When Google URL Shortener stopped their service, it left a lot of dearth in this area as the next best was not even close to what google was offering. Then came plethora of tools to fill the gap. Many of them were designed in a hurry and many did make it to the top and capture the market.
Today we are going to talk about some interesting tools in the market and discuss about their pros and cons.
- Bitly - For big businesses
- TinyURL - Best anonymous URL shortener
- Kutti.co - For freelancers & small business owners
How do we decide on a URL shortener?
URL shorteners make sharing long links more manageable. The top use case for shortened URLs is to create variations of a single link, so you can easily track the source of your incoming traffic. For example, you might create one short URL to use on Facebook, a different one for Facebook , and a third to be used in an email newsletter etc.
Many URL shortening services offer comprehensive tracking tools that allow you to see who is clicking your link, where in the world they are located, and what language they speak. You can use this information to discern click-through rates, which browser your audience prefers, and what devices your content is accessed from. Some services even allow you to bring your own custom domain name for creating your own branded service.
There are many free URL shorteners. And most URL shorteners have a free tier of service, but you often have to pay for added features, such as metrics and customization. The URL shortening services that made the cut for this list are reliable and easy to use, and each one stands out as the "best" for a special reason.
Bitly - For big businesses
Bitly is a full-service, business-grade URL shortener and is considered the world's leading link management platform, offering tools, data and analytics that allow businesses to own their customer experiences. Bitly turns links --already simple and ubiquitous-- into powerful and versatile assets. Bitlinks strengthen brand integrity, cut across channels, devices and walled gardens, and collect actionable insights along the way. Bitly's Enterprise version powers linking experiences for the world's largest brands. With features like branded short links, mobile deep linking, expanded analytics and user management, Bitly Enterprise is a one-stop tool that creates, organizes, optimizes, and displays insights from all the links dispersed across an entire business, internally and externally.
With Bitly's free limited account, you can customize the back-half your shortened URLs, track click rates, and get information about your top referrers, but only for 1,000 non-branded links per month. It's a generous free plan and could very well be adequate for some small businesses. The 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, there’s an additional custom pricing tier for enterprise users.
Bitly is the best URL shortener for large businesses looking to brand and track links, and it's a great choice for small businesses that want to generate short URLs and follow their stats for a modest number of campaigns.
Bitly price: Free plan available; paid plan from $35/month & $29/month if you pay annually. For more information you can hop on to their pricing page.
TinyURL: Best Anonymous URL shortener
TinyURL is a good link shortening service. You can use it directly without any sign ups or even use their plugin to directly shorten any website you are on. The best feature of TinyURL is their custom url. A great way to present short links with an easy to remember url and also clean looking.
Am extreamely useful Free URL shortner toolwhen you’re in a hurry and need to create a short link that will never expire. TinyURL can suggest a shorter URL for you, or you can customize the result. TinyURL also offers a bookmarklet, a small piece of javascript you add to your web browser’s toolbar that generates a short link from a webpage with the click of a button. It then leads you back to TinyURL where you retrieve the link. Although TinyURL is entirely free and anonymous to use, it doesn't contain any reports or information about your links and their popularity.
TinyURL price: Free
Kutti: For freelancers & small business owners
Kutti is an extreamely robust link shortening service designed for freelancers and small businesses. With Kutti's free account, you can customize the back-half your shortened URLs, track click rates, and get information about your top referrers, location etc. But if you look at their pricing model is it pretty straight forward, in free tier they offer 50 links & for one time fee of $20, you get a permanent license where you get 10000 links / month. This is pretty generous considering the fact that one might not hit that cap even for a small business. They offer all kinds of
They also let you generate your own slug for a nominal fee of $1 / slug
Kutti price: Free, $20 One-time fee
