Frequently Asked Questions

ShortlyLink is a smart URL shortener and link-management platform built for affiliate marketers. It turns long affiliate and campaign URLs into short, branded, trackable links and adds real-time click analytics, geo and A/B redirect targeting, conversion and revenue tracking, bot and fraud protection, styled QR codes, and link-in-bio pages.

Yes. ShortlyLink is currently in beta with a free plan and a limited number of spots, and you can create your first tracked short link in under a minute without a credit card.

ShortlyLink is designed for affiliate marketers, media buyers, agencies, and creators who need accurate attribution on every click — including conversion tracking, bot filtering, and campaign-level reporting — rather than just a plain link shortener.

ShortlyLink tracks conversions two ways: server-to-server postback URLs that affiliate networks call with a click ID, amount, and status, and a pixel you place on your own thank-you page. Each redirect appends a click ID, an expiry, and an HMAC signature to your destination; conversions are validated against that signature (valid for 24 hours) and deduplicated by click ID, so forged or double-counted conversions are rejected. Results appear in a revenue dashboard with confirmed, pending, and rejected states.

Yes. A single ShortlyLink short link resolves through a priority chain: geo rules by country, then weighted URL rotation, then an A/B test, then a mobile deep link into your iOS or Android app, and finally the default destination URL. Each stage only runs if an earlier one has not already chosen a destination, so weighted rotation and A/B testing are mutually exclusive on the same link.

ShortlyLink auto-generates an 8-character short code, or you can claim a custom branded back-half of 3 to 50 characters using letters, numbers, hyphens, and underscores. Reserved words are blocked and every code must be unique. Short-code lookups are case-insensitive.

Yes. ShortlyLink supports bulk import of up to 500 links per request, with per-row error reporting and a shared campaign, tags, domain, expiry, and UTM parameters applied across the batch.

Yes. You can add your own domain, verify it with a DNS TXT record, and assign it per link. By default short links are served from the branded domain go.shortlylink.com with fast, low-latency redirects.

For every click ShortlyLink captures whether the visitor is unique, IP-derived geography (country, region, and city), device, browser, and operating system, referrer, UTM parameters, the traffic source (direct link, QR scan, or bio tap), a bot flag, a fraud score, and any A/B test variant. Clicks stream into custom dashboards in real time, and you can export them as CSV or JSON.

No. ShortlyLink does not use browser cookies or local storage for click tracking. Unique visitors are identified with a one-way, server-side fingerprint hash that cannot be reversed to reveal the original IP or user agent, which keeps click tracking privacy-friendly.

Every click is scored from 0 to 100 using user-agent and fingerprint analysis, header checks, rapid-click velocity (such as 8 clicks within 10 seconds), and geo "impossible travel" detection, then classified as normal, log, challenge, or block. Blocked and challenged traffic is filtered out of your statistics automatically, and an anomaly job runs every five minutes to alert you to traffic spikes and bot surges.

Yes. Each link can activate at a start date, auto-expire at an end date, and be enabled or disabled on demand. You can also gate a link behind a password using an unlock page, and the password is never exposed in the URL.

Yes. You can set iOS and Android deep-link targets on a link with a web fallback, and ShortlyLink sends mobile visitors straight into your app while everyone else follows the normal destination. Deep linking runs after geo, rotation, and A/B targeting in the redirect chain.

Yes. ShortlyLink generates styled, scannable QR codes with optional center logos, exportable as PNG, SVG, JPEG, or print-ready PDF, with QR scans counted separately from clicks. It also lets you publish up to 25 link-in-bio pages at /@username, along with pre-sell bridge pages and a digital business card that downloads as a vCard.

Yes. ShortlyLink provides a public REST API at /api/v1 authenticated with an x-api-key header, with endpoints to list, create, get stats for, and delete links. It also sends HMAC-signed, SSRF-guarded webhooks for click, conversion, bot-detected, link-expired, and anomaly events, plus Slack alerts and a /shortly slash command.

ShortlyLink supports inviting members to a team with admin, editor, and viewer roles. During the current beta, the most reliable way for an agency or team to separate work is a shared operator account that uses campaigns and tags as the boundary between clients, which keeps reporting clean and avoids orphaned links.

You can export clicks, conversions, campaigns, and aggregated reports as CSV or JSON. Exports return up to 10,000 rows by default and a maximum of 100,000, and any truncation is clearly announced in the file and its headers so your data is never silently cut off.

ShortlyLink focuses on affiliate and performance marketing rather than general link shortening. Alongside branded short links it includes conversion and revenue tracking with signed postbacks, geo and A/B redirect targeting, per-click bot and fraud scoring, and campaign-level analytics — features aimed at attributing revenue, not just counting clicks.