A note before we start: shor10.co is my own work. I designed and built it under my company, TOMERA, with AI assisting the development. So this isn't a review. It's the builder's account of why I made it, and why each part works the way it does.
In Why Use Short Links? I argued that a link shortener today should do at least two things: filter bots out of the click count, and let a link expire when its campaign ends. shor10.co is what I built to do exactly that.
Where it started
When you share a link on Facebook, X, LINE or Slack, the platform immediately sends a bot to open it and fetch the image and text for the preview card. A link shortener that counts every request counts those bots as clicks, so the numbers are inflated from the moment you share.
The other problem I kept running into was campaign links that still worked after the campaign had ended. Anyone who found an old link in a post or a chat was sent to an expired promotion, or to a page that no longer existed.
Counting only real people
The True human clicks feature keeps the bots that fetch previews out of the click count. The number you see is close to the number of people who actually clicked, and the conversion rate you work out isn't dragged down by bots. This feature is on the Pro plan and above.
Links that expire with the campaign
You set an expiry time when you create a link. On the free plan it can be anywhere from one hour to seven days; higher plans allow longer, or no expiry at all. When the time is up, the link stops working, and anyone who clicks it sees a "Gone" page saying when it ended.
That page answers with HTTP status 410 (Gone) rather than 404 (Not Found). The difference matters: 410 tells both people and search engines that the link was closed on purpose and won't come back, rather than being a page that couldn't be found or a mistyped link.
Names you can read, not random characters
A link can be named after its campaign or event, so people can guess where it goes and type it easily. On the free plan links get a random name; choosing your own (a custom alias) is on Pro and above.
Set your own preview card
The missing preview image I described in the earlier article can be fixed by setting the title, image and description that appear when the link is shared. This is on Pro and above. Every link can also be downloaded as a QR code.
Private by design
People who click a link get no cookies, and only a salted hash of each IP address is stored, never the IP address itself.
Who it's for, and who it isn't for
A good fit for campaigns with an end date, time-limited promotion pages, and temporary links for handing over work or files. It also suits marketers and agencies running several brands, since higher plans can use your own domains.
Not a good fit if you need permanent links for free: on the free plan a link lasts at most seven days.
Try it
The free plan needs no card. You can see every feature and plan at shor10.co.
If you try it and have feedback, or a feature you'd like to see, please let me know.