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The Google URL Shortener was shut down three years ago (RIP), and since then, the internet—me included—has been trying to find the next best option for how to shorten a link.
With over a decade of experience reviewing tech and web apps, I can tell you there's almost never one perfect solution. (The only exception to this is takeout: the best answer is always pizza.) The best URL shortening service depends on what you need and want it to do. There are simple, fast, and free URL shortening apps; marketing- and analytics-focused ones that break down details about who's clicking your links; and even options that allow you to add calls-to-action to your links, or redirect people based on where they are in the world.
Why Did Google Discontinue Its Url Shortener?
To help you find the right URL shorteners for most people, I tested more than 35 different options. These are the best—and what makes them great.
All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the blog.
At its most basic, a URL shortener takes some long, unwieldy link and turns it into a shorter link, one that's easy to share. For example, if you're making an ad for a roommate, you can take something like
Easy Ways To Shorten A Url & Create Free Custom Links
This shortened link means whoever sees your ad has an easy-to-type URL to visit, rather than having to type some long unintelligible string of text where they're almost guaranteed to make a mistake. And it's not just for ads for roommates; URL shorteners allow you to provide a typable link on a business card, print ad, podcast interview, or any other situation where someone can't just click on a nice hyperlink.
While URL shorteners used to be useful for shortening longer links to fit character limits on social media and messaging apps, a lot of platforms take care of that for you. Twitter, for example, automatically shortens any shared links with its t.co shortening service, while iMessage obscures any links behind a preview card. If you're just sending things to your friends, you only really need to worry about URL shortening if you're exclusively using SMS.
I've been testing apps for this list for the past two years. To update the list this year, I spent time with dozens of apps, shortening URLs and generally exploring how well they worked. URL shortening isn't a complex task, at least from a user interface perspective, so this was mostly to get a feel for how nice they were to use and what extra features and analytics they offered. Apps with more advanced features, like the ability to add CTAs to your links, took more testing than simple free options.
Fastest Ways To Create A Short Link
In general, I relied on my experience using and testing software over the past decade to make any close judgment calls, as well as considering my notes on all the different apps from last year. If an app seemed under continuous development and was improving, it was much more likely to be considered favorably than one that looked to be stagnating.
Interested in doing even more with your URL shorteners? Check out our tips for how to use automation to track them, send them, and stay on top of performance.
Bitly is a full-service, business-grade URL shortener. If you only need to shorten links occasionally, you can use it without creating an account. Just paste your long URL into the box on the homepage, click Shorten, and be on your way.
How To Shorten A Linkedin Url
But Bitly really stands out for its business offering. Part of the appeal is that Bitly is so simple and easy to use. It has a comprehensive dashboard where you can track over 20 real-time data points, including the location of your visitors, organic shares, and more. Tools for tracking campaigns are easy to use as well.
While Bitly's free limited account used to offer quite a lot, it's gradually become less easy to recommend, especially for small businesses. My free account from a few years ago gets analytics for 10, 000 links/month, while new plans opened today only get 100—although you can still customize the back-half of 50 shortened URLs. It's a good way to check out Bitly's UI, but you should really be considering a paid plan.
The $35/month Basic plan provides a free custom domain, allows you to create 1, 500 links per month, and shows more data about who clicks your links. If you need more from Bitly, Premium, at $200/month, is a big step up but offers 3, 000 links per month, more granular analytics for things including city-level data and device-types, and other features, like unbranded QR codes.
Best Practices For Using Url Shorteners
Bitly is a great URL shortener for large online businesses that share a lot of links and want to brand and track them. It's also a good choice for small businesses that want to generate short URLs and follow their stats for a modest number of campaigns.
Bitly even integrates with , so you can do things like automatically generate short links from an RSS feed or Instagram post.
If you're looking for a Bitly alternative, both Cuttly and Linkly were very close to taking the top spot—they're worth checking out if you don't like Bitly. Their free plans are better, and both have improved hugely over the past two years.
The Complete Url Shortener Guide
While Rebrandly is a great URL shortener like all the other apps on our list, its appeal is unique. Rebrandly believes that brands, whether it's a product or a person, get value out of customizing links to content that references them from all over the web. Their free plan offers five custom domains, tied for the most with Short.io out of all the apps we considered, so you can customize the whole short URL, and not just the last half of it.
. This squirrel fanatic can then post these links on their social media, business cards, ads, and anywhere else they feel the need.
Rebrandly includes tools for tracking the popularity of each link, data about who's clicking on the links, and automatic QR code generation, too. On the free plan, you're limited to 500 total branded links and 5, 000 clicks tracked per month—but that's plenty if you're just starting out.
Shorten The Url Of Your Survey
Rebrandly also integrates with , so you can do things like automatically generate a short, branded link for new WordPress posts or Dropbox files.
Rebrandly price: Free plan with up to 500 links and 5, 000 clicks tracked per month; Starter plan from $24/month (billed annually) for 5, 000 links and 25, 000 clicks tracked per month.
Free link shortener TinyURL has been in the game since 2002, and it's stuck around so long because it shortens URLs, and it does it with minimum fuss. It's a useful tool for when you're in a hurry and need to create a short link that will never expire. Just paste your long link into the box, customize the second half of the URL, if you want, and click Make TinyURL! You can then use that link indefinitely without fear that it will stop working.
How To Shorten A Url To Make It Easily Shareable On Social Media And Other Websites
Although you don't need an account to use TinyURL, if you sign up for one, you can see a history of all your shortened links. You can also subscribe to a paid plan if you want features like tracking and analytics, branded domains, and the ability to edit each TinyURL after you create it.
BL.INK is a full-featured URL shortener service that can be used to not only turn long URLs into short ones but also to track the traffic coming from your links. Its dashboard shows trending links and general statistics, while an analytics page lets you dive into traffic by device, location, and referrers. You can also drill down into clicks by the time of day. Tags, which you can add to your shortened links,
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