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URL shortener that never expires: read the policy, not the promise
Permanent is a word shorteners use loosely. Here are the three lifetimes this product actually has, what happens on the day one runs out, and what to use for print.
By Wasim Idrishi · Updated · 2 min read
Search for a permanent URL shortener and every result promises one. The word does very little work. What matters is the written policy and what happens on the day it runs out.
The three lifetimes here
| How the link was made | Lifetime | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| No account | 30 days | A link you are about to send once |
| Free account | 365 days | Everything digital |
| Any paid plan | No expiry while the plan is active | Print, packaging, anything physical |
Free anonymous links expire because a redirect is a promise to serve traffic forever, and a promise made to nobody in particular is how a link table fills with abandoned rows. Being explicit about the 30 days is more useful than pretending it does not exist.
What expiry does, precisely
An expired link stops resolving and serves an expired page. Three things it does not do, and each of them is a real failure mode somewhere else:
- It is not repointed at an advertisement or a parked page.
- Its code is not recycled to a different customer, so an old printed QR never leads somewhere new and wrong.
- It is not deleted from your account without warning. Free-account links are flagged before they go.
Nothing is permanent, including this
A short link depends on a company continuing to exist and a domain continuing to be renewed. Anyone claiming otherwise is selling. What you can reasonably ask for is a policy in writing, an export of every link with its destination, and a plan for the day you want to leave.
Export is CSV or the API, on every paid plan. That is the real insurance: if the destinations are in your own spreadsheet, the worst case is a redirect job on your own domain rather than a lost campaign.
The rule for anything printed
Buy the link before the file goes to the printer. A QR code on a menu, a poster, a van or a piece of packaging outlives every digital campaign you will run this year, and the cost of reprinting is larger than every plan on the pricing page.
If a subscription is the wrong shape for a one-off print run, the lifetime link add-on buys a single link outright.
Link rot is the wider problem
Expiry is the version of link rot you control. The version you do not is the destination moving or dying. That is the argument for the indirection: when the destination changes, edit the link and every printed copy keeps working.
Related: link rot and how to prevent it, link expiry, what happens, and free URL shortener.
Questions people ask
Do GC.MW links expire?
It depends how they were made. No account, 30 days. Free account, 365 days. Any paid plan, no expiry while the plan is active. A lifetime link add-on exists for the case where you want one permanent link without a subscription.
What happens on the day a link expires?
It stops resolving and serves an expired page instead of the destination. It is never repointed at anything else, and the code is not recycled to somebody else, which is the failure mode that actually matters.
Is any short link permanent in an absolute sense?
No, and treat any service claiming otherwise with suspicion. A redirect depends on a company continuing to exist and a domain continuing to be renewed. What you can ask for is a written policy and an export.
What should I use for a printed QR code?
A link that does not expire, bought before the file goes to the printer. A QR pointing at a 30-day link is a dead QR a month after the flyers arrive, and reprinting costs more than every plan on the pricing page.