Dokku was the inspiration for it. I wanted a simple way to deploy small websites and I really wanted to understand how it all worked together - so I built my own.

One major difference (like already mentioned) is that I wanted to use Dockerfiles rather than Procfiles. I wanted to have full control over how it built and ran - and I didn't want to go through slugbuilder / buildstep at the time.

It may actually be easier on end users to use Heroku buildpacks and abstract some of the magic - but for our uses Dockerfiles were the best fit.

Now, the Tutum team came out with something that even simplifies it even more - and it might be worth looking at:

http://blog.tutum.co/2014/04/10/creating-a-docker-image-from...

I have had that on my backlog for several months and just haven't had time.

As far as I know it is completely Dockerfile-based, whereas dokku utilizes Procfiles. Therefore you could build and start any Docker container you like.