URL shortener with analytics

What a URL shortener with analytics actually gives you

A URL shortener is a redirect. You paste a long URL into a form, it gives you a short URL back, the short URL 302s to the long one. A shortener with analytics also logs every visit that touches the redirect, so you can see traffic on the short URL without any instrumentation on the destination page. This is the difference between a shortener and a link management tool.

Most shorteners cap the free plan at a handful of links per month and gate the analytics behind a paid tier. The obvious alternatives (Bitly, TinyURL, is.gd) fit that description. Some add an interstitial redirect page on the free plan, which quietly loses you clicks in exchange for the ad impression. linksync is the shortener that gives you the short URL, the analytics, and the platform breakdown on the free plan.

What you get with a linksync short URL

• A short URL you can rename. Every link at linksync.me slash L slash whatever auto-mints a code on creation and can be renamed once to something memorable. The slug is yours.
• Analytics without a dashboard connect step. The short URL is the analytics event. Every 302 through the redirect gets logged with the platform it came from, country, device, and (once you connect Stripe or drop the /s.js tracker) the session that follows the visitor onto your destination.
• Editable destination. The short URL stays the same forever. The URL it resolves to is editable from /app/links. Every share stays working when the destination moves.
• QR code included. The link detail page has a downloadable QR for the same short URL. Same tracking on scans as on taps.
• No interstitial. Every click 302s straight to the destination on every plan.

What the widget above shows

Paste any URL into the input. The widget renders what the linksync surface would look like for a shortened version of that URL: the short URL you would paste anywhere, an illustrative recent-clicks feed with platform labels, and a per-platform breakdown of clicks. Numbers are labeled Example because the real short URL is minted on sign-up.

The analytics you get without any setup

A traditional analytics stack (GA4, Plausible, Fathom) needs a tag on your destination page to see anything about a visitor. The linksync shortener runs the analytics on the redirect itself. That means:

• Clicks per short URL. How many times the short URL was hit.
• Platform per click. Which social sent the visitor. Detected automatically from the referrer and the in-app browser fingerprint of common social apps.
• Country per click.From Vercel's server-side geo header, which is more reliable than a browser-side IP lookup.
• Device per click. Mobile, tablet, or desktop.
• Last click at.Answers the "is this link still getting traffic?" question at a glance.

The analytics you get once you connect revenue

Pro unlocks two paths for tying the click to a purchase:

• Stripe Connect. Connect once from /app/integrations. Add metadata.ls_session to your Checkout Sessions. Every completed checkout attributes back to the click that started the session.
• /s.js tracker script. A first-party script under 2 kB you drop on your destination site. Same session survives to a window.linksync.track('purchase', ...) call on the confirmation page. Works with Shopify, WordPress, or any site you own; native Shopify and WordPress integrations are on the roadmap.

How this compares to Bitly and similar shorteners

Bitly caps the free plan at ten short links per month with a thirty-day analytics window and shows an interstitial page before the destination loads. linksync's free plan covers five tracked links with a seven-day window and no interstitial ever. Both give you a QR per link on the free plan. The differences that matter at scale: linksync classifies every click by platform automatically without UTMs, and follows the session onto the destination on Pro so revenue can attribute back to the click. See the full Bitly comparison for the row-by-row breakdown.