FAQ From Cohort Week 1 · Real-World n8n Builders

FAQ From Cohort Week 1

Amazing energy and great questions yesterday! Here’s a recap of some key points we covered in the chat so you might miss it in the recording:

🔐 AI Tools & Data Privacy

Using n8n cloud is fine for European clients.
Some companies request Mistral because it’s EU-hosted, but Azure OpenAI EU is also compliant.

💼 Tool Stack & CRM Advice

Many businesses still rely on Excel (we weren't surprised 😂)
If they use Excel as a CRM → recommend a real CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce), not Airtable.
Airtable or Supabase shine for automation + internal dashboards, not CRM replacement.

🤖 n8n Best Practices

🧠 LLM vs AI Agent

LLM Chain = input → output (one pass)
Agent = think → act → check → answer (multiple steps)
Use agents for chatbots + tasks that need reasoning, but they can be less predictable.

🏷️ Handling Gender in Emails

Best approach: gender-neutral greetings ("Hi Alex")
If needed, AI guesses gender from name, similar accuracy to humans
Using draft mode in Gmail lets a human double-check before sending. Always include human in the loop for critical tasks in a business.

📚 When to Use RAG