Accessing virtual hosts from other computers – xip.io alternative

Question

Sometimes you need to access your (Pow) virtual hosts from another computer on your local network — for example, when testing your application on a mobile device or from a Windows or Linux VM.

So far I've been using pow and xip.io seems to be the de facto way to access virtual hosts from other computers.

Today I needed to test a hotfix on Internet Explorer, on a Windows machine, using saucelabs.com, and in this scenario xip.io doesn't work anymore.

The Pow User's Manual suggests showoff-io as an alternative – the easiest way to share localhost over the web – but it seems that this one has turned commercial, revamped as forwardhq.com.

Are there any free alternatives to xip.io that work with testing platforms like Sauce Labs?

Answer 1

ngrok.com is a great alternative too. Simple Go binary, and it proxies both HTTP and HTTPS.

Answer 2

I have used proxylocal successfully with Sauce Labs and it's free with source available on Github.

I unfortunately found ForwardHQ frequently disconnected but proxylocal has been solid so far.

Answer 3

Try Burrow.io. The free plan lets you create one HTTP tunnel, and you don't need to install anything. After creating the tunnel through the web interface, all you have to do is paste a CURL command on your terminal and you get magically connected.

Answer 4

There is one more tool similar to proxylocal - localtunnel (it's github link - https://github.com/defunctzombie/localtunnel )