10 Top URL Shorteners9 min read

• What is a URL Shortener?
• How Do URL Shorteners Work?
  • 1. Bitly Url Shortener
  • 2. Rebrandly
  • 3. ClickMeter
  • 4. Clkim
  • 5. Tiny URL
  • 6. Polr
  • 7. BL.INK
  • 8. T2M
  • 9. Yourls
  • 10. Sniply
• Summing up

Not a big fan of using a mix of letters, question marks, and forward slashes in your social media postings to create long links? So here’s the answer: URL Shorteners! You may quickly condense any lengthy link to a few characters with URL shorteners. You can use URL shorteners to your heart’s content whether you’re a social media manager, blogger, small business owner, TikTok influencer, or just a regular person.

The issue is that there are several URL shorteners available online, making it challenging to choose the best one for your purposes. For this reason, we did the research and selected the top 10 URL shorteners for your requirements.

What is a URL Shortener?

A tool that creates a shortened version of any URL is known as a URL shortener or link shortener. The short link goes to the same webpage as the lengthy one, but it is much more aesthetically pleasing. Some link shorteners let you add a word or phrase of your choice to the short URL.

There are some paid-for and some free URL shortening services available. While both alternatives produce manageable, brief URLs, the commercial link shorteners typically have more functionality.

How Do URL Shorteners Work?

For your long link, URL shorteners provide a redirect.

Your browser sends an HTTP request to the web server to access a specific webpage when you type a URL into the address bar. The server is pointed to the same webpage by both the long and short URLs because they are merely different starting points.

There are many various kinds of HTTP response codes for redirects; nevertheless, you should only consider those that have a 301 permanent redirect. Your SERP ranking could be harmed by other response codes.

1. Bitly Url Shortener

One of the most widely used URL shorteners is Bitly.

Anyone can use the link shortener anonymously to make as many short links as they want, as was demonstrated above.

You can build and track up to 500 branded URLs and 10,000 non-branded links with the free account. This includes the capability to track your top referrers, the number of clicks your shortened URLs receive, and the location of the click.

There are premium and business accounts available, and prices start at about $500 per month. These enable you to obtain more in-depth analytical reports and generate as many quick links as you like.

In addition, Bitly has numerous more service integrations, like TweetDeck and Zapier.

2. Rebrandly

Best suited for: Brand-conscious small enterprises. Short URLs can be customized and branded using Rebrandly, a URL shortener.

They assist you in quickly setting up a new domain to utilize for short URLs. They may also assist you in setting up your present website’s domain name to utilize with your short URLs.

You may create and track up to 1,000 branded links with up to five custom domains utilizing their free plan. Premium accounts start at $29 per month and include the ability to add team members and other goodies.

Countless other applications, including Buffer, Zapier, and Tweetbot, are also integrated with Rebrandly.

3. ClickMeter

Best suited for: Large businesses.

Rebrandly’s similar firm, ClickMeter, targets enterprise-level businesses in need of more advanced technical features than those offered by Rebrandly. Conversion tracking, a feature that few URL shorteners offer, is one of ClickMeter’s main selling factors. Plans for ClickMeter start at $29 per month.

4. Clkim

Best suited for: Affiliate marketers, influencers and bloggers.

Rebrandly and Clkim both offer many of the same features. The primary distinction is Clkim’s emphasis on interstitial adverts and monetization. These adverts take up the entire screen and cover the app or website interface. Because of this, Clkim is a great option for bloggers and affiliate marketers seeking for an additional cash stream. Naturally, you can continue to track and brand your short URLs using Clkim. Clkim offers a 14-day free trial, with monthly plans beginning at $10.

Read more: Affiliate Marketing with Facebook Ads

5. Tiny URL

Best suited for: Casual consumers that require a quick and user-friendly URL shortener.

Back in the day before Facebook and smartphones, TinyURL was among the most popular link shorteners on the market. As you can see from the image above, there are a lot of things that other link shorteners have that TinyURL doesn’t have.

Having said that, TinyURL has advantages. First off, using it couldn’t be easier. There is no dashboard or tracking feature, and you do not need to register an account. Furthermore, TinyURL allows you to personalize the final section of your URL, unlike many quick and straightforward URL shorteners. Additionally, using this link shortener is totally free!

6. Polr

Best suited for: Creating and hosting your own URL shortener is the best option.

Anyone with the technical know-how can build and run their own link shortener using the open-source software Polr. Polr is a PHP and Lumen application that uses MySQL and may be used as is or customized to meet your specific needs. (If that sentence seems like Greek to you, you should probably avoid using Polr.) Polr provides a demo website if you only want to check out the UI.

7. BL.INK

A popular URL shortener that tracks link traffic has a user-friendly dashboard is BL.INK.

You can use BL.INK’s browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox to shorten links directly from the dashboard. Additionally, you may experiment with Smart Link to develop highly targeted URLs that will drive traffic to your website and entice users to convert. As you use BL.INK to shorten links, the dashboard records information on the overall amount of clicks as well as traffic based on referrer, language, device kind, location, and other factors.

8. T2M

T2M is an additional full-service link shortener that has a robust dashboard with a ton of statistics and link activity for you to review. Additionally, you can bulk build links to save time and effort and distribute connections to social media with just one click. Custom branded links that never expire are also available.

The basic plan has monthly link creation and tracking limits and requires a $5 initiation cost before being free forever. For access to advanced features, premium plans start at $9.99 per month.

9. Yourls

Similar to Polr, Yourls is an open-source, independently hosted link shortener that goes by the name “your own URL shortener.” However, unlike the other URL shorteners on this list, you must install and run this application on your own server in order to utilize it.

Among Yourls’ best qualities are:

• Make both personal and public links
• Information about clicks, referrers, and geographic location
• Sequential or unique links
• Examples of files for constructing a custom public interface
• Plugins provide access to additional functionality
• Bookmarklets for quick and simple sharing

And, it’s completely free!

10. Sniply

You may shorten and personalize URLs using Sniply, as well as give them a call to action (CTA). If you’re sharing links to other people’s stuff, this is extremely useful.

For instance, after pointing site visitors to an intriguing article authored by someone else, you can add your own call to action (CTA) to have them return to your website once they’ve read the post.

Sniply provides a user-friendly analytics dashboard where you can monitor the effectiveness of your links and administer your campaign. Even A/B tests can be used to improve your linking approach.

Summing up

There is a URL shortener service out there for you no matter what objective you’re trying to accomplish—brand awareness, providing third-party resources, or implementing marketing methods. You can try as many as you need to find the ideal option for your needs; you don’t have to choose just one.

The most crucial thing is to make your connections succinct and to the point.

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