Bitly Alternative: Short Links That Still Work in Five Years
A short link on a domain you do not own lasts exactly as long as that service keeps serving it. Worth knowing before anything goes to print.
A short link is an address you print: on business cards, on posters, under a QR code on the packaging. Print lasts. The address has to keep working long after the campaign behind it was invoiced and forgotten.
That is where Bitly comes up. The free plan allows 5 links a month, free links route through an interstitial page, and a branded domain costs extra. The first reaction is usually about money. The more expensive issue sits next to it: the printed address belongs to somebody else, who changes the rules whenever they like, retroactively included.
What the Bitly free plan still allows
Per Bitly pricing and the Bitly blog, retrieved 21 August 2026, the free plan costs 0 USD and includes 5 short links and 2 QR codes per month with unlimited clicks. Click and scan data start with Core at 10 USD per month, billed annually, with 30 days of history. Custom branded domains start with Growth at 29 USD per month, 348 USD per year, and Premium is 199 USD per month. Bitly quotes US dollars only.
Then came the interstitial in 2025. Free Bitly links and QR codes now route through a Bitly-hosted preview page that can carry advertising. It works retroactively, so links created years earlier are affected too, and removing it requires a paid plan. The Bitly support article on it answered with HTTP 403 on 21 August 2026, so the account here follows industry reporting such as Coywolf. Nothing about the link changed, only the business model of the service serving it. To be fair, Bitly states that free-plan links do not expire.
A short link is one line of server response
The service receives a request and answers with a status code in the 300 range plus a Location header pointing at the destination. The browser follows it. Nothing else happens at the core, the dashboard is convenience around that response.
- 301 Moved Permanently: moved for good. Browsers remember it and stop asking.
- 302 Found: provisional. The browser asks again on every click, so the destination stays changeable.
For printed material the difference is concrete: a 301 lands in the browser cache and is hard to pull back out, so if you might repoint a poster link later, use 302 or 307. Linkjet offers 301, 302, 307, 308 and 410 per link. Because the mechanics are this thin, any web server handles them: a redirect in an htaccess file is one line. What services add is the counting and a short domain you do not own.
Five routes to a short link
Bitly
Well known and set up in minutes, no technical work. The trade is above: monthly quotas, an ad interstitial on free links, a branded domain from Growth upward.
Rebrandly
Per Rebrandly pricing, retrieved 21 August 2026, even the free plan includes one custom domain, plus 10 links and 10 QR codes per month. Essentials is 11 USD per month, 8 USD billed annually, with 250 links and 2 domains. Professional is 32 USD, 22 USD annually, with 1,500 links, 3 domains and 2 teammates, and Growth is 99 USD, 69 USD annually. The domain points at Rebrandly through DNS: registered to you, resolved by the service.
Short.io
Also hosted, also built around custom domains. Its free plan, per the pricing page retrieved 21 August 2026, includes 1 user, 5 custom domains, 1,000 branded links and 50,000 tracked clicks per month. The paid tier amounts were not on the page as numbers at retrieval, the browser fills them in, so Short.io appears here through its features: Pro lists unlimited users and links, 10 custom domains, password protection and link expiration.
YOURLS, self-hosted
Open source, installed on your own hosting, requiring PHP and a database. The whole service is then yours, and the only ongoing cost is hosting. You pay in maintenance: updates, backups, abuse protection. Leave link creation open and you will eventually serve spam under your own domain.
Linkjet inside the WordPress you already run
If WordPress is already running, the second installation is redundant. Linkjet creates redirects right there, under the domain that already exists: yoursite.com/go/offer, with a slug you choose. Clicks land in your own database by time, device, browser and country, with IP addresses anonymised and country taken from server headers, not an external GeoIP lookup. Links group into categories, the link checker reports destinations that stopped answering, and QR codes generate locally in the browser. Free is complete under GPLv2. What the Pro add-on costs is on the pricing overview.
The five routes side by side
| Route | Custom domain | Cost (21 August 2026) | Click data lives | If the service shuts down | Effort |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitly | From Growth | Free 0 USD with 5 links a month, Core 10 USD, Growth 29 USD, Premium 199 USD, each per month billed annually | With Bitly, based in New York | Every short link dies, printed material loses its target | Create an account, no technical work |
| Rebrandly | Yes, one on the free plan | Free 0 USD with 10 links a month, Essentials from 8 USD per month billed annually | With Rebrandly | You keep the domain, the mapping to destinations is gone | Point the domain at the service via DNS |
| Short.io | Yes, 5 on the free plan | 1,000 branded links and 50,000 tracked clicks a month free, paid amounts not shown | With Short.io | Same as Rebrandly | Point the domain at the service via DNS |
| YOURLS | Yes, your own | Open source and free, ongoing cost is hosting | Your own database | Not applicable, you run the service | High: install, updates, abuse protection |
| Linkjet | Yes, the WordPress domain you have | Free version complete, Pro as an add-on, price on the pricing overview | Your own WordPress database, IPs anonymised | Not applicable, as long as your site runs | Low: plugin, slug, destination |
Why the borrowed domain is the real risk
A short link has two owners: the destination is yours, the address belongs to the service. That shows up in three situations.
Shutdown. Shortening services have been discontinued before. When a short domain disappears, every link that ran through it dies at once. The poster is still on the wall, the QR code still scans, the destination is gone. It cannot be repaired afterwards, because the domain was never yours.
Blocking. Short domains hide the destination, so spam filters and corporate networks treat them harshly. If fraudsters abuse one, the block lands on everyone using it. On your own domain you carry only your own reputation.
Authority. Anyone who types your printed address and links to it is visibly linking the other service, whose brand sits in the URL. On your own domain your name is on the address, clicked or not.
What gets transmitted on every click
A short link inserts an extra server between visitor and page, and that server sees every click. In its privacy policy, retrieved 21 August 2026, Bitly names four categories: the IP address and the location derived from it, network activity such as referring websites, the time and date of each access, and device settings such as browser type, operating system and language.
Bitly, Inc. is based in New York, with a Bitly Europe GmbH in Berlin. The policy states that personal data may be transferred outside the EU and the EEA, including to the United States, covered by EU standard contractual clauses and certification under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework.
This is context, not legal advice. In practice, every click on your printed link is a data transfer that belongs in your privacy notice, accurately, under GDPR. Run the redirect on your own domain and the click stays on your server. You still need a privacy notice, because counting is processing.
When a hosted service remains the better answer
No domain of your own. Without a website there is nothing for a short link to sit on. A domain purely for redirects only pays off once the first printed piece is on the way.
Measuring outside your own site. Anyone tracking links in third-party newsletters or client campaigns needs a counting point independent of their own site. Availability matters too: when your hosting goes down, your redirects go with it. Bitly lists 99.99 percent uptime on Enterprise, Short.io 99.9 percent on Team, and shared hosting carries no such promise.
Teams with permissions. Bitly puts group permissions, multiple users and SSO in Enterprise, and Rebrandly lists 2 workspaces and 2 teammates from Professional upward. WordPress roles are not a fine-grained link permission model.
Setting up a short second domain, or keeping the one you have
The worry that your own domain is too long rarely survives the arithmetic. yoursite.com/go/offer is around 21 characters, fits on any business card, and its QR code scans easily. A second domain gets interesting when the main domain is hard to spell, or when the address has to be read aloud, on radio, on stage, over the phone.
- Register the short domain, ideally at the same registrar as your main one.
- Add it at your host as a domain alias on the same installation, A and AAAA records pointing at the same server.
- Include the new domain in your TLS certificate. A short link without https produces exactly the warning nobody wants attached to a poster.
- Configure the short domain to redirect only, so the same content does not end up living at two addresses.
Whichever route you take, durability rests on domain renewal: auto-renew on, a payment method that does not expire, and registrar access somewhere a colleague can reach it. To measure links inside your own newsletter, create them with the same tool and read them next to your open rates, for example with Kurato.
Short links on the domain you already own
Linkjet creates redirects inside your WordPress: readable slugs, five status codes, click stats with anonymised IPs in your own database, QR codes without an external service. Free and complete.
Frequently asked questions
Is Bitly still usable for free?
Yes. The free plan costs 0 USD and includes 5 short links and 2 QR codes per month, per the Bitly pricing page as of 21 August 2026. Click and scan data start with the Core plan at 10 USD per month, billed annually. Free links have routed through an interstitial page that can carry ads since 2025.
Do I need a second, shorter domain for my own short links?
Usually not. An address like yoursite.com/go/offer is short enough for a business card and a QR code. A second domain pays off when the main domain is hard to spell or often read aloud.
What happens to my old Bitly links if I switch?
They stay with Bitly and keep working as long as Bitly serves them, and Bitly states that free-plan links do not expire. The practical approach is a clean break: everything printed from now on gets an address on your own domain.
Should a printed short link use 301 or 302?
Use 302 or 307, because the browser asks again on every click and you can repoint the destination later. Save 301 for permanent moves inside your site, since browsers cache it stubbornly.
Is a self-hosted short link better for privacy?
The click stays on your server, which removes the transfer to a service in a third country. This is context rather than legal advice. You still need a privacy notice, because your own counting processes data too.
