Short.io alternatives: what to use when clicks have to show revenue

The right Short.io alternative depends on why you are leaving. If its limits are the problem, a bigger or cheaper shortener fixes that.

If the problem is revenue per link, you need a tool that reads your payment processor, and Short.io fires conversions from a browser page with no connection to one.

TrackRev reads Stripe and 5 other billing systems from $29/month, and Dub reads Stripe from its $90/month Business plan.

We built TrackRev for exactly this: affiliate software for indie hackers and small SaaS teams, with link tracking and revenue attribution built in, so every link reports the revenue it brings in.

For the two-way version, see Short.io vs TrackRev or the comparison page.

What does Short.io cost and where do its limits sit?

Short.io costs $0 on Free, $5 on Hobby, $18 on Pro, $48 on Team and $148 on Enterprise, and the Free plan already covers 5 domains.

Short.io's pricing page sells five plans, takes 17% off annual billing and gives every paid plan a 7-day trial. Its homepage claims 1.2 million users and more than 100 billion clicks tracked.

The first limit to bite on a subscription launch is the conversion cap, 50 a month on Free and 200 on Hobby, and in our comparison no other cap sits that low.

Sources: short.io/pricing

On Free, detailed statistics cover 50,000 tracked clicks a month. Past that Short.io keeps collecting data but restricts what you can see, and the links keep redirecting until you upgrade.

Why do teams leave Short.io?

Teams leave Short.io when a feature sits one plan higher than the budget.

Country targeting starts on Hobby at $5, password protection, expiration and cloaking on Pro at $18, and city or region targeting and mobile deep links only on Team at $48.

One deep link for an app campaign therefore costs $30/month more than Pro. Domain caps rise the same way: 5 on Free, 7 on Hobby, 10 on Pro and 50 on Team.

Pro allows 10,000 API or bulk links a year, about 27 a day, at 50 requests per second like every plan.

A product that creates a link per signup hits that ceiling at 27 signups a day, and Team's 100,000 a year allows about 274.

Short.io's storage policy keeps click-stream data for 1 year and aggregated statistics for 26 months, so a customer acquired 18 months ago has no click-level record left to join to a charge.

Sources: docs.short.io/articles

Can Short.io track revenue?

Short.io does track conversions, which are events your own page reports with an optional value. Its Free plan allows 50 a month and its Hobby plan 200.

Switch conversion tracking on for a domain and Short.io appends a clid parameter to each destination URL.

Your page captures it with the Short.io browser SDK and reports an event back, such as a signup or purchase, with an optional value. Results appear per link and in a Conversion Stream panel.

The flow needs 3 pieces: the domain setting, the clid parameter and the browser script. The docs example reports a $45.99 purchase from 1 button.

1<button data-shortio-conversion="purchase" data-shortio-conversion-value="45.99">purchase</button>2 3<script type="module">4  import { observeConversions } from "https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@short.io/client-browser/dist/index.esm.js";5  observeConversions({ domain: "branded-domain-name" });6</script>

Sources: docs.short.io/articles · docs.short.io/articles

Why do renewals escape Short.io conversion tracking?

Short.io conversion tracking has gaps for a subscription business. The event fires while a visitor sits on a page, so renewals never produce one.

A $39 plan kept for a year is $468: the signup page can report the first $39, and the other 11 charges, $429 in total, land on Stripe's schedule with nobody on a page.

Refunds and plan changes stay invisible for the same reason, and a campaign that sells 300 plans in a month overruns Hobby's 200 conversions.

Short.io's integrations page names Zapier, Make, Segment, Google Analytics, Meta Pixel and AdRoll among its native options, and no payment processor. You can pass the clid through checkout and fire the event from your Stripe Checkout success page.

That works for one product with one-time purchases and stops working once money arrives after the visit.

Sources: short.io/integrations

Which tool is cheapest for revenue tracking?

Does TrackRev show revenue per link?

TrackRev is SaaS affiliate software with 0% fees and no limit on tracked revenue on either plan.

A link on your own domain redirects through its server, which records the click, and a first-party pixel on your site binds the visitor to an email at signup or checkout.

An hourly sync reads Stripe with a read-only restricted key, matches each paid charge to that email, and walks back to the click that started the journey.

Paddle Billing, Polar, Lemon Squeezy, Creem and Dodo Payments orders are credited to channels too, and the Stripe integration page and attributing Stripe revenue to marketing channels explain the join in full.

How do TrackRev renewals, refunds and plans work?

Renewals credit the 1 original click for all 12 monthly charges of a year, and a refunded or disputed charge drops its revenue on the next sync, so a channel's total follows what you keep.

Indie covers 1 workspace and 1 tracked domain for $348 over 12 months, and TrackRev Growth, at $299 a year, covers up to 10 of each. Paid plans include an affiliate program on the same data.

A custom tracking domain takes one CNAME to cname.trackrev.io and gets automatic SSL. The free plan covers 50 links and 1,000 events a month for link tracking only, and revenue figures need Indie.

What does Dub offer instead?

Dub's link plans run Free, Pro at $30 (just $1 above TrackRev Indie) and Business at $90, with a 14-day trial on the paid ones. Pro has 50,000 tracked events, 10 custom domains and 1 year of analytics history.

Business raises that to 250,000 events, 3 years and 100 custom domains, and it is the first plan with conversion tracking and A/B testing.

In Dub's conversion docs, a lead event such as a signup fixes which link the customer came from. Later sales attach to that link through native Stripe and Shopify integrations or the POST /track/sale endpoint.

That is link-level revenue, for $61/month more than TrackRev Indie. Pick Dub for geo targeting and split tests, or when Shopify runs your checkout. Dub.co vs TrackRev goes deeper.

Sources: dub.co/pricing · dub.co/docs

Does Bitly track revenue?

Bitly is a link shortener with QR codes and landing pages, and it lists no revenue tracking. Bitly's pricing page puts Core at $10 on annual billing only, with 100 links a month and 30 days of click data.

Growth is $35, or $29 on annual billing, with 500 links a month, 4 months of click and scan data, a complimentary custom domain and bulk creation of 100 links per upload.

Premium is $199 on annual billing and adds 3,000 links a month and a year of data. No tier mentions conversion or revenue tracking. Pick Bitly when QR codes and landing pages matter more than conversion data.

Sources: bitly.com/pages

What do 12 months cost on each plan?

Why do a click ranking and a revenue ranking disagree?

How do you move links without breaking printed ones?

Moving links starts with an export. Short.io's pricing FAQ says you can export all your links for free by asking support.

Raw click data exports automatically to S3 only on Enterprise at $148, so decide what history you need before you downgrade.

Build a CSV with a destination URL and a channel on each row and keep the slugs, because TrackRev honors the slug you give it and bulk import takes up to 500 rows per upload.

Check the import, then repoint your branded domain's CNAME to cname.trackrev.io and verify it in the dashboard.

Any slug you skipped stops resolving once the record moves, and Short.io serves the old links until then, so cancel it last, after 1 full billing cycle of parallel running.

When is Short.io still the better pick?

Short.io is still the better pick when a revenue tool would be the wrong replacement. In our comparison, these six cases favor Short.io:

• Country targeting from Hobby and city or region targeting from Team, neither of which TrackRev has.
• A/B testing and mobile targeting on every plan, Free included.
• A free plan with 5 domains and 50,000 tracked clicks, against 50 links on TrackRev's.
• Team workspaces with unlimited users, 50 domains and a 99.9% uptime SLA at $48.
• Zapier and Make automations, where TrackRev has webhooks and no Zapier app.
• Custom short links in Google Ads, since Short.io became a Google certified click tracker on December 11, 2024.

Sources: docs.short.io/changelog

If none of that applies and revenue per link is the missing piece, then in our comparison TrackRev Indie is $29 a month for 1 site and includes link tracking, revenue figures and the affiliate program.