TinyURL
Their website is the living saying of "do not judge a book by its cover." It doesn't have the best design, but it is functional. No registration is required, it is as simple as pasting the link and shortening it.
It does not allow many things beyond customizing the link in question, but that is its weak and strong point at the same time. If you just want to have URLs with fewer characters, then this is your URL shortener. If you are looking for something more complex, with metrics and other functionalities, it may be better to go for another option.
Owly
Many wonder why its logo and name refer to the owl, and that is because it is part of Hootsuite, a well-known social media management brand whose logo is that same animal. The downside is that to use it you must strictly have a Hootsuite account. But not everything is bad, because if you are already users of this platform, you will find it very useful to show you the URL shortener metrics along with other metrics of interest to your brand.
Rebrandly
It does not matter if your account has only the free plan or if you pay for the service, with Rebrandly you can shorten links that will always have your brand or domain in mind, something that not all other URL shorteners allow.
But it has a function that is even more amazing! Imagine you shorten a link and use it on about 20 different channels, ranging from social media to your own web pages, and suddenly bam! The destination page disappears. If the landing page URL is lost for any reason, those links will be rendered useless forever.
Rebrandly offers an elegant solution to this, because your links are truly yours and in a few seconds you will be able to change the destination URL of another link that was shortened.
Cuttly
You don't need an account to use their services, not even to take advantage of the link customization feature.
However, you will surely want to have an account to take advantage of its most outstanding feature, which is the live metrics .
If you want to shorten a URL to use the link on social networks and measure its impact in real time, then this is the tool you want to use. You can even add an extension to the bar of various search engines to use it whenever you like.
And that's all! We hope that now you know the reason why shortening links is a practice that you may want to adopt, as well as the best tools to do it.