Best URL shortener works great for marketing only if you choose the right tool. We've compiled a list of 10 best URL shortener and have broken them down into their own categories. You'll find all about how to create customized branded short links, how they work, what they can be used for, and which one is the best fit for your needs!
Table Of Contents
A URL shortener allows you to take a long link and create a new, shorter one that takes people to the same location. These days most links allow you to track your link metrics but all in all it couldn't be easier than using a URL-shortening service.
A URL shortener is a tool that makes it easy to share long, unwieldy links. For example, you can take something like “http://www.example.com/blog/why-should-you-focus-more-on-digital-marketing” and turn it into “https://rgkit.co/digitalmarketing”. Using URL shortener service on your computer or phone apps like Google drive where this link will be rendered as an easily shared tiny URL for people who don't have time to copy-paste big complex URLs from one place to another.
Social media is a great way to increase your brand awareness to use. The best URL shortener offers one more opportunity for customers and followers to share links by providing a tiled experience on the go.
On the other hand, URL shorteners that enable you to customize your unique link offer the opportunity to mention your brand. As an example, RetargetKit link shortener allows you to create a vanity short-link with just a few clicks.
Even if you’re using a free web hosting service, or an ISP that’s less than exciting, a custom URL shortener can keep your brand front and center.
There are many different types of URL shorteners, each with its own specific features which make them better suited to certain customers. This article will review the ten best URL shortener and their feature list along with the price.
Perfect for: Enterprise-level businesses.
Bitly is a business-grade URL shortener with comprehensive dashboard features and campaign tracking tools. Bitly provides everything you need to shorten URLs, from an online interface for occasional sharing or just monitoring your account information; the ability to track over 20 real-time data points including the location of visitors, organic shares, more!
Bitly’s price has been going downwards to reach out to more audiences. They offer four different plans starting from Free to Enterprise level.
Perfect for: Affiliate marketers and marketing agencies.
RetargetKit is a lead capturing and link management all-in-one marketing toolkit. It enhances brand awareness, controls social media marketing ads, and increases sales by retargeting your one-time visitors. In fact, you can collect social verified leads 10x faster by saving time, money, and effort.
As the best URL shortener, the price of the RetargetKit service is very low. You can easily afford it and enjoy using the best link shortener in minutes. Thus RetargetKit offers four different plans.
Perfect for: Small businesses focused on branding.
Rebrandly is a URL shortener that will help you to set up your custom domain or use the one you already have with its helpful features. It's more than just an easy way to shorten URLs- it gives you complete control over how they work for your business!
Rebrandly offers five plans; starting from Free plan to Custom plan.
Perfect for: Large businesses.
Rebrandly is an extremely popular URL shortener, but for those looking to take their marketing efforts up a notch or two, there's ClickMeter. They offer conversion tracking and other features that are perfect for enterprise-level companies who want more than just the basics from their service provider.
ClickMeter is a good website. They have conversion tracking. This means that you can see how many people clicked on your link and then came to your website.
Though ClickMeter's price is up to an enterprise-level, they offer four different plans starting from $29 to X-Large plan.
Perfect for: Hootsuite users, and anyone looking for a social media management tool.
The Ow.ly URL shortener is a popular tool that works with Hootsuite's social media management application to provide an easy solution for creating professional-sounding voice messages and lets you track your links' popularity in terms of referrals, clicks, and location! You can use Ow.ly for free with its Hootsuite-based plan to create ease around managing many different types of accounts on one dashboard or across various platforms like Twitter, Facebook Pages/Groups (etc)- all within the same app interface!!
Ow.ly is free for Hootsuite users. And to get access to Ow.ly, you need to create Hootsuite account. Hootsuite offers five different plan including a Free plan.
Perfect for: Anyone who is in need of a quick and easy-to-go URL shortener.
It's easy to see why TinyURL was one of the most popular link shorteners back in its day. It didn't have any pesky features, like social media accounts or dashboards for tracking who clicks on them! But now that we live in a world with iPhones and Facebook-verse? Not so much… What it does offer is simplicity – just type your URL into the box and click "shorten" – no creating an account needed! And since you're not using someone else’s domain name to redirect traffic anywhere, there are even more options than usual when customizing what goes after “http://tinyurl.com/whatevernameyouwant."
TinyURL offers three different plans.
Perfect for: Affiliate marketers, bloggers, and influencers.
Clkim is a great solution for bloggers and marketers of all types. It has an amazing focus on monetization, making it perfect if you're trying to make money or need another revenue stream. But Clkim isn't just about generating profit- they offer many features that other services don't have! You can use them in addition to Rebrandly because they provide tons more options like interstitial ads!
Clkim offers three different plans.
Perfect for: Shopify users
Zapier's URL Shortener is the best way to automatically create and save a shortened link every time you upload a new product on Shopify. You can also use it with other apps like Instagram, which means that your social media activity will be more organized than ever before!
Shortened URLs are the future of marketing. No longer do you need to type out long, complicated links every time there's an action associated with your business; just make one simple request through Zaps!
Free plan limited to 5 active single-step Zaps and 100 tasks/month; Starter from $19.99/month (billed annually) with 20 multi-step Zaps and 750 tasks/month.
Perfect for: Affiliate marketers
The Sniply service is a godsend for social media managers and content creators. It not only provides you with the short URL and click-tracking but also allows you to insert CTAs over any link that gets shared on your profile. When someone follows one of these links from your Twitter account or Facebook page, they will see an option at the bottom of their screen prompting them to subscribe to updates about other articles as soon as it becomes available!
Sniply offers four different plans distributing clicks on a usage basis.
Perfect for: Instagram users, sellers, bloggers, and affiliates.
At number 10 we have Shorby. Shorby is a unique URL shortener that links to more than one thing, but with Instagram's "one link in your bio" rule. Moreover, it has been designed for creators of social media platforms so they can keep their latest content updated on Shorby by adding new URLs instead of changing them out in every post.
Shorby price starts from $15/month and offers total three plans.
Firstly, URL shortener makes easier to share, control and manage long URLs. This mainly helps truly when sharing on micro-blogging platforms or in mobile messaging applications. Next, as some link shortenings allow you to create custom branded URLs for your business purposes – this makes them a must have for any company looking at building links quickly and easily!
Rebrandly has found that branded short links receive up to 39% more clicks when compared to generic ones. And with RetargetKit, you can convert your visitors into clients 10X faster. These branded URLs also have another key benefit: they're less likely than unbranded ones to be perceived as spam by unsuspecting people who click on them. Because it is easy for spammers to use URL shorteners in order not only to obscure the link destination but make it appear like a legitimate site with which you are familiar. So to get the best result you should go for the best URL shortener which you find perfect for you.
Since you have all the basics covered, let's take a closer look at how to set up and create custom-branded short links using RetargetKit.
Create your RetargetKit account and sign up. Once you click on the sign-up button, you will be redirected to the campaign page.
You will be redirected to the campaign page. Name your campaign. Campaign type is selected ‘shortener’ by default. Once you click on the Save button your ‘shortener’ campaign is created.
In the next step click the ‘NEW RETARGET LINK’ button to create the short link.
Place the link you want to show your audience in the ‘Destination URL’ And provide the slug you want to show your audience. You can check out other advanced settings but those are optional. Now save the link.
Now you might see your newly generated short link. Finally, all you need to do is share the link on different platforms. You can even use it for email marketing, blog post, Facebook sharing, Twitter post, Instagram Bio etc.
Now analyze the links and decide which links are working best for you from the analytics section. RetargetKit analytics will show accurate data to help you take action immediately. You can see how many unique clicks & conversion rates you received including the amount spent on ads & revenue coming from each link.
Here are some of the main benefits of using a URL or link shortener service.
Finally, URL shorteners are more than just a link shortening tool. They offer the ability to track link metrics an opportunity no savvy marketer can afford to pass up. Plus, branded URLs generate more trust and receive high click-through rates. Hence by using custom branded URL's for all of your marketing campaigns your users will know they're coming from someone reliable!
Rather than waiting further try RetargetKit today and test by yourself.