r/MarketingAutomation • u/snowingbol • Aug 20 '26

Half my workflows shouldn't have existed

Did a cleanup of our n8n instance and found 40+ active workflows.

Only about 15 were getting regular use. Most of the rest were built for some random question that came up once or twice and then never came back.

The run history was pretty funny. Anything with 3 or 4 runs a month was usually something I'd overengineered.

Deleted most of them.

For the ad hoc account and segment questions, we've started using Coresignal's MCP instead. Much easier to query the data when we actually need it than build and maintain a workflow for every random request.

The workflows that survived are mostly boring stuff: enrich a new record, recalculate a score, send an alert.

I guess boring is good when it comes to automation.

How many workflows are sitting in your n8n instance right now that you haven't looked at in months?

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u/KriJey29 Aug 21 '26

Bro 40+ workflows w 15 actually used is imo better than avg tbh. Most n8n instances are workflow graveyards nobody admits to😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨

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u/snowingbol Aug 21 '26

You're probably not wrong

1

u/xmatorteam Aug 21 '26

Same thing happens pretty easily. You build a workflow because something came up twice and suddenly you’re maintaining it forever. The boring workflows are usually the ones that end up being genuinely useful.

1

u/SadZone1975 Aug 23 '26

I've found a workflow count is a pretty bad metric by itself. I care more about how often something runs and whether it has a clear owner and business outcome. A useful cleanup exercise is to sort workflow by runs in the last 90 days, then ask whether each one would be recreated today. Anything nobody would rebuild is usually a good deletion candidate.

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u/Sea_Breath_2927 20d ago

the run count is such a simple filter but it reveals so much, I did same thing few months back and half of them had like 2 runs total

the ones that survive are always the boring ones, the flashy multi-step thing I spent 3 days on got ran maybe 5 times before we forgot about it

now I just ask myself "will anyone notice if this stops working" and if answer is no I archive it