The top 8 URL shorteners in 2021
Top Google URL Shortener Alternatives
The Internet has been attempting to find the next best choice since the Google URL Shortener was shut down a few years ago (RIP). Naturally, like most other matters there is no correct answer: what you desire, and what you require, is the finest URL shortening service for you. The application for shortening URL is simple, speedy and free. It has marketing- and analysis-driven applications with dashboards and extensive metrics.
We have researched over 30 different solutions to help you locate the finest URL shortener services. Our favorites are here.
The 8 greatest services for shortening URL
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Urlsh for adding a CTA to the links you share
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Bitly for the best all-round URL shortener
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Rebrandly for creating branded links
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TinyURL for fast and anonymous short URLs
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BL.INK for small business owners
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URL Shortener by Zapier for automatically creating short links
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Shorby for Instagram users
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Short.io for sending different visitors different links
What's a big shorter URL?
The most essential thing is that a URL shortener takes a long, unmanageable link and makes it easier to distribute. You can take anything like, for example : http://www.example.com/my-blog/2021/my-super-awesome-blogpost-about-squirrels-and-why-they%27re-awesome-too, and turn it into https://tinyurl.com/awesome-squirrels. This allows you to link to a business card, newspaper advertisement, audio interview, or any other situation where somebody can't click a hyperlink.
Shorteners can also help to shorten lengthy links to suit social media and messaging applications to character limitations, although many platforms look after this for you. For example, Twitter shortens shared URLs automatically to its t.co shortening service, whereas iMessage conceals links to a preview card. You only have to care about URL shortening if you are emailing it to your friends.
Some forms of statistics and click-tracking are other useful things URL shorteners provide. You don't necessarily know who is clicking when you share someone else's website address with your audience. However, if you use a URL shortener, you can collect information such as the number of hits from which the link is connected, where it comes from, and which devices people use. The more extensive and powerful these analyzes are in general, the greater the expense of the service. Free services tend to have minimal click-tracking and premium marketing services gather as much data as possible — even allowing you to serve customers in other URLs or using various devices.
There are many alternative URL shortcuts available and we have confined our search to self-employed services that are straightforward to install. There are automatic versions such as Polar and Yourls, which require too much technical expertise to be easily recommended while free and powerful. There are also URL shorteners that we have not taken into account in other programs. For example, Ow.ly is completely included in Hootsuite, and most newsletter services have a URL that is shortened and tracked. This is not the case, but they go much further than what most people need to do with a URL shortage.
Let's thus look at the greatest options our list has made.
