An n8n workflow for RSS content monitoring and alerts, run against a live instance before it ships

Know the moment a competitor's blog, an industry publication, or your own site posts something new, without checking it by hand or paying for a monitoring SaaS.

Free. Not available for download yet, check back soon.

The problem

The workflow itself is not hard to build in n8n: three nodes, no third-party API keys for the monitoring step. What is hard is trusting a copy-pasted JSON found in a forum thread or a mega-pack of thousands of templates that may or may not still import cleanly.

What this workflow does

Polls an RSS feed on a schedule you set, hourly by default.
Formats each new item into a clean alert payload: title, snippet, link.
Hands off to your notification channel: the workflow ships with an open slot you wire to Slack, email, Discord, or anything else n8n has a node for.

Before and after

Checking feeds by hand

You remember to check a handful of feeds when you have time, which is not the same as when something posts.
A downloaded template imports with a red X on half the nodes.
Nobody wrote down what the workflow does, so the next person rebuilds it from scratch.

With this workflow

The feed is polled on your schedule and formats the alert for you, so checking manually stops being the plan.
It imports clean because it was run against a live n8n instance before being offered, not just written and hoped.
A setup guide and troubleshooting table travel with it, so the next person does not start from zero.

What you get

The workflow JSON: RSS trigger, alert formatter, notification slot.
A setup guide: prerequisites, a 15-minute walkthrough, troubleshooting table.
A test checklist showing exactly what was run against a live n8n instance, and the result.

Who it's for

Ops people and small agencies who already run n8n and want a ready, tested polling-and-alert pattern instead of wiring the RSS and formatting logic themselves from scratch.

FAQ

Does this need any paid API keys?

No, not for the monitoring step. Only your chosen notification channel, for example a Slack bot token, needs its own credential, which you supply.

What n8n version was this tested on?

n8n 2.35.5. The pinned version and update policy ship in the setup guide.

Is this really free?

Yes. This is Verified Flows' proof-of-standard sample: the same tested-and-documented bar every pack is held to, given away first so you can check the standard before trusting a paid pack on a harder problem, such as a working human-approval gate or a CRM hygiene check.