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Inlets Uplink

What's the difference between Inlets Pro and Inlets Uplink?

Inlets Pro is a stand-alone binary that can be use to expose local HTTPs and TCP services on a remote machine or network.

Inlets Uplink is a complete management solution for tunnels for SaaS companies and service providers. It's designed for scale, multi-tenancy and easy management.

Inlets Uplink is our answer to the question: "How do you access customer services from within your own product?"

You may consider building your own agent, using a AWS SQS queue, or a VPN.

The first two options involve considerable work both up front and in the long run. VPNs require firewall changes, specific network conditions, and lengthy paperwork.

Inlets Uplink uses a TLS encrypted websocket to make an outbound connection, and can also work over corporate HTTP proxies.

Here are some of the other differences between Inlets Pro and Inlets Uplink:

  • The management solution is built-in, self-hosted and runs on your Kubernetes cluster
  • You can create a tunnel almost instantly via CLI, REST API or the "Tunnel" Custom Resource
  • The license is installed on the server, instead of each client needing it
  • TCP ports can be remapped to avoid conflicts
  • A single tunnel can expose HTTP and TCP at the same time
  • All tunnels can be monitored centrally for reliability and usage
  • By default all tunnels are private and only available for access by your own applications

With Uplink, you deploy tunnel servers for a customers to your Kubernetes cluster, and our operator takes care of everything else.

You can read more about why we created inlets uplink in the product announcement.

Reach out to us if you have questions: Contact the inlets team