Best URL Shortener Software of 2026

Software Applications for URL Shortener Software

If you work in social media marketing, you might have noticed that links are quite cumbersome. They can get lengthy, complicated, and confusing. Not to mention, if you are reaching out to a large audience to share information, you never want links to divert your efforts. This is where URL shorteners come in handy.

URL shorteners make links shorter, simpler, and redirect to the desired web page. These tools also help you track the number of clicks, their location and time, and recognize a brand.

This guide will give you an overview of the URL shortener software landscape so that you can better understand which choice is right for your organization.

Here’s what we'll cover:

• What is URL shortener software?

• Common features of URL shortener software

• What type of buyer are you?

• Benefits of URL shortener software

• Key considerations

What is URL shortener software?

URL shorteners are web-based apps that allow you to simplify long URLs into shorter ones. The short links are simpler and redirect you to a specific website. These applications are also used to shorten URLs so that they fit the character limit on different social media apps such as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and others.

In addition to creating shorter links, this software allows for custom branded or vanity links, track clicks to the links, link retargeting, and more.

A view of Campaign Analytics in Bitly (Source)

Common features of URL shortener software

Here are some common features in URL shortener software solutions.

What type of buyer are you?

Before evaluating URL shortener software, it’s helpful to consider your type of business and social media marketing experience. We believe that most buyers fall into one of the following two categories:

• Small local business: A small local business, or those just starting to grow their personal social channel, may not yet need the robust functionality of a URL shortener tool but only need the most basic functionality to share a handful of links. Small businesses may want to consider starting with free options, later combining that with paid versions as they scale.

• Medium to large business: Larger businesses, and/or those with well-developed social media marketing operations, should consider a paid URL shortener solution. These better support organizations with more complex, diverse campaigns, link tracking and google analytics, or social media platform integration.

Benefits of URL shortener software

• Link analytics: The software offers capabilities to help you track the link’s performance in order to gain a better understanding of content performance. For example, this includes the number of link clicks that can reflect your audience reach. These insights help you measure the effectiveness of your posts and marketing efforts.

• Post shares: The most significant advantage of URL shortener tools is the ability to easily share shorter links for readers to click, copy, and share in their own posts. As a result, your content gains more organic traffic on social media networks.

• Brand recognition: With URL shortener software, you can create custom URLs with a brand’s product or service name. This will help improve the brand visibility as potential customers, as well as the regular ones, can also share the links with the brand name.

Key considerations

It’s important to keep these considerations in mind when deciding which tool is right for you:

• Evaluate your needs before choosing a tool: Before you set out to explore options on the market, make a detailed list of the specific requirements you want the software to fulfill. For example, a customer service representative may not want to share long URL addresses on live chat as they may want to improve customer efficiency. This will help you identify the tool that provides the features that match your business needs.

• Link branding: Read reviews of different platforms to get an idea of how difficult it will be to customize domains and share on social media. You can also demo potential platforms to get a sense of which one will be easiest to use.

• Budget: How many people will use the URL shortener software? Will you be generating a dozen links in a month, or just one? Do you expect a high amount of traffic to these links? The answer to each of these questions is directly proportional to how much you are willing to spend on the URL shortening platform.

Note: The applications selected in this article are examples to show a feature in context and are not intended as endorsements or recommendations. They have been obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time of publication.