The self-hosted DigitalOcean App Platform alternative you own
AppCrane gives you push-to-deploy, auto-HTTPS and many apps on one Ubuntu box you own, with an MCP server on that box that deploys, reads logs, rolls back and promotes sandbox to production.
DigitalOcean App Platform builds from your Git repo and runs each component as containers on DigitalOcean, billed by the second at a monthly rate for the container size, with a free tier for static sites. DigitalOcean's App Platform MCP server can create an app from a spec, update it and report deployment status; team SSO works with OIDC identity providers.
| AppCrane | DigitalOcean App Platform | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | A server you own — any Ubuntu box | DigitalOcean's cloud |
| Where code & data live | On that server; AppCrane sends one anonymous daily install check-in (counts and version, no app data), off with APPCRANE_CHECKIN=off | On DigitalOcean's infrastructure |
| Pricing model | Free and open source on a server you already pay for — no per-seat, per-request or bandwidth metering | Container size times container count, billed by the second with a one-minute minimum; free tier for up to three static-site apps |
| Deploys | GitHub-native push-to-deploy, zero-downtime releases (start new, health check, swap, drain old), rollback to a kept release that restarts its image instead of rebuilding | Managed build and deploy pipeline |
| Agent-native (MCP) | 74 tools on an MCP server on your own box — your AI agent deploys, sets env, reads logs, rolls back and promotes, and each call is audited against its user | DigitalOcean's App Platform MCP server (remote or local): create from a spec, update, delete, deployment status, resource usage |
| Single sign-on | SAML 2.0, OIDC and SCIM in the AGPL-3.0 build, nothing to activate | Team SSO with OIDC identity providers such as Okta and Microsoft Entra ID |
| Isolation & TLS | Per-app Docker containers, auto-HTTPS via Caddy | Containers per component, sized by plan |
| Openness | Open source (AGPL-3.0), standard Docker + Caddy — you run the control plane | Vendor-operated managed service |
| Audit | Per-user audit: who deployed what, which environment, when — stored on your server | Team security history: each action, the user who took it and the originating IP |
DigitalOcean App Platform is a good fit when you want someone else to own the servers. Choose AppCrane when the apps are agent-built, the agent should do the deploying, and your code, data and audit trail should stay on infrastructure you own. It’s open source — read every line.