Cohostly vs Heroku: an alternative for AI-built apps

Heroku is a long-standing platform for deploying web apps with a Git push and a Procfile. Cohostly is for the small apps an AI assistant builds for you or your team: deploy from a folder or over MCP, share by email, and approve changes. Here is how to choose.

The short answer

Pick Heroku for what it is built for (below). Pick Cohostly when the app was written by an assistant, a specific set of people should open it, and you want nothing risky to change without your yes.

What Heroku does well

• A mature, well-documented model for web apps and workers.
• An add-on marketplace for databases and tools.
• A workflow many developers already know.

Where Cohostly is different

• Share by email, like a document: named people, your team, anyone with the link, or the public.
• Connect Google, Slack and other accounts one permission at a time, so no password sits in the code.
• Secrets are typed on a private page, never into a chat or the source.
• Every change by a teammate or an assistant waits for approval, explained in plain words with its risk.
• Deploy from a folder, .zip, GitHub repo, or straight from Claude, Claude Code or Cursor over MCP.
• Apps rest when nobody is using them and wake in about a second, so small tools cost little.

When Heroku is the better pick

• Your team already runs on Heroku and has pipelines, add-ons and habits built around it.
• You need its add-ons for a production system.

Moving an app from Heroku to Cohostly

For a new small tool, skip the pipeline: upload the folder, confirm the start command (the old Procfile line works) and share it. Idle apps rest instead of running all day.

Questions

Is there a Heroku alternative for small AI-built tools?

Cohostly is built for exactly that: deploy from a folder, share by email and approve changes.

Do I need a Procfile?

No. Cohostly proposes a start command from your project, and you can edit it before going live.