Today we brought to you a list of best URL shorteners in the market. URL Shorteners are well known tools and very useful to the ones who run a website, write blogs or trying to promote their brands online.
Most of the times the specific links to your products, blogs or posts you are sharing to people turns out to be unconventionally long and ugly overall. The main drawback of using those links is that it eats out space in messages or posts in the platforms they are being shared to.
Online platforms like Twitter have limited character entry per post and added with the description or other messages the links look more scrambled up and tough to read. Secondly it kills the mood of the viewers to proceed or read any further and click the links.
Longer URLs are nothing but an eyesore not to mention a hassle, especially for social media marketing.
Link shortener or URL shortener is a lifesaver in this case. They can provide mini URL for a lengthy link so that it is easy to read/remember and looks lot shorter.
What are URL shorteners?
URL shorteners are online tools that take a long URL and give you a new, very short URL that is easier to share. It’s really useful with email, text messages, and any other situation where a long URL is unmanageable.
Benefits of using URL shorteners?
With advanced technology and URL shortener tools, the concept of short, customized URLs came into the digital world which is now considered to be most crucial in pulling traffic to your online service as well as in social media marketing.
Also using a URL shortener you can achieve much more benefits than you can think.
- Link Shortening: It’s much simpler to share a short and memorable URL than a lengthy one, especially when those lengthy URLs contain random numbers in them.
- Link Tracking: Link tracking has got to be the number one reason to shorten a link. Digital marketers and social media managers, need to know how many clicks a link is getting.
- Link Masking: Provides security to your original link from being spam listed by Gmail or Facebook. This helps you a lot when it’s a matter of digital marketing.
Best URL Shorteners of 2021
There are many URL shortening tools out there that offers variety of features and services and provide both free and premium subscriptions.
Though free services come with basic and limited features, the premium options have more added functionalities like analyzing clicks, adding UTM tags, retargeting, creating custom brand links etc.
In this post we brought to you 5 best URL shorteners that will definitely meet your needs.
BL.INK
First on the list of our URL shorteners is BL.INK. BL.INK is a featured packed link shortener tool that comes with a beginner-friendly dashboard for tracking your link’s activity. This service can be used to not only turn long URLs into short links but also to track the traffic coming from your created links.
It is perfect for coordinating campaigns and tracking. User permissions and security are very flexible and make it and easy task for business managers to add or remove members from their team.
BL.INK price:
- Free Plan: Free plan comes with 1000 active links and limited analytics.
- Paid Plan: Expert+ plan starts from $48/month with 10,000 active links, 7,500 tracked clicks per link and 3 users.
Rebrandly
On the second position in out URL shorteners list we have Rebrandly. Even though Rebrandly is a really good link shortener tool, it has a very unique appeal. Beside making mini URL, it focuses on custom branding that makes it a strong tool for the ones looking to customize references to them or any products all over the internet.
Rebrandly also offers tools for tracking down the popularity of every link you created, data about who is clicking on them and automatic QR code generation. On the other hand Rebrandly integrates with Zapier, so you can automatically generate a short, branded link for new WordPress posts or Dropbox files.
Rebrandly Price:
- Free Plan: Free plan offers 500 links and 5,000 clicks per month.
- Paid Plan: Starter plan from $29/month for 5,000 links and 25,000 clicks tracked per month.
TinyURL
Another interesting entry in our list of URL shorteners is TinyURL. This free URL shortener TinyURL has been available since 2002 and for solid reasons. It is a very useful tool and time-saver when you are in a hurry and want to make a short URL that will never expire. It is very easy to shrink link with this tool.
Even though you do not need to create an account to use TinyURL. Simply just go to the website and paste your long link into the box shown on top, customize the second half of the URL if you want and then click “Make TinyURL!”, that’s it, now you can use that link without fear of loosing it or the link ever getting expired.
If you want to sign up for an account, you can see a history of all your shortened links that you created. There are also monthly and yearly paid plans which offer features like tracking and analytics, branded domains, and the ability to edit where each TinyURL goes.
TinyURL Price: Free to use; Pro plan starts from $9.99/month for tracked links and branded domains.
Short.io
Most URL shorteners will show you where people are clicking on your links and what kind of devices they are using, but Short.io enables you to target visitors in different location using different devices. This enables you to make sure that iOS and Android users see the correct app download link for their devices, or that your Canadian and American customers see the right type of dollars.
Short.io Price:
- Free Plan: Free plan comes with 1000 branded links and 50,000 tracked clicks and device targeting.
- Paid Plan: A Personal Plan starts from $20/month for 10,000 branded links and geo-targeting.
Shorte.ST
Another great option in our url shorteners list is Shorte.ST. This makes it an easy task for monetizing links and sending the appropriate URLs to the right crowd.
When users click on your short url, they see an ad on a separate page before reaching the original destination page. You then receive a commission for every time the ad gets a view.
Shorte.ST enables you to send a different customized link to visitors in different locations or using different devices.
Shorte.ST Price:
- Free Plan: 1000 branded links and 50,000 tracked clicks.
- Paid Plan: A Personal plan starts from 20$/month offering unlimited branded links, tracked clicks and provides more features such as country targeting.
Conclusion
All of the tools mentioned in this article have a variety of advantages and features that make URL shorteners powerful.
Figure out your priorities and what you’ll be using the URL shortener for and then as with all software, use the free tiers and trials before committing.
