There are also URL shorteners built into other apps that I didn't consider.
#Owly link shortener free#
There are self-hosted versions, like Polr and YOURLS, that, while free and powerful, require too much technical knowledge to easily recommend. There are lots of different URL shortening options out there, and I limited my search to easy-to-set-up, standalone services.
#Owly link shortener generator#
Many basic or free plans for a short link generator only let you change the last part of the URL (so you get ), while the more business-focused services enable you to use a custom domain (so you get squirre.ls/awesome).
This means you can make your URLs more relevant, or use different links in multiple ads or social media posts to compare click-through rates.
The best URL shorteners all allow you to customize your shortened URLs. Free services tend to have basic click tracking (although there's often a time limit and a limit on the number of total clicks tracked), while premium marketing options will collect as much data as possible-and even allow you to serve different URLs to people in different places or using different devices.Ĭustomization of URLs. Like with most marketing services, the more detailed and powerful these analytics, the higher the cost. If you use a URL shortener, however, you'll have a unique short URL, so you'll also be able to see how many clicks the link gets, where they're coming from, and what devices people are using. If you share a link to someone else's blog post with your audience, for example, you won't know much about how many people-and who-click through all that data will be in the other person's analytics account. In addition to that basic capability, here are the features I was looking for in a link shortener:Īnalytics and click tracking. If you're just sending things to your friends, you only really need to worry about URL shortening if you're exclusively using SMS. Twitter, for example, automatically shortens any shared links with its t.co shortening service ( at least when it works), while iMessage obscures any links behind a preview card. While URL shorteners used to be useful for shortening longer links to fit character limits on social media and messaging apps, a lot of platforms take care of that for you. And it's not just for ads for roommates URL shorteners allow you to provide a typable link on a business card, print ad, podcast interview, or any other situation where someone can't just click on a nice hyperlink. This shortened link means whoever sees your ad has an easy-to-type URL to visit, rather than having to type some long, unintelligible string of text where they're almost guaranteed to make a mistake. For example, if you're making an ad for a roommate, you can take something like, and turn it into.
#Owly link shortener full#
For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.Īt its most basic, a URL shortener takes some long, unwieldy link and turns it into a shorter link, one that's easy to share. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site-we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software.
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