Software Alternatives & Reviews

Shlink VS Bitly

Compare Shlink VS Bitly and see what are their differences

Shlink logo Shlink

A self-hosted URL shortener

Bitly logo Bitly

Get the most out of your social and online marketing efforts. Own, understand and activate your best audience through the power of the link with Bitly Enterprise.
  • Shlink Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-04-08
  • Bitly Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-18

Shlink videos

2020 Wine Reviews: Shlink Haus Wines

Bitly videos

Bitly Review

More videos:

  • Review - Why I Moved From Bitly To Rebrandly For URL Shortner
  • Review - What is Bitly.com?

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Shlink and Bitly)
Link Management
14 14%
86% 86
URL Shortener
15 15%
85% 85
Branded URLs
15 15%
85% 85
Online Services
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Shlink and Bitly

Shlink Reviews

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Bitly Reviews

  1. Bitly Review - Amazing Experience.

    Bitly is a URL shortening service and a link management platform. The company Bitly, Inc., was established in 2008. It is privately held and based in New York City. Bitly shortens 600 million links per month, for social networking, SMS, and email. Bitly makes money by charging for access to aggregate data created because of many people using the shortened URLs.

    The Bitly URL shortening service became popular on Twitter after it became the default URL shortening service on the website on May 6, 2009. It was subsequently replaced by Twitter's own t.co service.

    The company uses HTTP 301 redirects for its links. The shortcuts are intended to be permanent and cannot be changed once they are created. URLs that are shortened with the bitly service use the bit.ly domain or any other generic domain that the service offers.

    🏁 Competitors: Rebrandly, TinyURL, Polr

07 Best Bitly Alternative You Will Only Need (FREE)
We have reached the end of the alternatives to Bitly. There are a few reasons you might be looking for an alternative to Bitly, as I mentioned at the post’s start. Maybe you’re looking for more features or fewer restrictions. Or maybe you’re just looking for something different. Whatever the reason, there are plenty of alternatives to Bitly out there.
11 Best Bitly Alternatives & Similar URL Shorteners
Among the alternatives to Bitly on the market, Shorby is one of the best you could have. Other than shortening your website address, you can use the website on your Instagram bio. It means that this platform allows you to gather the important links in one place.
112 Best Chrome Extensions You Should Try (2021 List)
Bitly is one of the best URL shorteners to customize and shrink long links into shorter attractive looking links. If you do social media marketing, links are an internal part of your campaigns. You should make sure that you are using URL shorteners to increase click-through rates. How to use Bitly Chrome extension? Once you install it, connect the extension to the Bitly...
Top 8 Alternatives of Bit.Ly in 2023
Hence this was all about the top 8 alternatives of Bit.ly in the year 2023. Due to a few issues such as affordability, link counting restrictions, and technical glitches, Bit.ly often annoys its users while hanging. You can go for any of the above-mentioned alternatives of Bit.ly to ensure smooth functioning.
The 8 Best Alternatives to Google URL Shortener
Bitly is a full-service, business-grade URL shortener. If your needs are modest, you can use it anonymously to shorten long URLs and be on your way. But Bitly really stands out for its business offering. Part of the appeal is that Bitly is so simple and easy to use. It has a comprehensive dashboard where you can track over 20 real-time data points, including the location of...
Source: zapier.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Bitly should be more popular than Shlink. It has been mentiond 18 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Shlink mentions (12)

  • Copying microsofts aka.ms links with our internal Dns to help stop phishing
    IF you just want to setup an internal link shortener, there is software out there for it. We do it at my company. The best one I've found is Shlink: https://shlink.io/. Source: 10 months ago
  • Shlink CLI issue
    I have just set up shlink.io via /r/portainer and docker-compose. Now I have tried opening the CLI to generate an API key which I need for the shlink web interface but unfortunately it closes in a fraction of a second after bin/cli, showing all available arguments. Source: 11 months ago
  • Permanent URL to file possible?
    Are you looking for stable HTTP/S URLs that you can publish for others to access? One solution to that might be to purchase your own domain and host a little redirector service that bounces the consumer to the real, currently active, cloud URL. Something like https://shlink.io/ might work (but I’ve not used it, and that’s just a suggestion not a recommendation!). Source: about 1 year ago
  • F/OSS Spotlight: 🔗 Shlink
    Need to post some links in a small amount of space? You're going to want Shlink (code). - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Forwarding source IP from HAProxy?
    I'm working on setting up Shlink, a self-hosted URL shortening service. I've got it set up in docker and it's working, but now I want to set up a reverse proxy for it. I use HAProxy on pfSense, but in order to make it work, the documentation states that I need to make sure the "consumer's IP address, and the requests domain, are forwarded from the proxy". Source: over 1 year ago
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Bitly mentions (18)

  • Testing Svelte on the job
    The app I built was to function as the admin side of a URL shortener (something like bit.ly) so that one of our teams can convert long bookmarks into more shareable links so we can generate QR codes that another department on our team would use in their day-to-day tasks. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Bit.ly no longer offers URL shortening without account
    I have been using https://bitly.com and I was always able to shorten a link without account but now I am forced to create an account. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • How to Add a Link to Instagram Bio
    Bitly is one of the most popular URL shorteners on the market that allows you to create short links for free with minimum steps required from you. To shorten your URL, you only need to register, and then you're free to create a limitless amount of links. Whenever you use Bitly, you automatically create a tracking and analysis page for this link. Source: over 1 year ago
  • System Design: The complete course
    Let's design a URL shortener, similar to services like Bitly, TinyURL. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Creating a URL Shortener service in Python Django
    URL shorteners have become a popular service on the web. Companies like bitly are making great fortunes from them. But sometimes when you want a custom URL you get to pay for the service. So in this tutorial I am going to show you how to build a URL shortener service in Django. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Shlink and Bitly, you can also consider the following products

Polr - An open source URL shortener. A great non-profit and free alternative to bit.ly, TinyURL, or goo.gl.

TinyURL - Are you sick of posting URLs in emails only to have it break when sent causing the recipient to...

YOURLS - YOURLS is a website that contains all the tools you need to create and launch your very own URL shortener. URL shorteners like bitly or TinyURL are fine for public use, but they offer limited options in terms of URL customization.

Lstu - A nice and open source url shortener. You can use it as service or install it on your own server.

Rebrandly - Rebrandly is the easiest way to create, share and manage branded links.

Kutt.it - Kutt.it is a free and open source URL shortener with custom domains and stats.