DevStack.co.nz VS TinyURL

DevStack.co.nz's answer

DevStack hasn't tried to reinvent the wheel. It has vetted and identified which tools and resources are actually useful for property professionals working in Auckland and New Zealand.

Rather than being a long list of links, the tools are organised around the property development process, making it easier to find the right resource when you need it. The focus is on tools that are genuinely useful for property development, from site research and due diligence through to feasibility, planning, finance and construction.

TinyURL's answer:

TinyURL has been running continuously since January 2002, which makes it the first notable URL shortening service and one of the oldest still operating. For a link shortener that longevity is the product, not trivia: a short link is only useful for as long as it still resolves, and links created here don't expire.

Three things set it apart day to day:

• Human and bot clicks are reported separately. Most shorteners report raw click totals that quietly include crawlers and link-preview bots, so reported traffic reads higher than the real audience. Separating them means the numbers can be trusted for attribution.
• Destinations stay editable after a link is published. A link already printed on packaging or posted to social can be repointed without reissuing it.
• A permanent free tier, not a trial - 30 links a month, one branded domain, links that never expire.

DevStack.co.nz's answer

DevStack is an easy choice because it's free, requires no sign-up, and lets you customise your own toolkit by pinning the resources you use most often in whatever order works for you.

You can also save tools you don't use regularly but don't want to forget. Instead of keeping links scattered across bookmarks, emails, spreadsheets and notes, DevStack gives you one place for the property development tools and resources you actually use.

TinyURL's answer:

Three practical reasons, depending on what you need:

• You want attribution you can trust. Analytics cover clicks over time, referrer, geography, device, OS, browser and language, retained for two years, with bot traffic separated out.
• You want your own brand on the link. Bring your own domain or subdomain on any plan, with up to three branded domains on paid tiers.
• You want links that outlive the campaign. Twenty-four years of continuous operation, and a free tier that doesn't expire, matter when a link is printed on something you can't reprint.

Pricing starts free and goes to $9/month billed annually ($11 month-to-month) for 125 links a month with unlimited tracked clicks. Bulk plans handle 50,000 links a month for agencies and high-volume senders, and there's a REST API for automating the whole lifecycle.

DevStack.co.nz's answer

DevStack is primarily designed for people working in property development, including property developers, development managers and other property professionals in Auckland and across New Zealand.

However, you don't need to be a professional developer to find it useful. Property owners, investors and anyone researching their next property purchase can use DevStack to learn about the tools, data and resources available to help them make better-informed property decisions.

TinyURL's answer:

• Marketing teams running campaigns across several channels who need per-link attribution rather than a single lumped traffic figure
• Social media managers and creators working inside character limits, who want a branded link rather than a generic one
• Agencies managing links for multiple clients, each on its own branded domain
• Developers automating link creation and analytics through the REST API
• Enterprises needing SLA-backed uptime and compliance support
• Educational Institutions
• The healthcare industry

It also has a long tail of individual users who simply need a link shortened, which the free tier covers without an account upgrade.

DevStack.co.nz's answer

My background started with a university property degree, a BProp, followed by property valuations, development management, managing a subcontracting business, and eventually returning to property development.

Throughout that time, I used many of these tools constantly and realised I had links saved all over my computer. They were in email drafts, spreadsheets, notes, bookmarks and sticky notes. I wanted one consistent place I could trust to keep the tools I use, as well as the ones I only need occasionally but don't want to forget.

We're fortunate in Auckland to have a huge amount of property and development information readily available. The problem is that it can take some effort to find and extract it. DevStack grew from my own need to make that process easier.

TinyURL's answer:

Kevin Gilbertson, a web developer, launched TinyURL in January 2002 so he could link directly to newsgroup postings, which at the time had long and unwieldy addresses. It was the first notable URL shortening service, and it arrived years before shortening became a category.

Twitter used TinyURL as its default shortener until May 2009, which put it in front of a mass audience during the period when character limits made short links essential.

Since then it's grown from a single-purpose utility into a link management platform: branded domains, click analytics with two years of retained history, editable destinations, QR codes, bulk creation and a REST API. It now serves over 4.4 million registered users and has created billions of links.

DevStack.co.nz's answer

None of the third-party tools listed on DevStack are my own. DevStack itself started as a side project while I was learning to build websites and improve SEO for my own businesses.

What started as a simple place to organise the property development tools I use every day gradually became a passion project. I found it so useful in my own work that I decided to make it available to other property developers and property professionals in New Zealand.

TinyURL's answer:

TinyURL is a cloud-hosted web application, accessible from any browser with no install. Its public interface is a REST API (v2.4.2) published as an OpenAPI 3.0 specification and authenticated with bearer tokens, covering link creation, editing, destination changes, analytics retrieval and bulk batch processing.

DevStack.co.nz's answer

DevStack is free to use, so rather than traditional customers, its users include property developers, builder-developers, property professionals, investors and property owners looking for better information and resources.

It's particularly useful for people involved in Auckland property development who want to understand what tools are available and how they can use them in real projects.

I also share practical examples of how I use AI in property development and construction. For developers and builder-developers who want to go further, I offer a separate guide covering 13 areas where I currently use AI to save time, improve workflows and get more from the information available to us in New Zealand.

TinyURL's answer:

Twitter used TinyURL as its default URL shortener until May 2009.