The here.now alternative that is MCP-native and private by default.
here.now is fast, inexpensive agent hosting: passwords, email allowlists and site analytics, published by API key. Stacktree is built for the moment the page goes to a client: a named link per person, who opened it and how closely they read, comments and sign-off, a portal on your domain, published through MCP.
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What is the best here.now alternative?
Stacktree, when the agent should publish through MCP and the output should be private the moment it exists. here.now is a strong agent-first host with two products, Sites and Drives, but it exposes no MCP server and authenticates with bearer API keys. Stacktree is MCP-native, uses OAuth, and makes every URL unguessable by default with deeper gating on top.
Why people look for a here.now alternative
here.now is genuinely built for agents, so the reasons to look elsewhere are specific rather than general. The three that come up most:
- No MCP server. here.now installs through the agent-skills ecosystem and authenticates with a bearer API key. Its own agent card declares MCP is not a supported surface. If your stack is built around MCP tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Claude.ai), you want a host the agent calls as a native tool, not a skill wrapping an API key.
- No OAuth. here.now uses an email-code flow to mint an API key, then a long-lived bearer token. Teams that want a standard OAuth authorization grant rather than a copied key prefer that flow.
- A readable address by default. A here.now Site lives at {slug}.here.now, open to anyone with the link until you configure otherwise. Some teams want the opposite default: an unguessable URL from the moment the page exists.
They are priced for a different job
The clearest signal is the price list. here.now sells storage: $4 a month for 500 GB, $20 for 2 TB and unlimited sites. Stacktree sells client delivery: Solo is $19 for twenty-five live pages, a client space and your own address. If you are looking for somewhere to put a lot of agent output, they are cheaper per gigabyte and always will be. If the output is going to a named client who should not see anyone else's work, that is what a client space is for.
Where here.now genuinely wins
This is the closest competitor on the market, and it does things Stacktree deliberately does not. Be clear about them:
- Drives. here.now ships private cloud storage for agents: memory, context, plans, assets, and agent-to-agent handoff via scoped share tokens. Stacktree hosts static HTML only and has no durable storage layer. If your agents need persistent state or to pass files between runs, here.now is the better fit.
- Proxy routes. A here.now static Site can proxy to an external API. Stacktree serves static HTML with no proxying.
What client work needs that here.now does not do
here.now's analytics count traffic to a site. Client work asks a narrower question: did this person read it, and what did they say? As of October 2026 here.now's docs describe none of these:
- A named link per person. Send Maya her own link and every open comes back with her name: "Read by Maya Cole · 24 min over 8 visits".
- How closely they read. Reading time and scroll per reader, with your own previews left out, so you know the deliverable landed before the follow-up call.
- Comments and sign-off. The client comments on the page itself and signs it off, and the record stays with the page.
- A client portal. Everything you have sent one client, newest first, behind one passcode on your own domain.
Where Stacktree differs
Stacktree starts from a different premise on access and identity. The agent is the author, the link is the credential, and the controls live one tool call away.
- MCP-native. A real MCP server, so the agent calls
publish_htmlas a native tool andupdate_siteto replace in place. No skill wrapper, no copied API key. - OAuth. Standard authorization grant rather than a long-lived bearer key.
- An unguessable URL by default. A Stacktree link is a random token that acts as the credential. A here.now Site is a readable {slug}.here.now address, which anyone with the link can open and a determined person can guess. Both offer passwords and domain restriction on top; the difference is only what you get before you configure anything.
- Email-domain gate. Restrict a link to verified addresses on a domain via magic link. here.now added the same thing: its docs describe restricted access with an email allowlist and a domain allowlist, so treat this as parity rather than a reason to move.
- End-to-end encryption. Optional AES-GCM in the browser with the key in the URL fragment, so the server only ever stores ciphertext.
- Replace-in-place. One stable URL per artifact across every revision, so the link you shared yesterday shows today's version.
Workspaces and client spaces are not the same shape
here.now added Workspaces in July 2026, and it is the feature closest to what Stacktree calls a client space. Both group the artifacts your agents produce under one named address instead of leaving them as a pile of unrelated links. The difference is who the container is for.
- A Workspace is for your team. It lives at
acme.here.now, takes up to 50 members on the free tier, and access is granted to everyone on your organisation’s email domain or person by person. It is somewhere colleagues put things. - A client space is for one client. It has no members, because the client never makes an account. That is the entire point: they open the address, type a passcode once if you set one, and stay in for 30 days. Nobody is invited to anything.
- The gate sits at a different level. here.now protects a site with a password you switch on per site. A Stacktree space carries the gate, and every page filed under it inherits that gate, including ones you publish next month. A page can still override with its own.
- A client space has a front door. Bind a hostname and the space serves a generated portal at the root: every deliverable listed, newest first, on your own domain. A Workspace gives its sites an address but nothing at the root that collects them.
Both can sit on a domain you own, so that is not the dividing line. The dividing line is whether the person opening the work is a colleague you can add as a member, or a client you should never ask to sign up for anything.
Who should pick which
Pick here.now if your agents need durable storage and handoff (Drives), or if you want to proxy a static site to an external API. Those are real capabilities Stacktree does not have.
Pick Stacktree if the agent should publish through MCP rather than an API key, if you want OAuth instead of a bearer token, and if the artifact should be private the moment it exists, gated by unguessable URL, password, email-domain, or end-to-end encryption.
Switching from here.now
The move is partial by design, because the two products overlap on hosting but not on storage.
- What transfers: your static Sites and your custom domains. Export the HTML and republish via
publish_htmlor the dashboard, then point the domain at Stacktree on Solo or above (Cloudflare for SaaS). - What you gain: an MCP server, OAuth, the magic-link email-domain gate, and optional end-to-end encryption, plus replace-in-place URLs.
- What is different: you do not get here.now Drives or proxy routes. If your agents rely on durable storage or handoff today, keep here.now for that layer and use Stacktree for the gated-publish layer.
Stacktree vs. here.now
| Criterion | here.now | Stacktree |
|---|---|---|
| MCP server | No. Agent-skill install plus API key; MCP is not a supported surface. | Yes. Native MCP server, publish_html. |
| Auth model | API key (bearer), minted via an email code. | OAuth authorization grant. |
| Default URL | Readable {slug}.here.now, open to anyone with the link. | Unguessable token that acts as the credential. |
| Password and domain gates | Yes: password, email allowlist, domain allowlist. | Yes: passcode, magic-link domain gate. |
| Who read it, by name | Site analytics; no per-person reading data documented. | Named links, opens, and reading time per person. |
| Comments and sign-off | Not documented. | Yes, on the page, kept with it. |
| End-to-end encryption | No. | Yes. AES-GCM, server sees ciphertext. |
| Replace-in-place URL | Yes. Republish to the same Site. | Yes. update_site, one tool call. |
| Anonymous first publish | Yes. 24 h temporary Sites. | Yes. 24 h, no card. |
| Agent storage / Drives | Yes. Durable storage, memory, handoff tokens. | No. Static HTML only. |
| Proxy routes | Yes. A static Site can proxy to an external API. | No. Static HTML only. |
| Pricing | Free (500 sites, 1 domain), Hobby $4, Developer $20. | Free trial, then flat $19/$79/$249, never per seat. |
Frequent questions
What is the best here.now alternative for AI agents? +
Does here.now have an MCP server? +
Is here.now private by default? +
What does here.now do that Stacktree does not? +
How do here.now Workspaces compare with Stacktree client spaces? +
acme.here.now, holds up to 50 members on the free tier, and grants access by your organisation's email domain or by invite. A Stacktree client space is a container for one client: it has no members at all, because the client never creates an account. They open the address, type a passcode once if you set one, and that unlock covers every deliverable in the space for 30 days. Two other practical differences: a Stacktree space serves a generated portal at its root that lists the work newest-first, so the client has one page to bookmark, and the gate is set on the space and inherited by every page rather than switched on per site.Can I move my here.now sites to Stacktree? +
How does pricing compare? +
Related guides
- The MCP publish tool Every verb the Stacktree MCP server exposes.
- All Stacktree alternatives How Stacktree compares across the agent-hosting market.
- Private HTML hosting Unguessable URLs, password, email-domain gate, E2E.
- Agent-loop hosting Why replace-in-place beats a new link per run.
- Static.app alternative Another agent-host comparison, on the human-first side.
Sources and further reading
- here.now ↗ The product this page compares against.
- here.now llms.txt ↗ here.now's own machine-readable description of Sites, Drives, auth, and supported surfaces.
- here.now pricing ↗ Plans and limits as of October 2026.
- Model Context Protocol spec ↗ The protocol Stacktree implements and here.now does not expose.
- OAuth 2.1, authorization framework ↗ The authorization model Stacktree uses in place of bearer API keys.
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