Production Self-Hosted n8n: Docker Compose, Postgres, NGINX & SSL

Running n8n on SQLite is fine for experiments. For production traffic, use Postgres, a reverse proxy with WebSocket/SSE support, TLS, and backups. This guide walks through a practical stack on a VPS (Hetzner, DigitalOcean, etc.).

Cloud infrastructure for production self-hosted n8n

A small VPS plus Compose is enough for many self-hosted n8n workloads.

Why SQLite becomes a problem

SQLite is single-file and easy, but concurrent writes, large execution history, and multi-instance setups hurt. n8n documents Postgres as the production database for a reason.

Minimum architecture

Component	Role
VPS (2 vCPU / 4GB+)	Host
Docker + Compose	Runtime
Postgres 15/16	Primary DB
n8n	Automation engine
NGINX + Certbot	TLS + WebSockets

NGINX with WebSocket / long executions

n8n’s editor streams execution updates. Buffering or short timeouts break the UI.

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name n8n.example.com;

    ssl_certificate     /etc/letsencrypt/live/n8n.example.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/n8n.example.com/privkey.pem;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:5678;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade";
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_buffering off;
        proxy_read_timeout 3600s;
        proxy_send_timeout 3600s;
    }
}

Server configuration code for n8n reverse proxy and SSL

Keep secrets in env files outside git; rotate credentials after first deploy.

Useful n8n env flags

N8N_HOST, N8N_PROTOCOL=https, WEBHOOK_URL
EXECUTIONS_DATA_PRUNE=true and retention limits
N8N_ENCRYPTION_KEY (set once, back it up)

Backups

Dump Postgres on a schedule (cron + pg_dump) to object storage. Also back up the n8n volume if you store binary data locally.