Ngrok

ngrok is a universal gateway platform founded in 2013 that provides secure connectivity for APIs and applications without traditional infrastructure complexity. The company operates a global network handling over 100 trillion total requests, serving more than 7 million developers and 38,000+ companies including Databricks, Twilio, and Microsoft.

The platform functions as an all-in-one reverse proxy, API gateway, Kubernetes ingress controller, and global load balancer. Organizations deploy ngrok's lightweight agent within their infrastructure, which establishes secure outbound connections to ngrok's cloud service, eliminating the need to open inbound ports or manage complex VPN configurations. The solution supports HTTP, TLS, and TCP-based protocols with built-in features including OAuth/SAML authentication, traffic encryption, load balancing, and real-time observability.

ngrok raised $50 million in Series A funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Coatue in December 2022. The company maintains SOC 2 Type II compliance along with GDPR, CCPA, and EU-US Data Privacy Framework certifications, serving customers across development, staging, and production environments.

Choose ngrok when you need to establish secure connectivity without managing traditional networking infrastructure like VPNs, port forwarding, or firewall rules. The platform excels in scenarios requiring rapid deployment of API gateways, secure vendor access to private networks, or developer environments that need public URLs without staging deployments.

Expect a developer-centric experience with minimal configuration overhead. Implementation typically involves deploying a lightweight agent and defining traffic policies through configuration files or the dashboard interface. The platform handles encryption, certificate management, load balancing, and authentication as integrated capabilities rather than separate systems to configure.

While ngrok is not a healthcare-specific platform, the company maintains SOC 2 Type II compliance and serves healthcare technology companies requiring secure connectivity. The platform's site-to-site connectivity capabilities enable healthcare vendors to access customer networks securely, and its encryption and authentication features support HIPAA-aligned architectures when properly configured. Notable healthcare technology users include Databricks, which leverages ngrok for customer connectivity across its data platform deployments.

Technology companies, SaaS providers, and enterprises needing secure network connectivity for APIs, webhooks, or site-to-site integrations. Organizations with distributed infrastructure across clouds, on-premises environments, or customer networks who want to avoid traditional VPN complexity and port management.