If you’re making tough decisions about your company’s marketing tech stack, you’re likely evaluating Bitly and Rebrandly when considering your best link management solution. Link management is a key component of driving conversions and maximizing results, with 93% of marketers using branded links to increase reach and impact.
Bitly and Rebrandly are both well-established and widely recognized link shortener tools. Each of them offers intuitive functionality and a long list of helpful features. Which one should you choose? Or would a lesser-known option fit your needs better? We’ve created the following comparison of Bitly and Rebrandly, including the key features of each, to help you understand your options.
Note: The brands and examples discussed below were found during our online research for this article.
Rebrandly vs. Bitly: A quick summary
There are good reasons why both link management tools enjoy such widespread popularity. Each offers powerful features that give you several ways to use short links, helping elevate the look and reach of your marketing campaigns.
| Feature | Bitly | Rebrandly |
| Link Creation | Yes | Yes |
| Branded Domains | Yes | Yes |
| QR Codes | Yes | Yes |
| Analytics | Yes | Yes |
| Link-in-bio | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | Extensive + API | Basic + API |
| UI | Simple | Complicated |
| Mobile App | Yes | Yes |
| Support | Yes | Yes |
However, the tools have some differences, and each has its strengths. We’ll start the comparison with a quick overview of each tool.
Bitly: Best-in-class link management and analytics
Bitly goes beyond basic URL shortening—it’s a powerful link management platform that helps businesses boost visibility, track performance, and streamline the user experience. With Bitly, you can create branded links, manage QR Codes, and use Link-in-bio tools—all from one intuitive dashboard. Real-time analytics let you monitor clicks, top traffic sources, locations, and campaign performance across channels.
Whether you’re a large enterprise managing thousands of links or a small business looking to clean up long URLs, Bitly makes it easy to create, manage, and measure links that work harder. Ultimately, it’s best for teams seeking to optimize campaign performance and multichannel analytics.
Rebrandly: Well-equipped link shortener and custom domain service
Rebrandly, like Bitly, is more than a tool for creating short URLs. It gives users several features that make creating and managing links a snap. Marketing teams can use their branded domains to create custom URL links for their content and landing pages.
Users can also save time by managing multiple custom domain names, as well as 404 traffic, from Rebrandly’s sleek dashboard. Rebrandly, like Bitly, is scalable and fits the needs of all sizes of companies, providing the best solution for branded domains and solo users.
Key features
To accurately compare Bitly and Rebrandly, it’s essential to explore each platform’s key features and how they influence marketing performance. This side-by-side assessment will help you decide which tool aligns best with your goals and campaign needs.
Bitly
When you use Bitly, you gain access to numerous features that help create, customize, and manage all your links. By combining control over landing pages, QR Codes, branded links, and analytics in one place, Bilty gives you complete visibility across every element of your different campaigns.
- Link management: Bitly’s end-to-end link management solution is hard to match. Frequently called the best URL shortener, it’s simple to create a short or branded link with Bitly (10,000+ of them per month for Enterprise users!).
Users can also customize link slugs to give the link credibility and assure the audience it’s safe. Once you use your links to promote your content on social media and other channels, track clicks and other valuable metrics on the user-friendly Bitly Analytics dashboard. Need to change where a short link points? Use a Bitly redirect.
- Link editing: Bitly allows users to edit links after creation while keeping the link analytics.
- Landing pages: Bitly Pages makes it easy for anyone to create multiple landing pages as needed, with simple templates for responsive, mobile-friendly sites that you can launch in minutes—no dev team overhead required.
- QR Codes: The Bitly QR Code Generator lets marketers connect their offline campaigns to their digital efforts. Using QR Codes branded with your company’s logo and colors bridges the gap between traditional and digital marketing. With Bitly’s QR Code tracking and analytics, you can have a more complete view of your results.
- Link-in-bio: If your company aims to extend your reach and create personalized user experiences, Bitly’s link-in-bio feature delivers just that. By sharing clickable URLs from any social media profile, you can make it easier for your ideal customer to find your most compelling content.
- Security features: Advanced security features such as link encryption and malware detection, plus GDPR compliance, and Swiss-US Privacy Shield certification. Enterprise users also have access to single sign-on (SSO) options and advanced user permissions. Bitly is SOC 2 compliant.
Rebrandly
While Rebrandly may not offer the level of functionality Bitly offers (particularly in terms of link tracking and analytics), it’s a high-performing marketing tool that can increase your campaigns’ effectiveness.
- Deep linking: Use visitors’ locations, types of devices, or other data to send them to specific landing pages.
- Customized metrics: Easily create custom reports based on the analytics you value most. You can evaluate your campaigns’ performances in real-time.
- Traffic routing: Send your audience to the pages that have the best chance of converting them.
- UTM builder: Add snippets of code to custom URLs quickly and easily.
- Custom links: Create 10,000+ branded links per month with an Enterprise plan, like Bitly.
- Link-in-bio: Rebrandly advertises a free (for Rebrandly users) link-in-bio tool called LinkGallery.
- Security features: Fully GDPR privacy compliant.
Link tracking and data analytics
87% of marketers say data is their most underused asset, and link management changes that. With trackable links, you unlock a goldmine of actionable insights. You’ll see which referral channels drive the most traffic, what content your audience engages with, and how users move through your site.
This visibility helps you evaluate campaign performance, refine your strategy, and double down on what works. You’ll identify your top-performing landing pages, uncover buyer preferences, and make smarter, data-driven decisions that strengthen your marketing impact.
Both Bitly and Rebrandly give you the tools to create and track links, but how each platform surfaces and centralizes that data can make all the difference.
Bitly
Bitly’s analytics go beyond basic link tracking—they function as a campaign optimization engine that gives you unified tracking across every marketing channel. Whether you’re running email campaigns, social posts, or QR Code promotions, Bitly pulls all your performance data into one place for complete channel visibility.
Get a broad, real-time view of total clicks, top-performing links, and geographic engagement. Then zoom in with granular insights into organic shares, traffic sources, device types, and audience behavior. With Bitly reporting, you can fine-tune your strategy, double down on what’s working, and drive measurable results across every channel.
Rebrandly
Rebrandly offers a customizable approach to link tracking with its easy-to-use custom analytics reports. Users can monitor click stats to optimize performance across social media, ad campaigns, and SEO efforts.
For those on the Enterprise plan, Rebrandly unlocks advanced analytics features, including detailed click counts, source-specific charts, and aggregated group reports, all designed to give teams greater control over performance tracking and reporting.
User interface
When companies look for tools to boost automation and streamline workflows, they often overlook ease of use. But it’s critical to success. A platform that’s clunky or overly complex can slow onboarding, lower adoption rates, and frustrate users—sometimes enough to derail the entire initiative.
That’s why choosing a link management solution that balances powerful features with an intuitive, user-friendly interface is essential. The right tool should be easy to learn, quick to navigate, and built to support your team, not slow it down.
Bitly
Bitly designed its platform with collaboration in mind. Its late 2022 redesign brought a clean, intuitive interface that’s easy to navigate, whether you’re a marketing pro or new to link management.
From the Bitly Links overview, teams can tag, filter, and sort links for quick access and campaign clarity. The platform’s multichannel focus makes it easy to track link performance across email, social, and QR Code campaigns, all in one place. Bitly’s mobile app (iOS and Android) adds flexibility, enabling users to create and manage links on the go.
With built-in tutorials and a user-friendly interface, Bitly supports fast onboarding and smooth team adoption.
Rebrandly
In contrast, Rebrandly leans toward single-user workflows and custom domain control. While it offers flexibility for managing branded domains, its interface and features are best suited for solo marketers or small teams focused primarily on domain-level branding.
Rebrandly offers a search feature that helps you find what you’re looking for more easily. Link tracking is not difficult, either, with the tool’s all-in-one dashboard. The video tutorials on the dashboard help users ramp up fast.
Integrations
Most companies use numerous tech tools to stay organized, communicate with their teams, and manage marketing campaigns. If the tools don’t talk to each other, processes can devolve into chaos.
Choosing a link management solution means finding one that integrates well with your current tech stack. Let’s look at Bitly’s and Rebrandly’s available integration connections.
Bitly
Bitly connects seamlessly with the tools you already use, making it easy to drop link tracking into your existing workflows without extra setup or complexity.
With plug-and-play integrations across email platforms, social media schedulers, CRMs, and analytics tools, Bitly gives you instant visibility into how every link performs across channels. You can track clicks, conversions, and engagement from within the platforms you rely on; no need to jump between dashboards. This deep integration ecosystem means you’re not just shortening links. You’re unlocking real-time, actionable insights that help you optimize campaigns faster and smarter.
One of the many benefits of Bitly’s years on the market is the relationships it’s built with other tools. Its application programming interface (API) has already forged connections with many integrations, extensions, and mobile and social apps. This network makes integrating Bitly into your workflow easy with minimal disruption.
Rebrandly
Rebrandly offers a robust API that gives users deep control over branded link creation, domain management, and analytics. It’s a strong option for teams looking to build custom workflows or embed link functionality into their own tools.
However, unlocking the full potential of Rebrandly’s API often requires developer resources. From setup to maintenance, technical involvement is typically needed to ensure smooth integration, making it a better fit for teams with in-house dev support or more complex use cases.
All-in-one link management and extensive analytics with Bitly
The right marketing tools can make or break your efforts. Choosing a solution to help manage the number of links in your marketing campaigns, track their performance, and gather quality data depends on your company’s needs: The best choice for one organization may not be right for another. Your ultimate choice should hinge on the specific goals you want your link management tools to help you achieve.
Bitly is an intuitive and practical URL shortener and link management solution. We provide functionality, ease of use, and a list of integrations unmatched in the marketplace. Our Free plan and four paid plans make our tool a smart choice for any type or size of business.
Compare our plans to learn how Bitly can help you create more impactful branding and see more measurable results from your marketing campaigns.
