Show HN: Wsgrok – one of many ngrok alternatives

Show HN: Wsgrok – one of many ngrok alternatives(wsgrok.com)

6 points by hussachai 205 days ago | 5 comments

I built it for myself because ngrok didn't let me add one more domain unless I paid $12 more. I probably should've looked for alternatives before building my own, but my grudge got in the way . Once I started, I wanted to make it better than the other options. Silly, I know. No one probably cares.

I plan to open source it sometime next year because I’ve got other projects to finish first. It's free until I deplete my cloud credits, then it will switch to a tier-based model with a free option.

hussachai 204 days ago |

Just want to add more info here: wsgrok is a local tunneling tool similar to ngrok, but it uses websocket and protobuf to perform reverse proxying over TLS between the server domain and the agent running on your local machine. you can pin the region closest to you or your target server, and wsgrok currently supports 4 regions across the US, with plans to add 4 more in India, Spain, Finland, and Taiwan.

some services offer native data transmission over encrypted channels like SSH tunneling. one of the advantages of those services is that you don't need to download a binary, but the downside is that you can't inspect the traffic. that's why wsgrok takes the same approach as ngrok because I think inspecting request and response data is very important in development. I know trust is critical for this kind of service, which is why I plan to open source it so users can install it on their own servers or build the agent from source.

I'm using this service myself to develop our commercial products. We've got to eat our own dog food :)

prastik 205 days ago |

Not being able to add “one more domain” is an issue, but how does wsgrok ensure the domain link remains consistent after each server restart? That seems like a bigger problem since you’d otherwise have to update the domain across workflows every time the application restarts.

hussachai 205 days ago | |

Can you elaborate on that? The subdomain in wsgrok is static. However, you can bind it to any local port of your choice when running a client. You don't need to update the domain across your workflows if you create a dedicated subdomain for each one.

cdaringe 203 days ago |

Claude is building me sites that look just like this. Similar layout, sim styles, sim icons…

hussachai 203 days ago | |

Well, if you're using Mantine and Tabler Icons, there's a high chance your site will look very similar to this, regardless of how you build it. Disclaimer: I used Claude to generate the landing page. I used to build Mantine pages by hand as well, but they all looked kind of the same since I didn't customize the styles or components.