Shorten a URL With Your Own Domain: The Real Options

To shorten a URL with your own domain, you either point your domain at a hosted shortener as a "branded domain" add-on, or you install shortener software on a server you control and route the domain directly to it. The distinction that matters is who holds the click data and the redirect rules afterward — rent it monthly from a hosted service, or own it outright on your own infrastructure.

TL;DR:

Shortening a URL with your own domain means either renting a "branded domain" slot from a hosted service or pointing the domain straight at software you control.

Google retired goo.gl for new links in 2019 and has said existing links stop redirecting entirely by August 2025 — the free Google option is gone either way.

A free shortener works fine for a one-off link; it falls apart once you need password protection, click geography, or a domain you actually own.

Self-hosting isn't exotic: it's a small server, a DNS record, and open-source or licensed software — no coding required if you buy rather than build.

A one-time, self-hosted license avoids the recurring "branded domain" fee hosted shorteners charge and keeps your links alive even if you stop paying anyone.

Two Ways to Shorten a URL With Your Own Domain
Is Google URL Shortener Dead? Yes — Here's the Timeline
How to Shorten a URL Right Now, the Fast and Free Way
Building Your Own URL Shortener: What It Actually Takes
Hosted, Open-Source, or Self-Hosted: What Each One Actually Costs You
The Hidden Cost Nobody Mentions: What Happens When You Cancel
Picking the Domain for Your Short Links
Own Your Links for Good With Kortli
Frequently Asked Questions
Sources

Two Ways to Shorten a URL With Your Own Domain

There are only two real paths here, and most comparison articles blur them together. The first is leasing a "custom domain" feature from a hosted shortener: you point a CNAME record at their servers, and their software still generates, stores, and redirects every link. The second is self-hosting: you put the domain on a server where shortener software you own actually runs, so the redirect logic, the database, and the click logs never leave your infrastructure.

The difference only shows up when something goes wrong — you miss a renewal, the vendor changes its pricing tier, or you want to export five years of click data and discover the export tool is a paid add-on. If you never plan to leave, renting is fine. If you've already been burned by a subscription that controlled links you thought were yours, self-hosting is the only version of "your own domain" that actually means it.

Is Google URL Shortener Dead? Yes — Here's the Timeline

Google's goo.gl shortener stopped accepting new links in April 2019, a change Google announced directly through its own developer documentation. Existing goo.gl links kept redirecting for years afterward, which is why you still occasionally see one in an old email or a printed flyer.

That grace period is ending. Google has stated that goo.gl links will stop redirecting entirely, with the cutoff set for August 2025 — meaning any link you haven't migrated will go dead, not just unlistable.

Google closed goo.gl to new links in 2019. Links already in the wild got roughly six more years before the redirects stop working entirely in 2025.

If you have old goo.gl links embedded in print materials, signage, or archived documents, that's not a someday problem. It's a now problem, and it's the single clearest argument for owning the domain your short links live on instead of depending on someone else's roadmap.

How to Shorten a URL Right Now, the Fast and Free Way

If you just need to shorten one link for a text message or a social post, any free hosted shortener will take a long URL and return a short one in seconds — no account required for the most basic version. That's the honest answer to "how can I shorten my URL link," and for a single, disposable link, it's the right tool.

The limits show up fast once you need more than a redirect:

No custom domain on the free tier. You get the provider's branding, not yours, which undercuts click-through trust on anything you're putting in front of customers.
No password protection. If the link guards a private document or an internal resource, a public free shortener isn't built to gate access — see Password Protected Links: What They Lock and How to Build One for what that actually requires.
No real analytics history. Free tiers typically cap click history or analytics depth, so a link you made eight months ago may show you nothing useful today.
No guarantee of permanence. Free shorteners get sunset, acquired, or rate-limited without much warning — goo.gl is the biggest example, not the only one.

For anything you'll put on a business card, a QR code, or a campaign you plan to measure for more than a week, the free fast way is a starting point, not an ending point.

Building Your Own URL Shortener: What It Actually Takes

"How to make your own URL shortener" sounds like a bigger project than it is. At its core, a URL shortener is three things: a database table mapping short codes to destination URLs, a redirect endpoint that looks up the code and issues an HTTP redirect, and a domain pointed at the server running that code. You can build this in an afternoon with a basic web framework, or install software that already does it.

The part people underestimate is everything around the redirect — not the redirect itself. Click logging, bot filtering, link expiration, bulk CSV imports, and QR code generation are the features that separate a weekend script from something you'd trust with a client's marketing campaign. If you're weighing whether to build from scratch, run an open-source project yourself, or buy something pre-built, Open Source Link Shortener: The Real Trade-Offs, Compared walks through exactly where each option saves time and where it costs you later.

Pro Tip: Check whether your shortener defaults to a 301 or a 302 redirect before you commit to a domain. A 301 (permanent) redirect passes link equity and ranking signals toward the destination URL, per Google's own redirect guidance — a 302 (temporary) doesn't. Plenty of free shorteners default to 302 to keep traffic flowing through their own analytics layer, which quietly costs you SEO value you never knew you were giving up.

A 301 redirect passes ranking signals to the destination page. A 302 does not. Most free shorteners default to 302 — meaning every click you drive might be building someone else's SEO, not yours.

Hosted, Open-Source, or Self-Hosted: What Each One Actually Costs You

Every option "lets you use your own domain" in the marketing copy. They do not let you use it the same way.

	Hosted (branded domain add-on)	Open-source, self-managed	Self-hosted, licensed software
Pricing model	Monthly subscription, custom domain often a paid tier	Free software, but your time and server cost	One-time payment, you own the install
Who holds click data	The vendor's servers	You, on your own server	You, on your own server
Custom domain fee	Common on mid and upper tiers	None — your domain, your server	None
Setup effort	Low — DNS record and a dashboard click	Moderate to high — you manage updates, backups, security	Low to moderate — install once, maintain occasionally
What happens if you stop paying	Links can stop resolving	Nothing — it's already yours	Nothing — it's already yours
Best for	A single campaign, testing the idea	Developers who want full control and don't mind the upkeep	Businesses who want ownership without running IT full-time

The middle column gets romanticized online, and for good reason — "free and open-source" sounds like the obvious win. The catch is that someone still has to patch the server, renew the TLS certificate (Let's Encrypt makes that free, but not automatic forever), and troubleshoot it when a redirect breaks at 11 p.m. before a campaign launch. That's a real cost, just not a dollar one.

The Hidden Cost Nobody Mentions: What Happens When You Cancel

Here's the scenario hosted shorteners don't put in their pricing page: you cancel a subscription, and the short links you've already printed, emailed, and embedded in QR codes stop resolving. Not degrade — stop. Every business card, every piece of signage, every old email thread pointing to that link now dead-ends in a browser error.

This is the exact failure mode goo.gl is walking users through right now, just on a longer timeline and for a different reason. Whether it's a company sunsetting a free product or a vendor discontinuing a paid tier, the mechanism is identical: the domain was never fully yours, so the links built on it were always borrowed.

Pro Tip: Before you commit to any shortener, test the export path, not the import path. Create a handful of test links, then try to export the full click history and the redirect mappings as a plain CSV or database dump. If that export option doesn't exist or sits behind an enterprise tier, assume you can't leave without losing data — because you can't.

Picking the Domain for Your Short Links

Not every domain makes a good shortener. A few rules that actually hold up in practice:

Shorter is better, but legible beats clever. go.yourcompany.com reads clearly in a QR code scan preview; an obscure string doesn't, and users hesitate to tap links they can't parse.
A subdomain works as well as a second domain. You don't need to register yourbrand.io separately — l.yourbrand.com via a CNAME record does the same job for zero extra registration cost.
Check it against spam filters before launch. Some corporate email gateways flag unfamiliar short domains harder than established ones; a quick test send to a Gmail and an Outlook account catches this early.
HTTPS is not optional. A redirect served over plain HTTP will get flagged by most modern browsers, and a free certificate authority can issue the certificate in minutes — there's no reason to skip it.

If you're also generating QR codes for these short links, the domain choice matters there too — a clean, short domain leaves more visual room for a logo-embedded code without hurting scan reliability. QR Code Generator With Logo: The Free Tools Compared, Fairly covers which tools keep codes scannable once a logo is added.

Own Your Links for Good With Kortli

Kortli is a self-hosted link shortener you install on a Linux server you control, for a one-time payment instead of a recurring subscription. It covers the gap the comparison above points at directly: custom domains with no per-domain fee, password-protected links, A/B split testing, logo-embedded QR codes, and click analytics that live on your own server, not a vendor's. Check the current spec sheet and server requirements on our pricing page before you buy — it's built for someone comfortable running a small Linux server, not a drag-and-drop dashboard, and that trade-off is the whole point: you're buying ownership, not convenience.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Google URL shortener dead?

Yes. Google stopped accepting new goo.gl links in April 2019, and has stated that all existing goo.gl links will stop redirecting entirely starting August 2025. Any goo.gl link you still rely on needs to be migrated before that cutoff.

How can I shorten my URL link?

For a one-off link, any free hosted shortener will generate a short URL in seconds with no setup. For a link you'll reuse, track, or brand, point your own domain at either a hosted shortener's custom-domain feature or a self-hosted shortener you install on your own server.

How do I make my URL shorter using my own domain?

Add a CNAME DNS record pointing your domain or subdomain (like go.yourbrand.com) at either a hosted shortener's custom-domain endpoint or a server running your own shortener software, then generate short codes from there. The DNS step is identical either way; what differs is who controls the software behind the domain.

How do I make my own URL shortener?

At minimum you need a database mapping short codes to destination URLs, a server-side redirect endpoint, and a domain pointed at that server — buildable in an afternoon with basic web development skills. Most people skip the build step and instead install open-source or licensed shortener software, which adds click analytics, password protection, and QR code generation on top of the core redirect logic.

What's the difference between a 301 and 302 redirect for short links?

A 301 redirect is marked permanent and passes ranking signals toward the destination page, according to Google's own redirect documentation. A 302 redirect is marked temporary and does not pass that SEO value, which matters if your short links point to pages you want to rank.

Why does owning the domain matter more than owning the links?

Because the domain is what determines whether your links keep working if you stop paying a vendor — if the shortener's infrastructure is what resolves the redirect, canceling a subscription can break every link you've already printed or shared. Owning the domain and the server behind it means the links keep resolving regardless of what any vendor decides to do with its pricing or product.