10 Best URL Shorteners in 2024

The URLs of websites need to be plain and quite easy to remember. Just think about what would have happened if the URLs of Facebook and Instagram were to be lengthy. We surely don't want that to happen because it is quite difficult to recall lengthy URLs. Even Google recommends websites to have short URLs for better visibility on its search engine.

Since Google shut down its URL shortening service, many people are searching the internet for power and reliable URL shorteners. In this article, we will be talking about the top 10 best URL shorteners that allow you to shorten URLs effectively and make them more manageable and easy to remember.

What are URL Shorteners?

Keeping the length of an URL short is always a better approach for naming the subdomains of your website. A URL shortener, as a whole, is just a tool that takes in your URL and shortens it down. It doesn't do anything to the page or the resource that is linked to the URL. Also, there is no restriction on the type of URLs that can be shortened, and you can reduce the size of both HTTP and HTTPS links from the same tool without facing any problems.

List of 10 Top URL Shorteners For 2023

We have handpicked some of the best URL shorteners that you can find on the internet. Additionally, all of the URL shortening tools that we have picked offer their services for free, and some of them don't even require you to sign up. So, let’s take a look at these URL shorteners:

1. Bitly

Starting with our list, the first contender is none other than Bitly. If you have ever shortened URLs, you may have done it using Bitly as it is the best URL shortener that is well known for its efficiency and offers a great user experience. Bitly is a full-fledged business-grade URL shortener used by several companies to keep their links short when sharing them with users. If your needs are modest, Bitly allows you to shorten your URLs for free. What makes Bitly stand out from the rest is its business-specific offerings. Also, Bitly is simple to use and doesn’t require users to have any technical knowledge. If you have opted for a premium version of Bitly, you will get access to its dashboard that covers 20 real-time data points for the URL that you need to shorten. In addition to this, the data points give information about the location of the visitors, organic shares, etc. that could help companies track their campaigns. When you are using the free version of Bitly, you get the freedom to customize the back-half of the URL, track down the click rates, and get insights about your top referrals. But all this information is available for the first 1,000 non-branded links per month. It's a generous free plan, and it could work well for small and midsize businesses. Moreover, if you go for a basic paid plan, you get a custom domain, which allows you to create 1,500 links per month and provides you with much in-depth information about the clicks and the users of your links. Bitly also provides custom pricing based on the needs of clients. Overall, it's a great URL shortener for businesses of all sizes. The paid plans of Bitly start from $35 a month.

2. Capsulink

Capsulink stands out with its Smart URLs, optimizing your link management effortlessly. Designed to meet the customization needs of marketers and businesses, Smart URLs enable the creation of branded links with multiple destinations and customizable traffic redirection rules based on location, time, device, and language. Integration with Zapier automates tasks and streamlines workflows. The intuitive platform facilitates seamless collaboration with team members and clients, allowing easy editing of destination URLs, QR code generation, and Facebook cache clearing. Comprehensive analytics provide valuable insights, while unlimited branded links and cli.fm short domains maintain brand consistency across all channels. Capsulink's URL Shortening API supports programmatic generation of branded short and Smart links, offering flexible, scalable, and evergreen URLs ideal for app development and system integration.

3. TinyURL

TinyURL is at the 2nd spot on this list and it one of the best tools to shorten URLs. It gives the freedom to shorten the last few characters of the generated link, thus, allowing users to be consistent with their branding. It has a browser extension that can be integrated with many popular internet browsers, including Google Chrome. As a result, you can quickly open the tool and shorten URLs and attach them with messages or emails without the need to visit the official website of TinyURL. It's an entirely free tool that can make the URL shortening process much more manageable. In just three easy steps, you will be able to chop off your URL’s length and make it shorter than the original. Most importantly, the links that TinyURL shortens, will not expire. So, whenever you are sending mails containing shortened URLs, you don't need to worry about broken links.

4. Polr

At number three, we have Polr. which is an open-source URL shortener. You can get this tool by visiting the official website of Polr or from its repository on GitHub. The tool can be used as it is, and if you want to make some changes to it, you are free to download and tweak its source code. The main database of the project is MySQL and it is written in PHP coding language. Polr provides a much slicker user interface for users to work with and has a minimalist design of its dashboard. The self-hosting feature gives users the ability to know the finest details about their links and brand them as they like. Lastly, if you are looking to see how Polr works, then you can visit its demo page.

5. T2M

The next URL shortener on our list is T2M, which makes it quite easy for you to get done with your URL shortening task. To help users track down their URLs, the tool offers two different dashboards. One provides the location analysis, while the other one shows the information about devices and platforms. Also, you can QR code is available with each URL on the URL box. The T2M provides this new functionality of shortened URL with QR code. Users have the power to decide where and how they want their shortened URLs to be accessed. By opting for the paid plans of T2M, you can create a more advanced version of a shortened URL, such as you can add an extra layer of protection by adding a password to the URL. Also, the premium tools which are being provided by the website come with a vanity of URL options. It's a great tool for businesses that want to shorten URLs with just a few clicks.

6. Cuttly

If you are looking for a little bit of extra layer of personalization of notification where you can customize the alerts received for your URL clicks, then Cuttly is the way to go. It markets its Android and iOS apps front and center though you can easily access all its functionality using the Chrome extension. One of the unique points of Cuttly as a URL shortener is that it sends push notifications to the user's mobile device whenever someone clicks on their links. On the other hand, users can also set the frequency of notifications to hourly. Just like other URL shortener tools, you can track the location and demographics of the audience who clicks on your link. Cuttly offers a free plan that you can use to try out their services and see if they fit your needs. With the free plan, you are going to get unlimited links and clicks. In case you like the tool and want to access their premium features, then you can opt for one of Cuttly’s paid plans that starts from as low as $10 per month. The paid plans allow users to have their own custom domain in the URL links.

7. Free-URL-Shortener

Free-URL-Shortener is basically a smart redirect URL system that is based on the working of contextual triggers. The URLs can understand whether the user is trying to open the link from a mobile phone or a computer. Depending on the device the user is operating, the URL will redirect them to that particular page. The tool also provides the A/B testing feature to help users find out which landing page will be best for higher conversions. In addition to this, Free-URL-Shortener also offers a target-based approach for the custom list of people who clicked on your link. The tool can give you a number of options for both the page loading speed and details of clicks on your url that you need. Free-URL-Shortener can assist you in finding your way through low conversion rates to higher conversion rates.

8. Rebrandly

A long URL might be good for your business in a lot of ways as it shows your brand name, but in terms of remembering the whole URL it won't be that much of a help. With the help of Rebrandly, you can still get business from your brand name while the link being short, crisp, easy to remember and it will still have your brand’s name on it. Likewise, with this tool, you are getting a number of tracking features such as optimization of your links and scaling tools as well as the company is offering them in a variety of packages. The paid options for users start at just $29 a month and depending on the tools users need, and they can have a custom billing option too.

9. ClickMeter

ClickMeter, more or less, is a link tracking platform first and then a link shortener. It enables users to monitor their campaigns and track down their customers’ interactions with a particular link. ClickMeter is a great option for affiliate publishers and agencies that are looking to spend less money on tracking their campaigns. It's an ideal tool for medium to large businesses. ClickMeter comes in handy for creating web links that route visitors to different landing pages and monitor the conversion rates that are later put in the analytics report. The tool also keeps the URLs created through it safe from getting clicked by malicious or suspicious users. The training of the whole system can be done online, and the company provides documentation if there is some troubleshooting that needs to be done. The price is pretty reasonable, which is $29 a month. There are many features to track down your link that may overwhelm you but with time, you will get easily comfortable with the functionality of this tool.

10. GoLinks

GoLinks makes it easier to transform lengthy and not-so SEO-friendly URLs into short ones. Also, Golinks suggests multiple options to shorten your links so you can choose one that suits your requirement the best. The links generated through GoLinks can be shared directly through emails, and social media messages. GoLinks enable companies to securely access and share the information and the resources inside the company using team link shortener. It means, when you can create a direct link to the website or a page where you want to go and use it more often. Like go/github, Github repository of your company, where all the codes are present. Golinks users don't have to worry about finding their bookmarks as they can easily customize the short links with keywords which are generated by Golinks. These keywords could be anything which makes sense to the users and makes it easier for them to remember the URL. So they don’t waste time in searching ever again. The enterprise pricing is a bit aggressive as there are not too many features or tools which you can use with a URL shortener, but if you are going to use the basic version, which is completely free. Then it's a great product, without a doubt.

11. YOURLS

Last on our list is YOURLS, which is the short form of the "your own URL shortener." It is basically a service that you run on your server only. There is no subscription fee that you need to pay for using YOURLS as it's an open-source tool. The tool comes with bookmarklets that allow you to convert long URLs into shorter ones from your web browser with just one click. By default, the developers have set it up to create sequential URLs but users can change it according to their requirements. YOURLS is basically designed to be a lightweight URL shortening tool. In case you are looking for more than just the basic version of it, you can install the available plugins and customize the tool all by yourself.

Conclusion

So these were the top 10 best URL shortener tools in 2023. You can use any of them because the working of most URL shorteners is pretty much the same. When it comes to features, most of the URL shorteners mentioned above provide basic features for free, but if you want to use advanced features, you will need to go with their paid plans.

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