Move your links from Bitly

You can bring your Bitly links into a workspace with bulk create, which is on the Pro plan and above. Start from a Bitly export and the upload page recognises its columns.

Get the file from Bitly

On Bitly's paid plans, open the Links page, use the filters and date range to choose which links to include, and click Export. Bitly asks for an email address and sends the CSV there. The file has these columns: Link, Custom Link, Date created, Title, Destination URL, Engagements, Status.

Bitly's free plan has no export button. It does have the API, and how to export your links from Bitly has a short script that writes the same list to a CSV.

Upload it

Open Short URLs, click Bulk create, switch to CSV file and choose the export. The mapping fills itself in:

• Destination URL becomes the link's destination. The "Link" column, which holds the bit.ly short links, is left alone.
• Custom Link becomes the custom alias, so a link that was bit.ly/spring-sale becomes spring-sale on the domain you pick. Custom aliases are a paid feature, and an alias that is already taken on that domain is reported in the results.
• Title becomes the link's name.
• Rows whose Status says deleted are left out.
• Date created and Engagements are not used. Click history stays with Bitly.

Before you create the batch, pick the domain the new links use: the shared short domain or one of the workspace's custom domains. A batch holds up to 10,000 rows, and every link counts against the workspace's monthly link limit.

What does not move

The bit.ly links themselves. A short link is answered by the domain that serves it, so bit.ly/spring-sale can only ever be redirected by Bitly. The upload creates new links to the same destinations; it cannot take over the old ones.

That matters for anything already printed or published. Keep the Bitly account for as long as those links are in circulation, and use the new links for everything you print or send from now on. If you print a lot, put the new links on a domain you own, so the next move, if there is one, is a DNS change rather than a reprint.

QR codes do not move either. Every new link here has its own QR code, but it encodes the new link, so a printed Bitly code keeps pointing at Bitly.