Link permanence: why your short links should never expire

A short link is a small promise: click this and you'll get where you're going. Break that promise and people stop trusting you, sometimes across thousands of printed copies you can never recall.

Where broken links really hurt

On the web, a dead link is annoying but fixable. Off the web, it's permanent damage:

• A QR code on packaging that's already in stores.
• A short link on a printed poster, flyer, or business card.
• A link in an email that went out to your whole list.
• A link in a presentation or PDF that circulates for years.

You can't edit any of those after the fact. The link has to keep working, for years.

"Link rot" and why it happens

Links die for two reasons. The first is the destination moving, which is outside a shortener's control. The second is entirely self-inflicted: shorteners that expire links, especially on free tiers, or that threaten to sunset old links to cut costs. That second kind is avoidable.

Expiry should be a choice, never a default

There are good reasons to expire a specific link: a time-limited campaign, a one-off download. So expiry should exist, but as an opt-in setting on individual links, never a blanket policy that quietly kills everything after N days.

That's how Urlicer works: links in your workspace are permanent by default. If you want a link to expire, you set an expiry date yourself, per link. A link made on the home page without an account is the exception: it expires after 30 days unless you keep it in a free account.

Own the link, keep it forever

The safest way to guarantee a link lasts is to control it: use a shortener that commits to permanence in writing, keep your links in a workspace, and, for anything that really matters, put them on a branded domain you own, so the link's future is in your hands.

Do Bitly links expire?

Two separate questions, and only the first is answered on the pricing page.

What is documented: Bitly sells link expiration as a feature (the ability to set an expiry date yourself), and their comparison table lists it from Growth at $29/month upward. So on the free and Core plans you cannot make a link expire even if you want to.

What is a policy question, not a pricing one: whether a provider ever retires existing links: after an account closes, a plan lapses, or a domain is discontinued. For that, read Bitly's own support documentation rather than taking it from anyone else, including us.

The reason to care is that a published expiry policy is rarely what kills a short link. The common causes are duller: an account nobody renewed, a branded domain that lapsed, or a shared short domain that got blocklisted because of somebody else's phishing campaign, which takes every link on it down at once. Read about that last one before you print anything: why short domains get blocklisted.

Links in a Urlicer workspace never expire unless you set an expiry yourself, and setting one is available from the entry paid plan rather than the third tier up.

There is a third way a printed link stops being what you printed: the provider puts something in front of it. Since February 2025, links and QR codes from free Bitly accounts may open an ad page before the destination, and that reached codes that were already on paper. What the page looks like.

Want links that last? Start with a free account. Links in your workspace never expire, and every one gets a QR code and click analytics.