URL shorteners can be the perfect solution to make your links more attractive and optimized. See the selection we have made with the 10 best on the market and choose your preferred one!
If you have a social media strategy, you already know that the original links of your site or blog cannot always be used in their entirety. As much as your URLs are well structured and semantic, there is a space factor. Also, there are other cases where using a URL shortener also makes a lot of sense. In those hours; Which tool do you use? If you still do not know or have tried several and do not know which one to decide on, you will like this article. We are going to do an analysis of the pros and cons of the best-known options on the market. This will help you decide quickly and accurately.
Are you ready? So let's start!
Why know the different existing shorteners?
Basically, because the end is near!
What kind of apocalyptic promise is that? Well, if you think you don't have to worry about any tool because you already use the famous Google URL Shortener, you should prepare yourself. The company has already announced that it will discontinue the tool in 2019. The good news is that with the alternatives shown here you will not even notice. And if you never used the Google resource, you will not feel or want to know it.
Meet the 10 best URL shorteners
We separate 10 of the best URL shorteners on the market and we're going to show you an analysis of the pros and cons of each option.
At the end of this article, you can choose the shortener that best suits your needs.
And if you feel that several of them solve your problem in a satisfactory way, do a quick test and see which one has the best user experience, both for you and for the other people who work alongside you.
Without further ado, here is the analysis:
1. Bitly
Bitly has been one of the world's best-known URL shorteners a few years ago. This must have something to do with the very generous free plan that the service offers. The features of this plan easily meet the needs of a small business, so it's worth getting to know it better. Free account resources include shortened URL customization; click tracking; disclosure of the main people they share; geographic data of the people who click on the links. All of this can be done for up to 500 custom links or 10,000 non-custom links. Not bad, don't you think? If you don't want any of these resources, you can also use the direct shortener on Bitly's home page, without registering. But, in that case, perhaps it makes more sense for you to know our next option.
2. TinyURL
This tool is for those who do not want any resource other than URL shortening. To get an idea, TinyURL is so simple that it does not require registration, nor does it have a paid plan with more features. This is also its weak point. If you are looking for something more complete, it is surely not the best option. On the other hand, if you want the basics of the basics without a headache, you just have to enter the site and paste the link you want to shorten. It even allows you to customize the part of the links quickly and easily.If you have any doubts about the quality of the redirect, it will help to know that more than a billion URLs are shortened every month in TinyURL.
3. URL Shortener by Zapier
Zapier is an incredible automation tool, which you can use in many ways in your marketing strategy.
And those responsible for the system have created a specific tool to automatically shorten links. How? Imagine that after posting a photo to Facebook you want to create a link to that photo and save it to a Google spreadsheet. With this tool, it is possible to do this process automatically and the generated link will already be short.Amazing, right? Despite that, this feature is a little more specific than those offered by others and not everyone needs that kind of resource.
The feature is part of Zapier's free plan, so you don't pay anything for it.
4. Is.Gd
Of all the options seen so far, the Is.Gd is the closest to Bitly and is even better in some respects. The site also allows you to shorten any URL in a practical way without registration. But unlike Bitly, it allows you to customize the address and track clicks without having to sign up. In addition, you can generate a QR code from the URL, if you wish. This is very useful for putting it on printed materials like banners and business cards. On the other hand, the Is.Gd does not have an interface as graphic and nice as Bitly's. A simple registration in the other tool can compensate considering its better organization and ease of use.
5. Ow.ly
Owly is Hootsuite's URL shortener, one of the world's leading social media tools. This means that if you want to use Owly, you need a Hootsuite account.This tool works similar to what we have already seen: it offers personalization and traffic reports that can be essential for analyzing your online strategy.In addition, like Zapier, it allows you to shorten a link automatically as well as schedule a post to publish on social networks.However, if you do not use Hootsuite to schedule your posts on social networks, it is better to choose another option. At the end of the day, the Owly is not so superior to any of the shorteners we have seen.
6. Picker “Shortener”
Encurtador is a Brazilian platform, a simple and direct alternative. Just like Google Shortener, just enter the site and paste the URL you want to shorten.As standard, you can also follow the number of clicks the link receives, but only that. The strong point of this tool is that, in addition to being simple, it is available in Portuguese.Despite that, the term "shortener" here may seem like a joke, since depending on the size of your link, it may be the same size after shortened.The reason ?: The format of the link in this tool is: "encurtador.com.br/xxx", that is, nothing really short.
7. Yourls
The Yourls shortens even its own name, as it is an acronym for "Your URL shortener". And it is different from everything we have seen so far, since it is not a website you enter to do the procedure.
Before that, it is an open-source system that is installed and runs on the server itself. It is as if you were creating your own shortener, using a ready model.It gives you the option to choose whether your links will be public or private and use a bookmarklet to shorten any direct URL in the browser, with a single click. Finally, it has some tracking features too.In general, if you want more customization power and control of all the links you shorten, this may be your choice.Otherwise, you don't have to give yourself the trouble of installing a solution on your own server when there are so many other quality and ready-to-use solutions.
8. Rebrandly
Rebrandly goes a little further than a common URL shortener does. The focus of this tool is to customize your URLs so that they are more effective in attracting clicks. Therefore, despite offering click reports and other monitoring activities, the main resource is the possibility of widely customizing your URLs, and not only superficially, as in most cases.Rebrandly's free plan allows up to 1000 customizations in one domain. You can also create QR codes, which is always good. There is a paid plan, but for starters, the free plan is more than enough.
9. T2Mio
T2Mio is another complete URL shortening service. This means that it has all the features you can want. When you use the T2Mio you will see two interfaces.The first contains geographic data on who clicked on your content. The second exposes information about the devices they used, browsers, etc.
This gives a very complete view of who clicks on your links, which can serve you and generate useful insights for your strategy.In addition to the basics, there are two resources that stand out even more. The first is the automatic creation of a QR code as soon as the links are shortened.The second is that you can target your links to the areas where you want to have the greatest impact.The tool has a free plan with no limit on shortened or crawled URLs. The paid plan, which costs $ 7.00 and is geared toward small businesses, also has several exciting features.
10. Bl.ink
Bl.ink is a payment tool for small businesses and offers everything you need to shorten your URLs and accompany their performance.You can go deep enough to perform the following actions:extract information from the statistics page;accompany the most popular content;See at what times of the day people click your links the most;identify where users come from;add specific tags
and much more.However, the lack of a no-cost plan, when there are other free, equal-quality options, can be a problem.As we stated, all the shorteners on this list are of quality. What you need to decide is, only which one is best applied for your use.And don't get too attached if you notice that several of them satisfy your need. Just choose one and stick with it. This will help you continue to focus on the main thing, which is to generate value for your customers.Did you like to know a little more about the universe of URLs and optimizations? Then be sure to also see this content about the elements of a website and its peculiarities!
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