15 Best Free URL Shortener Sites

Since Google URL Shortener was discontinued a few years ago, the world of the internet has been trying to find the next best option. Of course, as with most things, no one answer is completely correct. The best free URL shortener service depends on what people need and want from it.

Previously, did you know about URLs? URL ( Uniform Resource Locator) is a series of websites listed, containing folder names, language protocols, and so on that lead to the World Wide Web (WWW ). This URL can provide documents, remember the name of the document that is on the internet, and more. But often the URL is long so it is difficult to remember. For that, you need to shorten or shorten the URL with a URL shortener.

There are free URL shortener apps that are simple and fast; focused on marketing and analytics with detailed dashboards and metrics, and there’s even an option that you can add a private call-to-action via the link you shared. Before you know what free URL Shorteners are, take a look at the explanation below.

What are URL Shorteners?

A URL shortener is a technique on the World Wide Web where URLs can be substantially shorter but still lead to the desired page. At its most basic,

URL shortener converts long and heavy links into shorter and lighter ones, making them easy to share. This allows people to provide easy-to-remember and typeable links on physical objects or in other situations where a person cannot click on a hyperlink.

Examples such as business cards, apart from being unsightly, links that are too long will take up a lot of space, because usually, the size of the business card is not too big and wide.

For example, http://www.example.com/my-blog/2021/my-super-awesome-profile%42069, of course, it looks more appropriate to be listed on a business card. It would be more interesting if shortened with a URL shortener to https://tinyurl.com/my-profile for example.

Benefits of URL Shortener

A URL shortener can change a site address or link to be as desired. Not only that but many benefits are rarely known. Here are four interesting benefits that you need to know.

Easy to Spread

The first benefit is that it makes it easy to spread short links on any platform. One of them is Twitter. Currently, Twitter limits the number of characters for each tweet to 280 characters.

By using a URL shortener, it will certainly be easier to share the link with your followers. To make it more interesting for people to open the short link, you can change the short link by adding a brief description of the site.

Easy to Manage

The next benefit is that it makes it easy to manage a link. When you open a site, of course, you often find long links that are very messy.

For example, https://bacatulis.com/f/hskfj420-hfnk-hbd-69-hjfu666lfbso/How-To-Teach-Read-and-Write. Dizzying, isn’t it? Of course, it will be more comfortable to see if it is shortened with a URL shortener to https://dik.si/bacatulis.

Easy to Track

One of the reasons why these days free URL shorteners are widely used by internet users is that they can help track geographic location and find out on which web page the user opens the link.

In addition, it can also track who clicks on the short link. This method is often used by various companies and online shops to find out where their customers come from, at what time they come, and what attracts them to visit the site. This helps business owners and online shops to develop better products and produce engaging content.

To track traffic who clicked on your link, you need to use UTM on the link. UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module. A UTM code is a unique code that can be added to a link or links that notifies Google Analytics of the information in each link. This information contains were the traffic source is coming from.

15 Best Free URL Shortener Sites

There are many free URL shortener tools available in the market. Here is a list of the top 15 free URL shorteners. This list contains both open source (free) and paid (commercial) software.

Bitly (Free + Premium Plans)

Bitly is the most popular free URL shortener tool for shortening URLs. These tools are capable of building and protecting brands by using strong short links. This helps create a seamless user experience. The software can also perform campaign management and analytics for your website.

Rebrandly (Free + Premium Plans)

Rebrandly is the industry’s leading link management platform for branding, tracking, and sharing shortened URLs. This free custom URL shortener tool offers features like custom analytics, traffic & deep link routing, link retargeting, Account management, custom orientation, etc.

Short.io (Free + Premium Plans)

Short.io is a tool that helps shorten, personalize and share fully branded short links for your audience.

Linky (Free + Premium Plans)

A link URL shortener is capable of creating simple, beautiful, and branded tracking links with smart redirects. It offers features like tracking the number of clicks, using your domain to create custom URL shorteners, as well as pulling data from Linkly into Google Sheets. It can drive & analyze 2,000 clickers per month.

BLink (Free + Premium Plans)

BLink is capable of replacing URLs with short links which means it helps get more clicks. This free URL shortener also offers features to easily create campaigns and track performance with real-time click analysis and offers enterprise-grade compliance and control.

Cutt.ly (Free)

Cutt.ly is an easy-to-use URL shortener & link management platform with branded URLs. It can generate a QR code for each short link. You will also get preview mode and user protection features to prevent suspicious links. This free custom link shortener offers a sortable list of shortened URLs.

SmartURL (Free + Premium Plans)

smarturl is a tool capable of creating short links that redirect by country and device. This free URL shortener replaces the default URL and redirects visitors to country-specific destinations. This sets your custom alias and adds a brief description of the context. For Indonesia itself, you can visit smarturl.id

Soo. gd (Free)

Soo. gd is a short link builder. To use this tool, you just need to add your long URL and suffix, then just hit the shorten button. You can also shorten multiple URLs with the help of this tool.

TinyURL (Free)

TinyURL is a free URL shortener service to make it easier to post long URLs, and can only be used for actual URLs. This URL changer tool offers a preview feature and also offers toolbar buttons to shorten any URL quickly.

Short URLs (Free)

The next free URL shortener that you can try is ShortURL. ShortURL can reduce long links from Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and other popular sites on the Internet. All you need to do is paste the long URL and click the short URL button.

You can also check the number of clicks revived by your shortened URL. This software is also compatible with smartphones, tablets, and desktop computers. This URL shortener-specific tool uses HTTPS protocol and data encryption.

Bit.do (Free)

Bit.do is a tool that shortens and personalizes any link. It is one of the best link shorteners which allows sharing links in email messages without breaking the chain. This free URL shortener tool can also track email marketing campaigns and short links with instant messaging services.

You’re (Free)

Yours is a small set of PHP scripts that offers a URL shortening service. YOURLS stands for Your URL Shortener. It provides useful bookmarklets for shortening and sharing links. This free site also offers features like click history reports, referrer tracking, visitor geographic location, etc.

Musicjet (Free + Premium Plans)

MusicJet lets you create smart links for music marketing. This will create and manage one or more smart pages from a single dashboard. You will also get various short domains related to music artists. The dedicated link shortener tool for this free tool is also capable of managing one or more artist smart pages from a single dashboard.

Adf.ly (Free)

Another free URL shortener is adf.ly which can create and share links on the Internet. You will be paid if someone visits your short URL. Adf.ly is also capable of placing links on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms. This site also provides detailed statistics provided per link.

Is.gd (Free)

Lastly, there is Is.gd which is a smart tool that helps shorten URLs. This dedicated URL shortener tool for free tools also offers features like click reports and referrer tracking.