .env <<'ENV'
N8N_HOST=n8n.example.com
N8N_PROTOCOL=https
WEBHOOK_URL=https://n8n.example.com/
N8N_ENCRYPTION_KEY=REPLACE_WITH_openssl_rand_-hex_32
GENERIC_TIMEZONE=Europe/Amsterdam
TZ=Europe/Amsterdam
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=REPLACE_WITH_A_LONG_PASSWORD
EXECUTIONS_DATA_PRUNE=true
EXECUTIONS_DATA_MAX_AGE=168
ENV
chmod 600 .env

Step 4: the compose file and the Caddyfile

services:
  postgres:
    image: postgres:16
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: n8n
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}
      POSTGRES_DB: n8n
    volumes: ["pg_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data"]
  n8n:
    image: docker.n8n.io/n8nio/n8n
    restart: unless-stopped
    env_file: .env
    environment:
      DB_TYPE: postgresdb
      DB_POSTGRESDB_HOST: postgres
      DB_POSTGRESDB_USER: n8n
      DB_POSTGRESDB_PASSWORD: ${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}
      DB_POSTGRESDB_DATABASE: n8n
    volumes: ["n8n_data:/home/node/.n8n"]
    depends_on: [postgres]
  caddy:
    image: caddy:2
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports: ["80:80", "443:443"]
    volumes:
      - ./Caddyfile:/etc/caddy/Caddyfile
      - caddy_data:/data
volumes:
  pg_data:
  n8n_data:
  caddy_data:

# Caddyfile
n8n.example.com {
    reverse_proxy n8n:5678
}

Step 5: start it and create the owner account

docker compose up -d
docker compose logs -f n8n

Open https://n8n.example.com, create the owner account, and add a Webhook node to a test workflow. The URL it shows must start with your domain, not localhost. Send a request to it with curl to confirm the round trip works.

Step 6: updates and backups

Updating is a pull and a restart. Back up the database dump and the .env file together; one without the other is useless.

docker compose pull && docker compose up -d
docker compose exec postgres pg_dump -U n8n n8n | gzip > n8n-$(date +%F).sql.gz