RSS to newsletter: automate content curation with n8n

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If you run a blog, a niche newsletter, or just want to keep your mates informed about the latest in your favourite hobby, you've probably felt the pain of manually curating links every week. Copying headlines, pasting URLs, formatting emails — it's soul-destroying. The good news? You can automate the whole thing with n8n, a free and open-source workflow tool, and never hand-paste a link again. Here's how to build an RSS-to-newsletter pipeline that does the boring work for you, so you can focus on the fun part: adding your own commentary and personality.

Why n8n beats the alternatives

You've got plenty of options for automating newsletters — Zapier, Make, IFTTT — but they all have the same problem: they get pricey fast once you hit their monthly task limits. n8n is different. You can self-host it on a £5-a-month VPS (or run it free on your own machine) and process unlimited workflows without per-task charges. If you're in the UK and watching your pennies, that's a game changer. Plus, n8n gives you proper control: you can add logic, filter out junk, and even pull in data from multiple feeds before sending. It's like having a tiny robot assistant that never sleeps and never asks for a pay rise.

What you'll need before you start

Before we dive into the workflow, gather these bits:

• An RSS feed URL — most blogs and news sites still have one. Look for the orange icon or add /feed to the site's URL (e.g. https://example.com/feed).
• An n8n instance — either self-hosted (Docker is easiest) or the cloud version. For a first test, the free tier on n8n.io works fine.
• An email service — I'd recommend a transactional email provider like SendGrid or Mailgun (they're cheap and reliable). Alternatively, if you're already using Gmail, you can hook that up directly for small lists.

Once you've got those three things, you're ready to build.

Building the core workflow: fetch, filter, format

Open n8n and create a new workflow. You'll be dragging nodes onto a canvas — think of them as Lego bricks for data. Here's the exact structure:

1. RSS Read node — paste your feed URL here. Set the polling interval to 'Every 6 hours' or whatever suits your posting schedule.
2. Filter node — this is your quality gate. For example, to only keep items with a word count above 300, add a condition: {{ $json.content.length }} > 300. You can also filter by date to skip old posts.
3. HTML node — this is where the magic happens. n8n has a built-in 'Convert to HTML' operation. Map the feed's title, link, and description fields into a simple template like this:
   <h2>{{ $json.title }}</h2><p>{{ $json.content }}</p><a href='{{ $json.link }}'>Read more</a><hr>

Test the workflow by clicking 'Execute Node' on each step. You should see the data flowing through, and the HTML node should output a clean, formatted block you'd be happy to email. Don't worry if the styling is basic — you'll polish it later.

Adding your personal touch: the 'curator' step

A newsletter with zero personality is just spam. The whole point of curation is your voice. So add a Code node after the HTML node. In the JavaScript editor, you can inject a custom intro or outro. For example:

const intro = '<p>Morning folks! Here are this week&rsquo;s best reads on AI and side hustles — enjoy.</p>';
const outro = '<p>That&rsquo;s all for this week. If you found this useful, forward it to a mate.</p>';
return [{ html: intro + items.map(i => i.html).join('<br>') + outro }];

You can even pull in a random quote from a public API to keep things fresh. The point is: the automation handles the grunt work, but you still get to sound like you.

Sending the email and scheduling it

Now for the final piece: the email node. Add an Email Send node and connect it to your email service. If you're using SendGrid, you'll need an API key (they're free for 100 emails a day, which is plenty for a personal newsletter). Fill in the subject line — you can make it dynamic, like This week in AI: {{ $json.date }} — and set the body to the HTML output from your Code node.

Once that's wired up, the last step is scheduling. Drag a Schedule Trigger node onto the canvas and connect it to the RSS Read node. Set it to run every Monday at 9am, or whatever cadence suits. Then hit 'Activate Workflow' and watch it fire on its own. No more Sunday-night panic.

If you'd rather not build this from scratch — and trust me, there are plenty of fiddly bits like handling empty feeds or retries — I've got a shortcut for you. n8n Starter Workflows are plug-and-play templates you can import into n8n in minutes. They come pre-built, tested, and documented — including a fully working RSS-to-newsletter setup with all the edge cases handled. From £9, it's a bargain compared to the hours you'd spend debugging on your own. But if you enjoy the tinkering, by all means, build it yourself — you'll learn a ton.

Going further: multi-feed digests and AI summaries

Once the basics work, you can level up. Add multiple RSS Read nodes and merge them with a Merge node to create a roundup of several blogs. Or get clever with AI: drop in an OpenAI node to generate a one-sentence summary for each article, so your readers get a taste before clicking through. The prompt is simple: Summarise this article in 20 words: {{ $json.content }}. That turns your newsletter from a link dump into a genuinely useful digest — the kind people actually open.

You can also add a Wait node to stagger sends, or a Spreadsheet node to log every issue for future reference. The beauty of n8n is that the ceiling is only your imagination — and your patience for debugging.

Final thoughts

Automating your RSS-to-newsletter pipeline isn't just about saving time — it's about consistency. Readers subscribe because they trust you to show up every week. With n8n, you'll never miss an issue, even when life gets busy. Start small, test thoroughly, and before you know it, you'll have a self-running content engine that works while you sleep. And if you hit a wall, remember: there's a template for that.