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Bitly

Bitly

Overview

What is Bitly?

Bitly (Bit.ly) is one of the most popular link shortening tools. The vendor says it shortens 1 billion links per month. The company is privately held, based in New York City, and was founded in 2008.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Bitly has proven to be an invaluable tool for users across various industries and roles. By shrinking and customizing long URLs, Bitly …
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The go-to URL shortner

9 out of 10
March 27, 2022
Incentivized
Not only super useful URL shortening - but the additional features like the ability to integrate webhooks or QR codes with the shortened …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

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Pricing

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Basic

$35

Cloud
per month

Free

Free

Cloud

Customized

Contact sales team

Cloud

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

bitly project demo

YouTube

Bitly Video Demo

YouTube

bitly demo

YouTube

CMPE281 Bitly Demo

YouTube

CMPE281 Bitly Project Demo

YouTube

READ DESCRIPTION! -- Review & Demo Of Switchy.io Tutorial -- Bitly And Clickmagick Alternative

YouTube
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Product Details

What is Bitly?

Bitly Video

Creating and managing powerful branded links is easy. Check out our tips for using popular Bitly features, including custom domains, redirects and Campaigns. Learn more at: bitly.is/resources Check out the Bitly blog: bitly.is/blog

Bitly Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Bitly (Bit.ly) is one of the most popular link shortening tools. The vendor says it shortens 1 billion links per month. The company is privately held, based in New York City, and was founded in 2008.

Reviewers rate Usability highest, with a score of 9.5.

The most common users of Bitly are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(130)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Bitly has proven to be an invaluable tool for users across various industries and roles. By shrinking and customizing long URLs, Bitly makes it easier for users to remember and share links. Marketing and communications departments have found Bitly particularly useful in shortening lengthy URLs for social media posts, helping them meet character limits and build trust in their posts. The analytics provided by Bitly have enabled users to track outbound clicks and gather data on how their content is performing beyond social media platforms. In addition, Bitly has been used in email marketing campaigns to implement shortened links required for XML product data coding. Users have also found Bitly helpful in shortening URLs on product labels, allowing customers to easily access product information. Overall, Bitly's ease of use, ability to create user-friendly URLs, and comprehensive analytics have made it a preferred choice for managing tracking links, creating UTM codes for marketing campaigns, and tracking click rates on social media posts. With features like webhooks and QR codes, Bitly has further enhanced its usefulness in shortening long URLs for digital brochures, event materials, and even offline sharing.

  • Customizable links: Many users have praised the ability to customize links in Bitly, as it allows them to easily manage and identify each link. This feature prevents their URLs from getting lost in a sea of indistinguishable links.
  • Analytics insights: The analytics feature in Bitly is highly valued by users, as it provides valuable insights for each link created. Users appreciate being able to see the number of clicks, the source of visitors, and trends in traffic behavior, which helps them make data-driven decisions.
  • Searchability: Users find Bitly's searchability feature beneficial, as it allows them to easily find links by using keywords. This saves users time and effort when retrieving links that were used months ago.

Confusing User Interface: Numerous users have reported encountering difficulties with the user interface of Bitly, stating that it is confusing and in need of improvement. This confusion hampers their ability to perform tasks effectively and diminishes their overall experience with the platform.

Limited Analytics: Many reviewers have expressed dissatisfaction with the analytics provided by Bitly, as they are limited in scope. Specifically, Bitly only offers 30 days of reports and does not track specific sources of traffic. As a result, users feel constrained in their ability to gather comprehensive data and make informed decisions based on it.

Lack of Customization Options: A significant number of users have highlighted the lack of customization options for Bitly links, particularly in the free version. The absence of robust customization features restricts users' ability to personalize and tailor their shortened URLs according to their preferences, limiting its usefulness for branding purposes.

Users commonly recommend the following when using Bitly:

  • Prioritize starting with the free version of Bitly before subscribing to assess its suitability and benefits.
  • Consider upgrading to a custom domain for a superior experience and a more professional appearance in social media posts and other online content.
  • Utilize Bitly for effective URL shortening, comprehensive analytics tracking, and valuable insights into external website links. This allows users to enhance their marketing efforts and effectively monitor link performance.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-3 of 3)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Leandro Chaves | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We make use of Bitly to accomplish two objectives: Having a short URL that could appear weird when the UTM parameters are included and also (and mainly) to have insights about the clicks like origin, device, etc.
  • Shortening URL
  • Giving insights about the clicks
  • Servers with 99.99999% uptime
  • Easy to create and manage URLs
  • Providing analytics of others shortened URLs
  • Insights about trending markets
  • Custom daily reports
Using its API lets devs provide a way to shorten URLs fast and securely. As a marketer, one can study the given insights to improve the strategy and also find issues.
  • Shortening URL
  • Insights about clicks
  • Friendly URLs
  • It helps increase ROI due to the fact that as a marketer one can improve marketing strategies
No tech skills are required to create short links
  • Creating short links
  • Copying links created
  • Read insights
Yes
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently I use bit.ly to track clicks and in-bound marketing leads for a few freelance jobs I'm leading. One is to track clicks to a website that is selling books (directly from author) - another is my wife's business (small clothing company, Etsy store), and for a music streaming company that hasn't launched yet -- to generate more names for our email listserv. I used it to show click trends over time and to review referrers.
  • Ease of use. It's so simple it needs almost no explanation as to what info it delivers or how to use it.
  • Accessible information. I love that you can see the info about any link by simply including a "+" at the end of the link.
  • Personalized/custom links. Creation of these makes it super easy to remember the most important links -- and doubles as branding as well!
  • It used to be that the app was not as user friendly as the desktop version, but that was remedied last year. It's great now.
  • Although fully transparent info for all links is good, it might be nice if you could make a link's info private. Note: this may be accessible at the enterprise level of service, which I am not currently subscribed to.
I have used bit.ly for my roles at NBA, VIACOM, BET and now with the small businesses I consult for. In my opinion, there is no better service for ease of use for shortening, and getting real time action oriented data for the links you generate.
  • TIME SAVER. Although at past jobs, I 've had access to robust analytics platforms - like omniture - they often take significant time, energy and effort to pull and analyze those metrics. Bitly is simple, real time and actionable.
  • Showing referrers is extremely important - so that with one shortened link you can still see where clickers came from - without having to create an individual link per platform.
I used to use tinyURL - they had no analytics, and no customization options. Also, the link generated after the / was longer and took up more room. Bit.ly is better than Hootsuite's OW.LY because it's free. :)
  • Generating a shortened link
  • Creating a custom link
  • Accessing the metrics associated with links
  • Reviewing analytics associated with links
  • I find no problems at all in the bitly platform.
Yes
Very well. There was a time wherein the mobile app lagged behind from a functionality perspective versus the desktop experience - however that has been augmented to be in line across the experiences.
There is no other service that I know of where the analytics are so easily accessed and understood - and the generation of links could not be any simpler. My 6 year old son understands how to read the metrics numbers, charts and how to make a custom link. You really cant be more user friendly than that!
Corinne Aherne | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In a social media capacity we use Bitly to shorten links so that we don't take up character space in our posts. Especially on Twitter, characters are at a premium, so being able to use Bitly to make our URLs the smallest number of characters possible allows us to deliver better messaging to our audience. Our entire marketing team also uses Bitly to shorten links for email blasts and other marketing materials. Bitly allows us to create more aesthetically pleasing content by eliminating long, cumbersome URLs. We also have opted to use a branded Bitly link, which further ties in our brand to everything we're doing.
  • First, the obvious - it shortens links. Not only that, but you can customize the links so that each one is easy to manage and identify. The customization aspect is definitely a huge plus since it's easy to start drowning in lots of indistinguishable URLs.
  • The analytics portion of Bitly is also great. You can garner insights for each link you create like how many clicks the URL has, where the visitors are coming from, and identify trends in traffic behavior.
  • Searchability - Bitly saves each link you create and you can easily search for them using key words. If you need to pull up a link you used months ago, all you have to do is search for it in Bitly and it will come up.
  • One thing I've noticed is that if you're shortening a link that you didn't create - for example shortening the link to a news article that you then want to share on Twitter - the analytics will continue to pull data from the original URL as a whole, and not just your unique Bitlink. It would be nice to be able to pull out the traffic that just my efforts are pulling to the site, and not every single source of traffic that site is getting.
I think in the realm of digital marketing and social media specifically, Bitly is a must. Short links equals more space to convey your message, and in an area where getting the message across concisely is crucial, a tool like Bitly is a life saver. Additionally, Bitly really makes it easy to keep track of and analyze the hundreds of links my team and I promote on a daily basis. We definitely lean on this tool to get our day to day work done.
  • Paying for a branded Bitly link makes all of our branding look tighter and more cohesive. We promote so many links a day and that extra level of customization is great for keeping a consistent look and feel to all of our content.
  • Link shortening and customizing - It's simple: Paste the link into a box, watch it get shortened, rename it, and move on.
  • Search - Just search for a keyword or tag in the search box and you're off. As easy as Google.
  • The analytics can be a bit clunky. I wouldn't 100% rely on Bitly's analytics to gain insights from your promotional efforts.
Yes, but I don't use it
Bitly is very simple to understand if you're using it for its basic function - link shortening. If you try to dig in a little further to look at analytics or do a really granular search of your links, you can hit some snags. It can take a little bit of getting used to, but the learning curve is minuscule.
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