Bitly Review

PROS: Bitly's tracking stats are excellent. It provides an easy to see overview of what's being clicked and where. The Chrome extension is simple and effective to use as well. We use Bundles a lot and they are very helpful. I love that I can use branded URLs and custom links, as they make tracking things very easy.

CONS: I'd like to see a little more customization on making shortlinks, like being to append automatically Google Analytics parameters to links to our own domains. Their mobile app needs a bit of work too. In particular, I would like to be able to do social sharing from my mobile device as well

PROS: Bitly has been around for some time now and my impression of it is that it is a business ready for the future. They offered shortened URL's as a service out of the box, as well as providing tagging and measuring of these links so you could have immediate analytics as to how you are engaging through the link. With their new interface, I like that you really get control over when, where and how many times your links have been used. Its mobile app provides a lot of convenience and its API is very easy to use for more powerful uses. And of course, I get set a personalized brand for the short URL's that I share.

CONS: It is frustrating to find a short URL you can use that somewhat resembles your brand name. It's almost impossible now to find 2-character domain names. Finding a 3-character domain is tricky too, but with some creativity you can still find some out there.

PROS: For such a simple tool, bitly does a great service in addressing the need to get URLs shortened, especially in some social networking sites with character limits or even just for the sake of good presentation. You also get to save those shortened URLs for future use, bookmark or even share them. The integration with Chrome browser allows me to just simply copy and paste a URL link for easy converstion to smaller URL.

CONS: For a simple solution, it does what it is supposed to. Nothing to dislike about that.

PROS: Bitly makes it incredibly easy to turn those long, ugly URLs into simple, shareable links that we use for social content. One of the better features is its ability to look historically at what links performed best, since you can view your Bitly history anytime, and re-use them, which makes building an ongoing social content calendar much easier. Though I'm not a fan of them myself, you can also create QR codes with your Bitly links, and clicks are aggregated with your URL data. You can even create your own shortened links too.

CONS: The one major dislike I have is that at any time, a competitor can just add a "+" to the end of any of my Bitly links and see its performance data. I wish there was a way to make that information private.

PROS: I have used bitly on two fronts: as a user needing to shorten links for personal and work user and as an analyst needing to track the clickthroughs for those links. It does all of that in a clear way and it is a perfect companion to any social/digital strategy. It is an effective tool that you can use even if you don't have any budget for digital marketing efforts.

CONS: I don't have any issues with it. it would be nice though to have an Android app in the same way as I already have one on my iPhone. However, that isn't a big dealbreaker for me.

PROS: Bitly provides a fully functional account for free. Of course you can opt to pay for an upgrade, but in my personal experience, the free account works just as well for our needs. It provides real time metrics that provides us the stats of links clicked, which has been very useful. They even have an API in several languages. And if you are a web developer, you will have a lot of fun since you will be able to measure custom events.

CONS: This is one tool where there is nothing to dislike about. A few months ago they didn't provide a feature to customize the URL so you just had to stick with their random alpha-numeric URL. But now, you can add a nice SEO-based and user friendly custom URL so at least that need of ours was addressed.

PROS: I really like the fact that bitly free accounts are fully functional, and that is one of the most important aspects of it. I've been using it for years to shorten and track my links, especially in the music business where you need to have easy to remember short links to create effective campaigns. The daily metrics and stats provided real time by the tool are awesome to have as well.

CONS: Nothing negative in particular at the moment. They've introduced a lot of features since it was launched and they were all great to have. I guess the guys at Bitly knows well how to keep customers happy with the service.

PROS: Bitly is great and easy to use. It's free and it does the job of shortening links quite well. In addition, the dashboard is great and it allows you to see how many people click on the link you shared, which is a very hand feature.

CONS: The only thing I do not like is that when it counts the number of clicks to a link, it includes links from other posts unless you create a new link.

PROS: I love that you can just go on the website and just paste your link in the text box and it will shorten the link automatically. So easy! And if you wanted an account on bitly software, it's completely free to sign up. The website's layout is clean and simple, which I love because it makes it so easy to navigate and use the site.

CONS: There's nothing to dislike about it. But maybe I haven't used it long enough.

PROS: I love that I can use this product in tandem with Google's URL Builder to create trackable links that don't take up your entire screen. What's more, it has surprisingly robust analytics for being a free service. I also appreciate that it allows customization of short links so they look more branded or on-message.

CONS: The only complaint I have is that getting to the analytics isn't intuitive as it should be. When you're on the dashboard you have to click an "i" to get a snapshot of your analytics, but to get to the full page you have to click a different "i" that looks more like a decoration than a link where I can get more information. I wish they'd fix that, though it's not something that would prevent me from recommending this tool.

PROS: Bitly does a good job of setting itself apart from the rest of the URL shorteners out there by focusing on analytics. It allows the user to spread links with ease while also being able to track how many people have clicked through the link. The bit.ly is also shorter than many other URL shorteners and is easier to remember and less effort to type. At the same time, it is very simple and aesthetically pleasing user interface.

CONS: Sadly, there is no first-party Android or Windows Mobile application available. There are however third-party apps but for a service this mature this is disappointing. Also, if bitly ever gets shut down, all previously shared shortened links would end up being broken.

PROS: Bitly can turn long, tracking URLs easily into simple, shareable links that can be used for social content. What's more, it can track and analyze the effectiveness of the links you use for social campaigns. The website even provides tools to view statistics related to the users that click on the generated links.

CONS: The only issue with a link shortner is not really related to the service. It's just that some people are afraid to click on the bitly-shortened link since they won't be able to know where the link leads to. You may end up losing some customers because of this.