Tag: Rebrandly

Top 8 Alternatives of Bit.Ly in 2023

Bit.ly is a popular link management platform and URL-shortening assistance created in the year 2008. Since then it has reached the target of shortening around 600 million links every single month for its applications in email, SMS, and social networking. It also keeps the trace of your click data, and link customization for both, MSMEs and hefty companies.

Bit.ly offers a free plan which allows building only 50 links per month. That’s why, nowadays, people are experiencing some issues with Bit.ly such as its high pricing and time taking integrations. It makes them switch to other popular options for link shortening for their MSMEs.

We have brought you the top 8 alternatives to replace Bit.ly in 2023. The following mentioned platform can either reduce or replace your technical issues with link shortening and link data analysis. Let us dive in to find out what these alternatives are.

Cuelinks
Rebrandly
Golinks.io
Short.io
TinyURL
BL.INK
Bit.do
YOURLS

Cuelinks

Rating	4.5/5
Website	www.cuelinks.com

Cuelink URL Shortener and affiliate earner

Cuelinks is an efficient tool in the market right now. Since its inception, it has been an excellent tool for link tracking. Cuelinks’ user experience is smoother than other tools in the market. It has a great dashboard, where you can see your EPC, conversion rates, etc on a single panel.

The Cuelinks has the following significant features:

Once you sign up in the Cuelinks, you will have Java codes that will automatically start converting your links into affiliate links, as soon as you paste Java codes into the website’s footer.
The best thing about Cuelinks is that it covers almost every famous brand deal and they work with most of the affiliate networks. It also keeps a good track record of earnings.
Cuelinks provide lifetime link management, which means publisher need not change broken links manually, instead, Cuelinks does it automatically for the customer.

Rebrandly

Rating	4.6/5
Website	www.rebrandly.com

Rebrandly is another leading link-building platform to share, track, and brand URLs and shortens them into a particular custom domain. You can keep the trace, integrate, collaborate, promote, scale, and optimize links and domains.

You can fast redirects, link search, custom URL slugs, editable destination URLs, branded link export, link tags, QR codes, high volume links, bulk link edit or creation, and link expiration assistance along with Rebrandly.

From training routing to its training and support, Rebrandly offers the following features:

It provides enterprise tool integration, decent engineer support, direct training, account management, link importing, email support, video tutorials, and a knowledge base.
It also allows collaboration with activity audit logs, single sign-on, two-factor authentication, multiple access levels, workspaces, and team-mates.
It furnishes custom SSL, 404 redirect management, main domain redirect, HTTPS, and multiple domain names.
It offers server click analysis, logo in reports, custom report builder, aggregated reports, public or private reports, GDPR privacy, UTM builder, and link analytics.
In the case of traffic routing, Rebrandly offers links with emojis, mobile deep linking, link retargeting, open graph control, parameter forwarding, and 301 SEO redirect.

Pricing For Rebrandly:

Pricing & Features	Free $0	Essential $24/month	Professional $75/month	Teams $415/month
Clicks tracked per month	5,000	25,000	150,000	1,500,000
Total branded links	500	5,000	15,000	150,000
Custom domain names	1	5	5	20
Custom reports per month	–	–	–	31
Active teammates	–	–	–	10

Golinks.io

Rating	4.7/5
Website	www.golinks.io

Golinks.io boasts of being the most secure platform for building short links. The top enterprises such as Marqeta, Mercari, Open AI, Impossible, snowflake, Blex, FreshBooks, and GitHub benefit from the productive links of Golinks.io.

Its three main link formats in the address bar include go/drive, go/zoom, and go/GitHub. It furnishes keyword-oriented links with several tags to make it convenient for users to reach and explore resources.

The other features of Golinks.io include:

It furnishes secured links to cloud service and industry standards.
Single sign-on with a bunch of options such as custom SAML, Ping, Azure, auto provisioning, OneLogin, and OKTA.
Allows migration of data and existing links conveniently.
Facilitates sharing links among every single domain of your company.
Contains SOC 2 Type 1 which supports transportation, collection, and data storage.

Pricing for GoLinks.io

Plan	Free For teams	Starter	Pro	Enterprise
Price (monthly)	$0	$2	$4	Custom

Short.io

Rating	4.4/5
Website	www.short.io

Another effective custom domain URL shortener is Short.io. It furnishes its link-shortening services in your own domain. It is popular because of its quick customer support and affordable prices. Moreover, Short.io furnishes detailed statistics for domain and short links.

It provides statistics such as top countries, top browsers, devices in the run, social referrers, top referrers, click statistics, data range, unique clicks, total clicks, etc.

The features of Short.io includes:

It facilitates geo-targeting. It divides users on the basis of demographics such as location and region.
It then directs users to that particular webpage which implies that two users in two different areas experience different web pages.
Allows adding UTM parameters for link shortening or campaign tracking.
It also has password protection which implies that a secured link is only open to users who have its password.
For further shortening, Short.io contains QR which ultimately leads users to the desired link.

Pricing of Short.io

Plan	Free	Personal	Team	Enterprise
Monthly	Free $0	$16	$43	$121
Annually	Free $0	$158	$424	$1210

TinyURL

Rating	4.4/5
Website	www.tinyurl.com

TinyURL is a link-shortening services platform for businesses, markets, and small to hefty brands for the last 18 years. This URL shortener boasts of being experienced, reliable, and convenient. There are both paid and free versions of TinyURL.

Its premium account allows customers to create, track, grow and manage their brands through link campaigns of every detailing present in TinyURL.

The exclusive features of TinyURL include:

Links that perfectly fit your brand domain.
Detailed analytics about the consumers of campaigns.
Provides the data based on referrer, frequent times, devices, and locations.
Gives customizable reports and QR scanners along with shortened links.

Pricing for TinyURL

Plan	Free	Pro	Pro 5K	Pro 50K	Bulk 100K,250K, 750K, 1.5M and 3M
Price (monthly)	$0	Starting at $9.99	$29.00	$199.00	$99.00, $149, $299, $499, and $899 respectively.

BL.INK

Rating	4.5/5
Website	www.bl.ink

BL.INK is a software that supports link management by shortening, tracking, branding, and controlling URLs. For calculating the user’s data, BL.INK includes vanity keywords, measures engagement, and uses charts and graphs dependent on demographics. BL.INK integrates with the most popular tools of the time such as Zapier, Sprinklr, and Khoros for better performance.

The exclusive features of BL.INK includes:

Provides detailed analytics of link management significant data.
The links created are scalable, interoperable, and growth-oriented
It allows customization in pricing as you have to pay only for the features you are using.
It offers flexible plans and expert teams of 1 to over 15 users.

Pricing for BL.INK

Plan	Expert+	SMB	TEAM	BUSINESS	ENTERPRISE
Price	$48/month	$99/month	$299/month	$599/month	Custom
Redirects	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Active Links	10,000	50,000	250,000	500,000	Custom
Clicked/tracked links	7,500	15,000	30,000	60,000	Custom
Users	3	15	25	50	Custom
Domains	15	30	60	100	Custom
Domain Links	–	250	500	1000	Custom
GDPR Compliance	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Bit.do

Rating	4.5/5
Website	www.bit.do

The last in the list, but not the least, Bit.do is another ultimate URL shortener for tracking and shortening links. Established in 1995, Bit.do allows customers to personalize links using custom text for human reading.

The list of features of Bit.do include:

Contains multiple domains to build links to every field.
Furnishes detailed link analytics.
Supports integrations.

Pricing for Bit.do

Price:	$85.00 per month to $250 per month
Free Trial	Not Available

YOURLS

Rating	4.6/5
Pricing	Not available
Website	www.yourls.org

YOURLS here signifies Your Own URL Shortener. It allows you to operate your own URL shortening assistance with the help of small groups of PHP scripts. It never lets you depend upon third-party integrations for link building and analysis.

The YOURLS has the following significant features:

It is an open-source and free-of-cost software platform.
It allows both public and private link short links building.
From visitor’s geolocation, and referrers tracking, to historical click reports, YOURLS furnishes almost every stat related to link creation and analysis.
It contains convenient bookmarklets to share and shorten links easily.
It has a friendly installer for accessible induction.
Allows third-party integrations along with API with several other applications.
It furnishes sample files for public interface operation.

Conclusion

Hence this was all about the top 8 alternatives of Bit.ly in the year 2023. Due to a few issues such as affordability, link counting restrictions, and technical glitches, Bit.ly often annoys its users while hanging. You can go for any of the above-mentioned alternatives of Bit.ly to ensure smooth functioning.

FAQs

Is there a free alternative to Bit.ly?

Yes, there are many free versions of URL shorteners available in the market like TinyURL, Short.io, etc.

Does Google have a URL shortener?

Yes, Google had a URL shortener named “goo.gl“.Which was discontinued by Google on March 30, 2019.

How do I choose a URL shortener?

You should keep a few things in your mind while choosing a URL shortener are:

Must have tracking and analytics option with a good link management system.
A great and easy dashboard to use.
Compare the features of all shorteners and choose the best fit for you.

Are link shorteners safe?

Using the right and trusted link shorteners are always a good idea. Otherwise, Criminals do use this to do scams and crimes.

December 17, 2022

Top 7 URL Shorteners | Benefits of Using URL Shortener

If you running any business in 2022, then the URL of your website is of paramount importance. The URL is the first thing your potential customer would see when he visits your website, and thus creates a good first impression.

There are high chances that if your URL has more than 100 characters in it, your customer would rather avoid using the website as it screams span, even though it was designed with the correct intentions. Having a long, cumbersome URL means that, as per various search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, your page would not be shown at the top of the specific Google search and thus would have poor search engine rankings. This issue further gets exacerbated if social media platforms have a specific character limit, like what Twitter used to have when they had a character limit of only 140 characters per tweet until 2017.

Thus, shortening the URL makes for better convenience. There are more chances that a potential customer would open your website if it has a short URL. A short URL means it would have a better search engine ranking, as long as it has the specific keywords needed for the Google search. Short URLs also make for better sharing and help align the content with business expectations.

One of the most used solutions in shortening is a URL shortener. Also called a “link condenser” or “a vanity URL creator”(or any other jargon you can fit), their whole purpose is to take the long and ugly URL into something short and precise, which makes for more convenient sharing and better search engine rankings.

So in this article, we would discuss the purposes of a URL shortener in more detail. We would also briefly discuss how URL shorteners work and what are the most famous URL shorteners used in all industries with the respective pros and cons.

Benefits of Using URL Shorteners
How does an URL Shortener Work?
Top 7 URL Shorteners

Bitly
BLINK
Owly
Linktree
Rebrandly
TinyURL
TinyCC

Benefits of Using URL Shorteners

Link Masking – As mentioned earlier, long URLs tend to create a feeling of suspicion that the user is clicking on something malicious, even though that is not the case at all. By masking the original web address, we remove this suspiciousness and help us portray other key points we want to intend successfully.

Customized Brand Strategy – URL shorteners allow us to customize our shortened link and thus give a good opportunity to name-drop the brand of the user. This helps for better brand promotion, especially if you are on a free web-hosting service or have an ISP that is less than exciting.

Link Tracking – URL shortening services help us track the URL’s performance and analytics, like how many people opened our link in a preset amount of time, and where most of the links are coming from.

Search Engine Optimization – It has been noted that shortened links tend to appear way more early after, say, a specific keyword is searched on Google than lengthy URL links. This makes for more people viewing the user’s page and better search engine rankings.

Link Retargeting – Link re-targeting means adding a little pixel, or a piece of code to your site so that when people visit your site, they get to see the advertisements for your products. URL shorteners have their inbuilt link re-targeting pixels, which makes for better convenience.

How does an URL Shortener Work?

URL shortener generates a website shortcode (a small piece of code inside the website which performs a specific function dedicated to the functioning of the site), map the target URL to the shortcode, and provides a new URL.

There is no algorithmic relationship between a shortened URL and a destination URL, so you can not unmap it without going through the URL’s shortener systems.

Top 7 URL Shorteners

Now that we have discussed how an URL shortener works and what are its purposes, we would discuss briefly the seven URL shorteners widely used. While there are some overlaps, each of these seven URL shorteners caters to a specific segment of the market. We would discuss all of these in detail.

Bitly

Bitly (sometimes referred to as Bit.ly) is one of the most commonly used URL shortener platforms. It has a comprehensive dashboard that shows your performance metrics, such as click-through rates, for example. It also shows information such as from what part of the world is the ones clicking your link.

The tool also offers branded links and has integrations with various customer relationship software (like HubSpot for example) which helps you seamlessly distribute the shortened links through your social media profiles.

Bitly’s free account offers up to 1000 unbranded links and link reporting for 30 days at first. If you want to upgrade on that, then its enterprise plan lets you brand 10000+ links a month and provides all the crucial information mentioned above. While the limited account plan(which costs $29 per month), is better for small-scale industries, the subscription tier (which costs $199 per month) is best for large businesses that want to brand and track the activity of every link in their respective marketing campaigns.

In Bitly, you can create a custom URL slug (the part which comes at the end of an URL). This helps to denote a particular keyword that makes for good Search Engine Rankings.

Pros and Cons of Bitly

Pros	Cons
1) Ability to shorten links without necessarily shortening up.	1) You can get the feature of being able to customize your slag once you sign up for Bitly.
2) 1000 shortened links are included in the free version and even more if you buy the subscription plan.
3) Ability to add 50 custom slugs per month in a free subscription.
4) Good choice for getting started with link shorteners.

BLINK

BLINK is one of the most robust URL shorteners out there. It offers smart branded links that contain relevant words and not just a random mixture of words, which thus makes for better branding.

It also provides analytic reports that can track clicks as per the respective date, time, language, referrers, device, and location. The tool integrates with web analytic tools like Google Analytics and Adobe. Thus, it is more suited to businesses that already have an established link shortening strategy as they can utilize the variety of features BL.INK offers straight away.

BL.INK offers five subscription tiers, ranging from $48 per month to $599 per month. It prices its plans based on the number of links you’d like to create and track.

Pros and Cons of BLINK

Pros	Cons
1) Plethora of features that are ideal for avid link shortening users.	1) No option to shorten links without signing up.
2) Cheapest subscription that offers 10000 links.	2) It only tracks a limited number of clicks.
3) Ability to bulk edit links.

Owly

Designed by the social media management platform Hootsuite, Owly is a link shortener that’s included in every Hootsuite account created. With Ow.ly, you can distribute your links and track their performance metrics directly within the Hootsuite platform. This allows you to shorten every single link you post to all your social media profiles. Ow.ly is a great option for anyone who already uses Hootsuite in their businesses as it would be free of cost for them.

Pros and Cons of Ow.ly

Pros	Cons
1) Integrated right within the Hootsuite platform.	1)Can’t shorten links without signing up.
2) Ability to see link analytics side-by-side with other social media analytics.	2)Not a great choice to consider if you do not have a Hootsuite account.

Linktree

While Linktree is not a URL shortening service definition-wise, it is a tool where you add a list of your links to a profile. Instead of listing all of the links you want to promote on every social media platform, you add them to your Linktree profile and then add the URL designed by Linktree to your social media profiles.

This tool is ideal for platforms such as Instagram(and thus tailor-made for Instagram users) where you can add only one link to your profile. The best part is that Linktree offers a user-friendly URL structure (e.g. linktr.ee/yourname) so that it looks and gives you the feel of a shortened link. It also offers analytics that allow you to see which links get clicked a lot more in comparison to others and how much traffic your Linktree profile is getting. It also does not cost that much with $6/month for its professional mode.

Pros and Cons of Linktree

Pros	Cons
1) Allows keeping unlimited links in a single place.	1) Does not offer the same features as traditional URL shorteners.
2) Short and sweet profile link, which makes it easy to remember.	2) Free version does not allow you to see detailed analytics.

Rebrandly

Rebrandly is a link-shortening platform that can brand your links, track the respective metrics, and integrate with over 50 other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to seamlessly distribute your links.

Rebrandly has three plans for individuals, who want to shorten their links and two plans for teams, Rebrandly’s URL shortening platform offers link shortening solutions for small businesses that have the potential to grow due to its low starting prices for the features it gives. For instance, its free plan offers 5000 tracked clicks, 500 branded links, and 5 custom domain names, while its premium plan offers 150000 branded links, 20 custom domain names, and 1500000 tracked clicks for $499 per month.

Pros and Cons of Rebrandly

Pros	Cons
1) Ability to shorten links without signing up.	1) No unlimited tracked clicks available.
2)Can include custom slugs without signing up.

TinyURL

TinyURL is a free link shortening platform that’s perfect for hobbyists who want to shorten links every once in a while, unlike say full-fledged businesses.

Using TinyURL is way simpler to use, unlike other URL shortening platforms. You can quickly fill in the link you want a short URL for and add a custom alias. If no one uses the alias you have t, the link you will get will look something like “tinyurl.com/alias.” You can then rename, edit, or do any sort of changes you want to do to the URL.

TinyURL’s free platform also allows you to track key metrics and analytics for your links after you sign up for a free account. The pro edition cost $9.99 per month and the bulk edition which allows for more link checks costs $99.99 per month.

Pros and Cons of TinyURL

Pros	Cons
1) Easy-to-use link shortener with its plug-in-and-go approach.	1) Can only keep one TinyURL at a time.
2)Also includes tracking clicks and other metrics.
3) Can establish a custom slug without signing up.

TinyCC

Tiny.CC allows you to create temporary short links by simply pasting your long link into a text box and pressing the shorten button shown on the screen. Like TinyURL, you have the feature of being able to customize your slug.

If you are a paid user, you can have non-expiring links and edit URLs later. If you’re a free user, the link will eventually expire and eventually, can’t be edited. Thus the free version is more suited for quick and easy one-time link shortening, A plethora of features(especially on the analytics end) are there, ranging from $5/month to $44/month.

Pros and Cons of Tiny.CC

Pros	Cons
1)Can customize the slug without signing up.	1)Free version has way more limitations in comparison to other URL shorteners.
2)Easy-to-use.
3)Paid options start at a cheaper price point, in comparison to other options.

Conclusion

Thus, in this article, we have written about the topmost URL shorteners used by professionals worldwide. URL shortening tools play a crucial role in the sharing of information, be it about the local pickle-making company, or the Instagram profile of a social media influencer as they give us various analytical tools to help us understand the user and remove the feeling of doubt he has if he sees a long URL.

FAQs

What is the use of URL Shortener tools?

URL Shortener tools make the long and ugly URL into something short and precise, which makes it more convenient for sharing and better search engine rankings.

Which are the top URL Shortener tools?

The top 7 URL Shorteners tools are:

Bitly
BLINK
Owly
Linktree
Rebrandly
TinyURL
TinyCC

Which is the best URL shortener?

Best URL Shorteners are:

Bitly
TinyURL

May 21, 2022