Is it for social media? Or online advertising? Affiliate marketing? Personal branding? The list goes on…įor most people, a free URL shortener is all they need.
Link branding – How easy do they make it customize to your domain and make branded short links? And are they “drinking their own Kool-aid” when it comes to sharing on social media? How to choose the right URL shortener for youįor you personally, you need to make a decision based on how many links and how much traffic you plan to generate using the URL shortener, the size of your budget, the size of your team, and the purpose you are using the URL shortener for. Quality of education – How are they doing when it comes to teaching their audience about their tools? User base – How many customers do they have and how stable are they as a company. Price – what you might have to pay, what paid offerings do they have, and how do they compare with other URL shorteners.
We rated each URL shortener based on what we thought would be the most important consideration factors for users:įeatures – understanding what they offer you, especially what they offer for free. Side note: Most people don’t know this, but most URL shorteners are actually focused on serving heavy traffic sites, and not everyday internet users. Use the technology that companies like Rebrandly are offering you for free, rather than relying on your own. You need your links to be up 100% of the time and redirected as fast as possible. This is one of the main reasons I recommend not using your own domain and hosting for your URL shortener.
There are dozens of plugins, websites, and open-source code bases that allow you to shorten a link or use a 301 redirect to move users and traffic from one web address to another. URL Shortening is simultaneously very simple and very complex. Your business’ needs are undoubtedly unique, so you need to understand the features and figure out a way to pick the best fit from the best link shorteners out there.Īs a custom URL shortener ourselves, specializing in link branding and link tracking, we’ve studied this industry in quite a lot of detail, and there are a lot of truly respectable companies doing great work out there. If you’re looking for some shortcuts, jump straight to: 1. There is no shortage of companies offering URL shorteners these days, but they all have a slightly different angle, plan, or feature set. The best URL Shortener out there have a range of different features – the question is, which one is right for you? What features do you need and which really don’t matter? Email The features and pricing of some of the best URL shorteners