Sher: The ngrok Alternative Built for Modern Dev Workflows

You haven't heard of Sher yet, but it solves a daily developer pain point better than the tools everyone knows about.

While ngrok dominates mindshare for localhost sharing, it's a general-purpose tunneling solution that treats all local servers the same. Sher was built specifically for modern development workflows — it has native support for Vite, Next.js, Astro, and other frameworks that developers actually use.

Why This Matters

Every developer needs to share local previews. Client review, teammate collaboration, mobile testing — you name it. The current options are either overkill (deploy to Vercel for a quick preview) or generic (ngrok treats your React dev server like any other localhost service).

Sher understands modern dev servers. It knows how to handle hot reload, asset serving, and framework-specific routing. Instead of just creating a tunnel, it creates a preview experience optimized for how developers actually work.

Underrated for Good Reason

This tool has video documentation and polished assets — signs the creator invested real effort. It's freemium rather than open-source, which explains why it's not trending on GitHub. But for the specific use case of sharing framework-based local development, it's better than the alternatives.

You could use ngrok, but you'd be using a generic solution for a specific problem. You could deploy to preview environments, but that's heavyweight for quick iteration. Sher sits in the sweet spot of purpose-built tooling for modern development workflows.

This is exactly the kind of unglamorous but essential infrastructure that makes development smoother. The tools that solve daily friction often matter more than the breakthrough technologies that grab headlines.

Try Sher