URL Shortening Tools: Creating Clean & Trackable URLs for SEM

URL shortening tools have become an essential resource in the digital landscape, offering a convenient solution to the challenge posed by lengthy, complex URLs. This blog will explore URL-shortening tools, their features, and how they can streamline your online presence. With these tools, you can transform long and cumbersome URLs into concise and easily shareable links.

URL-shortening tools offer simplicity and efficiency, whether you’re sharing links on social media, sending them via email, or simply aiming for a more user-friendly web experience. Join us as we delve into URL shortening tools and discover how they can optimize your online communication, enhance tracking, and improve the overall user experience.

What is a URL shortener?

A URL shortener is a tool that creates a short, unique URL that redirects to a specific website. They make a URL shorter and simpler. Your new, shorter URL typically includes the shortener’s domain name and a combination of random letters. Sometimes, you can customize this mini URL with a custom phrase.

Reasons to Use a URL Shortener

If you’re sharing a link, there are many good reasons to use a URL shortener.

Long links can look suspicious.

If you’re linking to a specific page buried deep on your website or are using UTM parameters to track your visitors, you might find yourself wrestling with a lengthy URL.

An oversized URL will look clunky anywhere you use it—in social posts, shared via text, or pasted into an email.

But worse than that, long URLs also look super suspicious. With so many letters, backslashes, numbers, and question marks, anything could happen when we click that link! Anything!

Keep things looking neat, tidy, and friendly with a URL that’s as short as possible.

A custom URL shortener lets you brand your links.

If brand awareness is part of your social media strategy, a custom URL shortener is one more tool to help spread the word.

URL shorteners that let you customize your short link give you a chance to name-drop your brand. Link shortener, for example, lets you create a vanity short link in just a few clicks.

Especially if you’re using a free web hosting service or have an ISP that’s less than exciting, a custom URL shortener is a way to keep your brand front and center whenever you’re sharing links.

Link shorteners allow you to track performance.

Most link-shortening sites will offer tracking metrics. This information about who clicked your link, where, and when will help you calculate the campaign’s ROI.

To easily track source traffic, create short links using different UTM parameters. Combine this with other analytics tools—like Google Analytics—and set yourself up for marketing success.

Short URLs allow you to get the most out of character limits on social media

Twitter has a strict character limit of 280, so keeping posts concise is key. Shortened URLs give you more room for that poignant observation about politics or the perfect punctuating emoji for your killer joke about hot dogs.

Even for posts on Facebook or Instagram, where the character limits are in the thousands, it’s still best to keep things short and sweet for readability and engagement. Short URLs help avoid TL;DR syndrome.

Another benefit of shorter links is that they’re also useful for IM or email, where longer links may be hard to read or disrupted by line breaks.

How do URL shorteners work?

URL shorteners work by creating a redirect to your long URL. Entering a URL into your internet browser sends an HTTP request to the web server to pull up a specific website. The long and the short URLs are simply different starting points for an internet browser to reach the same destination.

There are a few types of HTTP redirect response codes, but look for 301 permanent redirects; the others may hurt your SEO ranking.

Best URL Shortening Tools

The Google URL shortener was shut down in the spring of 2019, but on the bright side, there are dozens of alternative options.

On the downside, there are dozens of alternative options out there. How do you know which to choose?

Our advice: Look for shortener services that let you customize your link or include detailed analytics. A URL shortening site that’s been around for a while might also be more reliable and reputable, and is less likely to experience service closure or disruption.

OnlineQRCode

If you’re looking for a simple yet powerful tool to create QR codes, OnlineQRCode.com has got you covered. Whether it’s for personal use, marketing campaigns, or business needs, this platform makes generating high-quality QR codes quick and hassle-free.

The free version lets you create static QR codes for links, text, or contact details—no signup is required. However, the premium plans are worth exploring if you’re a business or marketer looking for more advanced features, such as dynamic QR codes, detailed analytics, and custom branding.

One standout feature is the ability to customize your QR codes fully—add your logo, choose colors that match your branding, and make your codes truly unique. Plus, with tools for bulk QR code generation and seamless integrations, it’s a perfect fit for businesses aiming to make a strong impact.

Key Features:

• Create both static and dynamic QR codes.
• Personalize QR codes with logos and brand colors
• Track performance with QR code analytics
• Edit and update QR codes as needed
• Bulk QR code creation for businesses

Pricing:

• OnlineQRCode is free to use for basic static QR codes. Plans start at just $0.79/7 days for access to premium features like advanced customization and tracking. Larger businesses can explore tailored enterprise solutions for high-volume needs.

Bitly

Bitly is a strong (and well-liked) tool for URL shortening. Many people have long regarded it as the best, and for good reason!

The second-tier premium plan allows you to use your custom domain name with up to 1,500 shortened links per month, while the free option only allows you to shorten ten links per month using the Bit.ly domain name.

Bitly also provides a link-in-bio feature, which has become a requirement for social media influencers and companies with a social media presence. In addition to URL shortening services, it offers a QR code generator. Even the free edition allows you to use these. However, Bitly branding is included.

Bitly’s subscription plan offers additional features such as link retargeting, link history, and customer support. You can also track specific connections and receive relevant information on your dashboard. You can even measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns in specific areas.

Key Features:

• Connect custom domain
• Analytics dashboard
• Audience intelligence
• Custom URL
• Integration with 17 popular tools, including Zapier, HubSpot, and Sprout Social
• QR code generator
• Link-in-bio feature
• URL retargeting

Pricing:

• Bitly offers its basic service for free. After that, premium plans start at $8 per month (paid annually for $96 per year). If you want additional features like a custom domain, plans start at $35 per month with monthly billing or $29 per month with annual billing.

Tiny.cc

An all-around platform is Tiny. Cc. It is among the finest free URL shorteners and offers a variety of highly useful paid packages, making it a strong candidate for the title of “best premium URL shortener.”

The program functions as a flexible connection management platform. It allows you to shorten URLs, share, update, organize, customize, and earn money from them. Its role is to shorten, clarify, and monetize your links. Your URLs can be transformed into editable, low-DPI QR codes for printing and distribution.

The system continues after that. It keeps track of your shortened links and creates visual infographics that reveal your click analytics and visitor demographics. The best part is that you may read all this information without creating an account.

To manage and change the links, you must register for an account. With their free plan, you can abbreviate URLs associated with your brand or domain, group them according to tags, hide affiliate links, create personalized redirects, view modification history, filter URLs, and more.

Key Features:

• Tracks QR Code campaigns.
• Shortens and monitors referrer or affiliate URLs.
• Tracks banner Ads for internet marketing.
• Measures the conversions for links.
• Generates simpler QR codes with lower dpi for printing.
• Supports high-volume commercial URLs.
• Shortens links using your brand or custom domain.
• Generates shareable, user-friendly URLs.
• Manages links.

Pricing:

While Tiny.cc offers one of the best free URL shortener platforms, you’ll be limited to 500 URLs, which is more than enough for individual users.

Otherwise, if you want to use the shortened URLs for marketing purposes or in your media publications, Tiny.cc will expand your capacity—but for a price.

• Basic – $5 per month
• Business – $25 per month
• Pro – $44 per month

The prices above are for month-to-month plans. If you pay upfront for the year, you will pay even less per month than you see above. There’s also a fourth Enterprise plan for those who require large-scale URL shortening. You need to contact Tiny.cc directly to get a quote.

Also Read: AI-Powered SEM Tools: Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Better Results

Sniply

Sniply may be the right solution if you want to use content curation to generate significant conversions. It lets you make quick, personalized links to articles, blog posts, and websites. It’s simple to post these links on social media. Users are directed to the relevant content when they click these succinct “Snips,” and the web page also features the Snip you prepared beside your Call-To-Action.

The CTA can be reused, or you can create new CTAs for other campaigns. The analytics dashboard allows users to monitor click and conversion stats and campaign performance.

Key Features:

• Custom URL shortener
• Customized CTAs on each shortened URL
• Embeddable on articles and pages you share
• The dashboard monitors to track user interaction
• Integrates with other marketing and analytics tools to fine-tune campaigns
• Connects to your custom domain

Pricing:

Three main plans are available for Sniply:

• Basic – $9 per month
• Pro – $29 per month
• Business – $59 per month

There’s also an Enterprise plan for large operations, but you must contact Sniply directly for a quote. All plans come with a 14-day free trial and a discount for annual payments. The number of team members, brands, monthly clicks, and customization options varies between plans.

Blink

Blink is a complete link management platform that offers a full solution for controlling, monitoring, and measuring every touch point in your engagement journey, making it more than just one of the best URL shortener options available. It enables you to integrate it with web analytics tools like Google and Adobe or use reports to examine link performance.

The platform’s open API allows you to link with other tools and provides a variety of other connection choices. Additionally, it can be scaled to support your entire business, from tiny one-person operations to vast teams running infinite campaigns.

If you still need more than that, Blink offers many security and privacy features, such as configurable user permissions and enterprise-grade security, to satisfy the compliance requirements of highly regulated industries.

Key Features:

• Shorten and customize links for better branding and tracking
• Dynamically route clicks by date, time, language, device, and location
• Analyze link performance using Blink reports or integrate with web analytics tools such as Google and Adobe
• Enable user permissions to ensure the right team members have access to what they need
• Pay only for what you need and scale to new pricing tiers as your team grows
• Custom short domains that support multiple TLD options, including .brand domains

Pricing:

Blink has four main plans and a fifth Enterprise option that requires you to contact them for pricing. Each plan comes with a 21-day free trial.

• Expert – $48 per month
• SMB – $99 per month
• Team – $299 per month
• Business – $599 per month

Although they don’t openly advertise a free option on the plans page, if you proceed with the registration process, they do mention it. Specifically, they state that you can continue using their free plan if you choose not to continue with the service after the 21-day free trial. No details are provided on what features come with the free plan, though.

TinyURL

The best URL shortener for people who need a large number of shortened URLs yet want something affordable is TinyURL. And by affordable, we mean free.

They allow you to customize the URL portion after the backslash, which is one of its wonderful characteristics.

Instead of using a random URL like https://tinyurl.com/yourtexthere.

As previously said, TinyURL offers a sizable free plan, and thanks to its openness and scalability, its premium plans are also quite approachable. A few hundred to 5,000,000 active TinyURLs (no, that’s not a typo) can be added simply and gradually. Contact their sales staff for customized possibilities if more than five million is needed.

Key Features:

• Fast redirection
• Option to customize the shortened URL
• No expiration date on shortened URLs
• Easy-to-use

Pricing:

TinyURL has a 100% free basic URL shortening service for individual users. It lets you customize your links and track your link history. For advanced features like analytics, you’ll need to upgrade to their premium plans, which are priced as follows:

• Pro – $12.99 per month
• Pro 5K – $35 per month
• Pro 50K – $249 per month

The prices above reflect month-to-month pricing, but upfront, for the year, the per-month prices are even lower. In addition, TinyURL offers a separate set of high-volume plans for those who need many shortened URLs for SMS or other campaigns.

Cuttly

Cuttly offers an all-in-one link management platform with several tools for managing and analyzing short links, like a few of the other alternatives on this list, and goes beyond URL shortening. It is a powerful URL shortener with link analytics, enabling you to track and evaluate the impact of clicks on shortened URLs. You may also generate QR Codes (even on the free plan) to provide your business with offline and online solutions.

Overall, Cuttly provides many tools to manage your links easily. It’s a fantastic tool for both novices and specialists. Whether you work for a small or large organization, are a blogger, or are in marketing, you will value this URL shortener. If you ever get stuck, Cuttly also offers support, with an email response time of two to 24 hours (on average).

Key Features:

• Provides extensive link analytics that allow you to track clicks on short links and measure their effectiveness
• Allows you to create your own Link-in-Bio microsites and generate QR Codes
• It comes with advanced features like UTM codes, A/B/C testing, pixel retargeting, and mobile redirects
• Enhanced security features, like two-step verification, are available to access your account

Pricing:

Cuttly offers an extremely generous free URL shortener that shortens your links and includes many other link management features. The Cuttly free plan includes:

• One free branded (custom) domain
• Up to 1,000 links monthly
• One link-in-bio page with five links
• QR code generation

If you want even more features, there are three premium plans available. They are priced at:

• Single – $25 per month
• Team – $99 per month
• Enterprise – $149 per month

If you pay upfront for the year, the per-month prices are even lower than those listed above. Regarding value, considering the price points and the features provided, this is probably the best URL shortener on the list.

Also Read: Social Media Management Tools: Streamlining Your Social Media Marketing

Ow.ly

Popular social media management software includes Hootsuite. The Hootsuite tool Ow.ly allows you to shorten your links for social networking or other uses.

This is undoubtedly the finest URL shortener if you currently use Hootsuite. From the Hootsuite dashboard, you can access Ow.ly. You can also examine metrics for your shortened URLs from there.

Key Features:

• URL Performance Metrics
• Link retargeting
• Trackable short links
• Mobile platform supportive
• Rank monitoring
• Demonstrate social ROI

Pricing:

Ow.ly is included with both free and premium Hootsuite plans. So, while creating a Hootsuite account to take advantage of it, you don’t need to pay extra to use it specifically. Hootsuite plans start at $99 monthly (billed annually) and come with a 30-day free trial.

Rebrandly

Rebrandly offers advanced URL shortening technology with a ton of functionality. This online tool lets you make personalized, branded, and succinct connections that people will remember. It also allows you to create and distribute short links across various social networks.

Rebrandly may be the finest URL shortener for teams because it enables segregation of workspaces and teammates. It also has additional features, such as support for link retargeting.

Key Features:

• Bulk link creation
• UTM paramAccessAPI access
• 100+ app integrations
• Emojis on short links
• GDPR-compatible
• Rapid auto-scaling servers
• Private Reporting
• Custom reports
• Click tracking

Pricing:

Rebrandly offers a limited free plan that supports 500 links and 5,000 clicks per month. After that, there are various paid plans:

• Essentials – $24 per month
• Professional – $75 per month
• Teams – $417 per month

There’s also an Enterprise plan, but you must contact Rebrandly directly to get a quote. The prices above reflect the per-month cost when purchasing an annual plan. If you pay monthly, Rebrandly will charge you a bit more.

T2M

T2M is another intriguing competitor on our list of the top URL shorteners. The ease of use of this link-shortening method will win you over. They offer two distinct dashboards to simplify URL tracking. One is for devices or platforms, while the other is for location analytics. Even a QR code and a brief URL are generated.

Because T2M uses dedicated instances, each user receives a server response dedicated to them. This guarantees a quick redirect to your desired URL. You can choose where the link should operate or establish short, branded URLs to increase clickthrough rates.

With the premium plan, you can build more sophisticated URLs, including vanity and password-protected URLs. It’s the ideal option for online businesses seeking flexible, short URLs.

Key Features:

• No spam policy
• Personalized short URLs
• Full-scale analytics
• One-click domain mapping
• Bulk URL creation
• Unlimited API
• No-expiry URL
• Dedicated instance
• Auto-generated QR code
• CSV Import

Pricing:

If you want to use the basic T2M service, you can choose the basic tier for a $5 one-time fee. The $5 is just for verification and to cut down on spam – there are no ongoing fees.

After that, there are four premium plans. The prices below reflect the month-to-month costs:

• Standard – $9.99 per month
• Pro – $29.99 per month
• Premium – $89.99 per month
• Dedicated – talk to sales

Up front for the year, you’ll get three months for free, bringing down the per-month prices you see above.

ClickMeter 

ClickMeter is more of a click-rate optimizer than a URL shortener. Numerous features will enable you to construct a URL with a few clicks. ClickMeter is geared more toward marketers and marketing firms that work with Google AdWords or other ad networks.

It works like a charm for web administrators with a global audience and numerous languages. You may easily interface with well-liked content management systems like Shopify and WordPress in addition to location-based targeting. The dashboard for Clickmeter offers a thorough analysis report.

Key Features:

• Multilingual support
• Geotargeting
• URL encryption
• Bulk link creation
• Branded tracking links
• Multiple API keys
• Google Analytics UTM support
• Device-based targeting
• Clone links

Pricing:

ClickMeter has three premium plans, all of which offer a 30-day money-back guarantee:

• Medium – $29 per month
• Large – $99 per month
• X-Large – $349 per month

Also read: SERP Analysis Tools: Understanding and Reacting to Search Engine Results

Conclusion

In conclusion, URL-shortening tools have become indispensable in our online interactions. They offer a practical and efficient way to share links, particularly in platforms with character limitations or when visual aesthetics matter. By condensing URLs into shorter, more manageable forms, these tools enhance the user experience and provide valuable tracking and analytics features. Whether you’re looking to track link performance, customize URLs, or make sharing easier, the wide array of URL-shortening tools available today has you covered. Explore the options in this guide and find the one that best suits your needs. Start optimizing your links and enjoy a smoother online experience.

FAQs:

What is a URL shortening tool?

A URL shortening tool is an online service that takes long, complex website addresses (URLs) and generates shorter, more manageable links.

How does a URL shortening tool work?

URL shortening tools use a redirection technique, where a short link is created and associated with the original long URL. When someone clicks on the short link, they are automatically redirected to the intended webpage.

Why should I use a URL-shortening tool?

URL shortening tools offer several benefits, such as making long links more visually appealing, saving character space on social media platforms with limited character counts, and providing analytics to track link clicks and engagement.

Are URL shortening tools safe to use?

Most reputable URL-shortening tools are safe to use. However, it’s essential to be cautious when clicking on short links from unknown sources, as they may lead to malicious websites. Stick to trusted and reliable URL-shortening services.

Can I customize the shortened URLs?

Many URL shortening tools let you customize shortened links with your preferred keywords or branding. Customizing URLs can reinforce your brand identity and make links more memorable for your audience.