sher: The ngrok Alternative You Haven't Heard Of

You haven't heard of sher because it has exactly one vote somewhere and zero marketing budget. But it solves the daily friction of sharing localhost previews better than tools getting 10x more attention.

The Problem

Every developer hits this: client wants to see progress, teammate needs to test your branch, designer wants to review the implementation. Your code runs on localhost:3000. Theirs doesn't.

Usual solutions:

• Deploy to Vercel (overkill for quick previews)
• Push to GitHub and hope they pull (friction)
• Use ngrok (paywall for custom domains, complex setup)
• Screenshot and pray (not interactive)

What sher Does

sher generates instant preview URLs for local development with one command. Works out of the box with Vite, Next.js, Astro, and anything running on localhost.

npx sher

That's it. Your local dev server gets a public URL that works immediately. No signup, no configuration, no monthly subscription.

Why It's Better

Compared to ngrok:

• Free for basic use — no paywall for custom domains
• Framework aware — detects Vite/Next.js automatically
• Simpler setup — one command vs account creation and auth

Compared to deployment:

• Instant — no build pipeline or CDN propagation
• Reflects live changes — hot reload works through the tunnel
• No commit required — share work-in-progress immediately

The Real Value

This is the kind of unglamorous tool that saves 10 minutes every day but gets overlooked for flashier launches. Those 10 minutes add up. The mental overhead of "how do I share this quickly" disappears.

sher isn't revolutionary. It's just better than the alternatives for 90% of use cases. Sometimes that's exactly what you need.