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Bitly is a URL shortening service and a link management platform. The company Bitly, Inc. was established in 2008. It is privately held and based in New York City. Bitly shortens 600 million links per month,[5] for use in social networking, SMS, and email. Bitly makes money by charging for access to aggregate data created as a result of many people using the shortened URLs.

Key Information

In 2017, Spectrum Equity acquired a majority stake in Bitly for $63 million.[2]

From November 2023, guest users can no longer create short links; an account is required.

Products

[edit]

The Bitly URL shortening service became popular on Twitter after it became the default URL shortening service on the website on May 6, 2009.[6] It was subsequently replaced by Twitter's own t.co service.[7]

The company behind Bitly launched a similar service, but for online videos, to determine what videos are the most popular on the web.[8]

The company offers a paid solution called Bitly Enterprise that provides advanced branding features, audience intel, omnichannel campaign tracking, custom QR codes and more. Companies can use their own custom domains to generate shortened links; for example, The New York Times uses nyti.ms and Pepsi uses pep.si. This allows the company to push brand awareness on services such as Twitter but use the Bitly engine to generate the shortened URLs and track marketing metrics.[9] Bitly Enterprise also has advanced analytics features and uses Bitly data to provide advanced social insight tools for companies and brands.

In December 2021, Bitly acquired Egoditor GmbH, developer of QR Code Generator, as part of its expansion beyond link shortening.[1]

Technology

[edit]

The company uses HTTP 301 redirects for its links. The shortcuts are intended to be permanent and cannot be changed once they are created. URLs that are shortened with the bitly service use the bit.ly domain or any other generic domain that the service offers.[10]

Starting October 12, 2010, users could automatically generate QR codes that, when scanned with a mobile QR code reader, automatically directed users to shortened links.[11]

On May 29, 2012, Bitly announced "Bitmarks", a new search feature, with enhanced public profiles and an iPhone app.[12]

In 2025, Bitly announced that links made with the free plan would no longer be just redirects, but would instead feature an intermediate page with advertisements.[13][14]

Preview short URLs

[edit]

To see a short URL's information, that is to reveal or preview any Bitly URL https://bit.ly/x just append a plus sign "+", as in https://bit.ly/x+, for example https://bit.ly/1sNZMwL should be copied and pasted into the browser address bar as https://bit.ly/1sNZMwL+.[15] This allows users to see and check the long URL before visiting it.

Alternative domains

[edit]

.ly is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Libya. In 2011, the bit.ly address was set to redirect to bitly.com.[16]

The .ly TLD is controlled by the Libyan government, which has previously removed one domain deemed incompatible with Muslim law.[17]

Bitly users on paid plans can use a custom domain registered separately by the user and redirected to Bitly's servers via the DNS record.

Bitly used to offer additional domains: bitly.com and j.mp (using the top-level domain of the Northern Mariana Islands, a commonwealth of the United States). This functionality is no longer available.[18]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Bitly

View on Grokipedia
from Grokipedia
Bitly is an American that provides a comprehensive link management platform, enabling users to shorten URLs, generate customizable QR codes, create branded landing pages, and access advanced analytics for tracking clicks, scans, and engagement metrics. Founded in and headquartered in , Bitly originated as a simple service but has since expanded into a full connections platform serving businesses across industries such as retail, healthcare, media, and finance. The company, led by CEO Peter Krivkovich, as of 2025 reports over 600,000 global paying customers and facilitates more than 256 million links and QR codes created monthly, resulting in approximately 10 billion connections worldwide each month. Key features include AI-powered custom domain generation, seamless integrations with over 800 applications, and tools for scalable link redirection and performance monitoring, making it a vital tool for digital marketers aiming to enhance audience interactions and measure campaign effectiveness. Bitly emphasizes values like innovation, inclusion, and integrity, with a focus on fostering accessible products that drive meaningful connections in an increasingly digital landscape.

History

Founding and Early Years

Bitly was founded in in as a project incubated by Betaworks, a startup studio led by John Borthwick, with key contributors including Nathan Folkman, Peter Stern, and Toby Gabriner. The service emerged during the rapid rise of platforms, particularly , where character limits made long URLs cumbersome for sharing content. Initially, Bitly focused on providing a straightforward tool to condense links while preserving functionality, addressing the need for concise sharing in online conversations. The service launched publicly in July 2008, quickly gaining momentum as Twitter's user base exploded. By mid-2009, Bitly had surpassed competitors like to become the dominant shortener on the platform, with adopting it as the default service for link processing. This integration aligned perfectly with 's growth, enabling seamless sharing across social networks and boosting Bitly's visibility amid the late-2000s boom. In its early years, Bitly demonstrated explosive adoption, shortening over 2 billion links per month by January 2010 and handling millions of clicks daily. The platform integrated effortlessly with , , and various services, facilitating easy link distribution without technical barriers. Originally offered as a free tool that required no user registration, Bitly emphasized accessibility to encourage widespread use in the nascent era of viral content sharing. Over time, it evolved from basic shortening to a more robust , though core features remained rooted in its simple origins.

Growth, Acquisitions, and Milestones

Following the introduction of Twitter's t.co URL shortening service in 2011, which replaced Bitly as the platform's default shortener, Bitly continued to expand independently, focusing on broader link management capabilities. In 2012, the company launched Bitmarks, a feature enabling users to categorize, save, and search shortened links like digital bookmarks, enhancing its utility beyond basic shortening. Bitly's growth accelerated through strategic acquisitions, marking its evolution into a comprehensive connections platform. In December 2021, Bitly acquired Egoditor , the developer of the Generator platform, for an undisclosed amount, integrating advanced creation and management tools to address surging demand during the and expand its offerings in mobile engagement. In 2025, Bitly introduced several product updates to enhance and monetization. The company rolled out ads on preview pages for links created with free accounts in February, allowing it to sustain the no-cost tier while generating revenue from high-volume usage. Later that month, Bitly launched an AI-powered custom domain generator, enabling users to automatically discover and claim brand-aligned domains for more trustworthy and memorable links. Additionally, enhancements to the included new metrics options and group-based product usage tracking tailored for enterprise customers, providing deeper insights into team-level performance. In April 2025, Peter Krivkovich was promoted to , succeeding Toby Gabriner who had led the company since 2020. Bitly has maintained its privately held status since Spectrum Equity's majority acquisition in 2017, supporting sustained investment in platform development without public market pressures. The company's growth was recognized in G2's 2025 Spring Report, where it earned 48 badges across categories like link management, , and customer satisfaction, reflecting strong user feedback on reliability and innovation. Leadership expansions have further propelled Bitly's momentum. In June 2023, Peter Krivkovich joined as , bringing expertise from roles at NextRoll and other tech firms to oversee financial strategy amid rapid scaling. Building on this, in June 2024, Bitly announced key hires including Jerome Alabado as Vice President of Financial Planning and Analysis, Lauren Schuman as Vice President of Product Growth, and Manu Jain as Vice President of Data, alongside promotions of Kelsey Stevenson to Chief Product and Technology Officer and Raphael Syed to Vice President of Engineering, all aimed at accelerating innovation and enterprise adoption.

Company Overview

Ownership and Funding

Bitly secured its initial external funding through a in March 2009, raising approximately $2 million from investors including AlphaTech Ventures, with participation from angels such as and Jeff Clavier. The company, originally incubated by Betaworks, used this capital to scale its service amid rapid early adoption. Subsequent funding rounds fueled valuation growth and product development, including a Series B round in October 2010 for $10 million led by RRE Ventures and a Series C round in July 2012 for $15 million from investors such as . These efforts brought total venture funding to around $27 million across multiple early-stage rounds by 2012, supporting expansion beyond consumer tools. A pivotal shift occurred in July 2017 when growth equity firm Spectrum Equity acquired a majority stake in Bitly for $63 million, valuing the company at approximately $200 million post-investment. This transaction transitioned ownership from prior venture backers to Spectrum, providing resources to accelerate enterprise-focused growth. Bitly has remained privately held since, with no initial public offering announced as of November 2025. The cumulative funding, exceeding $90 million across eight rounds, facilitated Bitly's strategic pivot to a comprehensive link management platform for enterprises and enabled key acquisitions, including the 2021 purchase of , operator of . This financial backing underscored the company's evolution from a free shortening tool to a revenue-generating SaaS provider.

Leadership and Operations

Bitly is headquartered in , with its primary office located at 601 West 26th Street, Suite 357, on the third floor. The company maintains a remote-friendly operational model, providing flexibility to employees to balance work and while fostering collaboration across distributed teams. In 2024, the workforce grew by 18% year-over-year, particularly in key technical and growth-oriented departments. Peter Krivkovich serves as Bitly's , leading the company's strategic vision, innovation roadmap, and growth initiatives following his promotion from in 2025. Krivkovich, who joined as in June 2023 to oversee financial planning and budgeting, assumed the CEO role after Toby Gabriner's departure in April 2025. Key executives include Tara Robertson, who directs global marketing strategies, and Chief Product and Technology Officer Kelsey Stevenson, promoted in 2024 to advance product innovation and technical infrastructure. In , Bitly bolstered its with additions in product and to accelerate business growth, including Lauren Schuman as of Product Growth to enhance customer activation and retention, and Manu Jain as of Data to build analytics platforms for deeper insights. These hires align with the company's emphasis on scalable solutions for enterprise clients. Bitly's operations center on global link management, enabling secure , generation, and analytics across international markets to facilitate and data-driven decisions. The company prioritizes compliance, with GDPR compliance, adherence to the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (including UK Extension and Swiss-U.S. components), and SOC 2 Type 2 compliance to ensure and regulatory alignment for users worldwide. Internally, Bitly supports employee resource groups such as BitlyCares, an employee-driven initiative launched to promote sustainable social impact through charity partnerships and community outreach programs.

Products and Services

URL Shortening

Bitly's URL shortening service transforms lengthy URLs into concise bit.ly links, facilitating easier sharing while preserving the original destination through HTTP 301 permanent redirects. This core mechanism ensures seamless navigation, as clicking the short link automatically forwards users to the intended page without altering the target content. Users can enhance branding by assigning custom aliases to these short links, such as bit.ly/YourCustomAlias, instead of relying on randomly generated codes. This feature allows for memorable, personalized URLs that align with marketing or organizational identities. The basic shortening functionality is accessible via a free plan, which permits up to five short links per month with unlimited clicks and no expiration. However, since February 2025, free-tier links include an preview page featuring ads before the redirect, a update aimed at sustaining the no-cost offering. Registration for a Bitly account is required to create and manage these links, providing essential access to basic tracking and customization options. Shortened links from Bitly are widely utilized in posts to fit character limits and drive engagement, in marketing campaigns for streamlined calls-to-action, and in messaging services like to maintain brevity while enabling click tracking. The free plan restricts redirects to the bit.ly domain, potentially including Bitly branding, whereas paid subscriptions eliminate ads and unlock custom domains for fully branded experiences. Bitly's link management platform extends beyond basic by providing tools for creating, organizing, and optimizing links at scale, enabling users to maintain brand consistency and derive actionable insights from link performance. Key features include branded Bitlinks, which allow organizations to use custom domains and back-halves for professional, recognizable short links that reinforce brand identity across digital touchpoints. In February 2025, Bitly launched an AI-powered custom domain generator that suggests tailored domain options based on a description to simplify finding and claiming branded domains. Bitly Pages enables the creation of mobile-optimized, branded landing pages linked to short URLs, with customizable templates for profiles, buttons, and images; the free plan allows up to two such pages per month as of 2025. integrates seamlessly to direct users to specific in-app content or personalized experiences based on , such as time of day or user . Additionally, cross-channel measurement capabilities enable tracking of link performance across marketing campaigns on various platforms, offering a unified view of from creation to conversion. The platform's analytics suite delivers detailed metrics to inform , including real-time click tracking, geographic data down to city-level granularity, and device information such as type and operating system. These insights support audience segmentation and campaign optimization by revealing patterns in user interactions. In 2025, enhancements to the dashboard introduced new metrics options, such as QR code scan tracking and channel-level engagement data, alongside integrations with tools like , Power BI, and Tableau for custom, roll-up reporting across campaigns or regions. Common use cases for the platform include through automatic of third-party links to prevent dilution of identity, and precise measurement of campaign (ROI) via performance benchmarks tied to business outcomes. It supports integrations with , , and channels to facilitate strategies, and briefly extends to linking for hybrid digital-physical campaigns. For enterprise users, the platform offers advanced capabilities like custom reporting tailored to specific business needs, team collaboration tools for shared link management and internal workflows, and access for automated, scalable operations such as bulk link creation and programmatic retrieval. These features ensure large organizations can centralize control, conduct , and integrate link data into broader enterprise systems for enhanced efficiency.

QR Code Solutions

In December 2021, Bitly acquired Egoditor , the developer of the Generator platform, marking its first acquisition and expanding its offerings into dynamic creation integrated with short links. This acquisition enabled Bitly to offer customizable that link directly to Bitly short , supporting both static codes for fixed destinations and dynamic codes that allow updates without regenerating the code. Key features include extensive customization options such as colors, styles, logos, and branding elements to align with marketing materials. Additionally, these provide built-in tracking for scan analytics, capturing data on scan locations, devices, and timestamps to measure engagement. Bitly's QR code solutions are applied in marketing campaigns to drive traffic to promotional content or , enabling location-based targeting and . In product education, particularly for companies, QR codes on devices or link to installation guides and tutorials, simplifying user and improving satisfaction. For , they facilitate inventory management by encoding unique identifiers that connect to digital records, supporting real-time updates in supply chains. These tools also create interactive mobile experiences, such as overlays or event check-ins, bridging physical and digital interactions. By 2025, Bitly integrated AI capabilities into its QR code platform, including a custom GPT tool launched in October that allows users to generate and manage codes conversationally, enhancing design customization through natural language prompts. In September, the introduction of the MCP Server further embedded QR codes into AI agents like Claude for automated workflows. Safety features were bolstered with HTTPS encryption on all QR-linked URLs to prevent data interception, alongside dynamic redirects for updating product safety and warranty information in tech applications. These enhancements prioritize secure, adaptable use in high-stakes sectors like technology.

Technology

Core Shortening Mechanisms

Bitly's URL shortening service primarily relies on the .ly , the (ccTLD) assigned to , to generate short links under the bit.ly subdomain. This choice enables concise, memorable URLs while leveraging the global availability of the .ly extension. For paid subscribers, Bitly supports the integration of custom domains, allowing users to create branded short links that align with their own web properties, such as yourbrand.link, to enhance trust and recognition. At its core, the shortening mechanism involves assigning a unique alphanumeric to each submitted and storing a mapping of this code to the original full in a database. Upon accessing a short link, Bitly's servers retrieve the corresponding destination from this mapping and issue an HTTP 301 permanent redirect, which instructs the user's browser to navigate to the target while preserving benefits. This process ensures efficient, one-to-one correspondence without reusing or altering codes once assigned. To manage high volumes of traffic, Bitly operates a distributed with service-oriented components, including asynchronous messaging queues and load-balanced servers, capable of processing approximately 10 billion connections and 256 million link and creations per month. Legacy domains like j.mp and bitly.com, previously available for free users, were discontinued for new link creation to streamline operations and focus resources on bit.ly, though existing links on these domains continue to function. Basic security is integrated into the shortening workflow through automated link validation, where a crawler fetches and analyzes destination content, and a Threat Detection Service scans for , , or other risks before enabling redirects. Suspicious links are flagged via an Abuse , often based on partner databases and user reports, resulting in warnings or blocks to mitigate malicious redirects.

Advanced Features and

Bitly offers preview functionality for short URLs through its Link Checker tool, allowing users to verify the destination before clicking, which helps mitigate risks by providing transparency without requiring interaction with the shortened link. Users can append a plus symbol (+) to any Bitly URL or paste it into the checker interface to reveal the target site details securely. The platform's technology provides real-time insights into link , including click volumes, referral sources, geographic locations, device types, and timing for both links and QR codes. In 2025, Bitly enhanced its Dashboard with new metrics options, enterprise-level product usage tracking by group, and AI-generated custom domains to streamline branding and data interpretation. These AI-driven insights enable users to derive actionable patterns from large datasets, such as optimizing campaigns based on referral trends or location-based . For security, Bitly Enterprise includes protections like SSO logins, two-factor authentication, group permissions, user management, and activity logging to safeguard account access and operations. The platform maintains compliance with SOC 2, GDPR, and CCPA standards, ensuring data privacy and transparent practices across global deployments. Additionally, integration with Web Risk API enables real-time scanning of links and QR codes for malicious content, protecting users from harmful destinations as Bitly processes millions of connections daily. Bitly's facilitates custom integrations, allowing developers to retrieve detailed click and scan programmatically for incorporation into external systems like CRMs. scan tracking is unified with link via the , supporting metrics on scan counts, locations, and devices in real time, with webhooks pushing updates to connected applications for automated workflows. This enables seamless tying of QR performance to broader link , aiding in comprehensive campaign analysis without manual intervention.

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