Overall experience is good and I use bit.ly daily for productivity.
Pros
Not only URL shortner, it performs and gives analytics for each shortnened URL. Not only that, it gives the location of the click performed on the URL. Thus it is a complete suite for URL tracking. For example: you have a resume hosted on google drive, you can shorten the URL of the long google drive address for resume and share the shortened URL to employers. Thus you can track the click too.
Cons
BITly helps in achieving all the requirements you expect from a URL shortner. I don't have any dislikes for the same. Still they can update their android application opening time. It takes some time to load the application on smartphones.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 9/10
Excellent software tool. Simple, helpful, and a key tool for any savvy marketer.
Pros
We use bitly in all kinds of contexts. Putting long links in Youtube descriptions, for example, takes up way too much space, so using bitly is perfect--and a better experience for the user. We've also used it in the classroom when teaching and training. We give the students a bitly link on the white-board to go to for key online information or to review the training. Makes things easier for our clients and us!
Cons
The links seem to be case sensitive, which isn't made clear when you set the links up. Be aware of this when you create links people may need to type into their phone/laptop (like links you put on physical marketing materials). People will probably not type in the various capital letters you put in your link and your link may not work. All that said, it's very simple and works. And it's free!--for most of the basic stuff, anyway. Using "bitly" may not always be a great branding option for your link needs--but that's where the paid version will help you create branded links to your heart's content.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 10/10
Bitly is the best alternative to goo.gl that we have found. We have been using it regularly since over 2 years. I will surely recommend it to everyone. The free plan is mostly enough.
Pros
We used to have goo.gl as our link shortening service, and after its shut down, we moved over to Bitly.
- Just put in your link and it will generate a new short link, its that easy.
- Link customization! Its one of the best features of this service.
- Top notch analytics provided by Bitly, organized and modern clean interface.
- You can use your own short domain with Bitly, this is a very unique service that we surely will use in the near future.
Cons
There are a lot of limitations in the free plan. Even the basic plan is a little limiting. The cost is very high at $300 a month, the monthly Premium package is too expensive. There are often glitches here and there.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 10/10
I use Bitly software to solve the business problem of shortening the product or category landing page links, tracking their clicks and eventually, use those insights to optimize customer experience and drive higher sales by reducing user experience or content issues. For example: if a customer engages with our voice assistant tool to shop and is not able to find a product on our website, we want to help that customer using an auto generated link to that product and track if clicking that link made that customer more satisfied. So, benefit of Bitly is it improves customer engagement through shortened landing page links and allows us to track their experience on our site. Hence, helping us improve ROI of our online business.
Pros
I use Bitly software to shorten product and category links which have Google Analytics tracking tags appended to them. So, when the marketing team includes those links in chatbot, customers see a shortened version of the links with the tags hidden. This strategy ensures links are user friendly. And at the same time, enabled for tracking so I can report on which link drove the most clicks as well as who those engaged customers were. Ultimately, using Bitly allows my marketing team to improve customer engagement and retarget those customers to drive higher conversions - a simple recipe for success. I also use Bitly analytics if for some reason Google Analytics UTM tags don't work. So, a nice backup plan.
Cons
Couple of Bitly features are needing improvement. First, the ability to customize the landing page website link I am trying to shorten and include in chatbot. So, instead of showing a random string of characters in the shortened link, I would like to show a name of the page title clarifying what product or category that page is about. I feel this feature would drive higher click-through rate from customers who see that custom link. Secondly, the ability to integrate Bitly click analytics with UTM session activity and customer id. So, I can see an end-to-end experience of customers from link click to landing to buying a product or researching it. These holistic insights would help my marketing team to improve design and content.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 7/10
My experience with Bitly has been good, but the pricing model has to be updated to satisfy small users' necessities.
Pros
Bitly is a powerful and easy tool to use. The free version is already enough for base users, but it doesn't offer flexibility like the premium one. I like the capability to personalize each link and have real-time analytics feedback in the premium version. Moreover, I can connect Bitly with third-party apps for boosting productivity.
Cons
One of the main cons of Bitly is the price for the basic premium version. Even the amount of links that can be created is limited to just 1.5k. It would be great to have a different pricing level based on the number of links that can be created.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 7/10
Bitly offers a free version. Paid plans include monthly and annual subscriptions, details of which are outlined below:
Free - $0
Basic - $35/month or $29/month (billed annually)
Premium - $300/month or $199/month (billed annually)
Customized - details on request