URL shortener
Ten characters.
Every click counted.
A gc.mw link is ten characters end to end. It fits in a caption, survives being read aloud on a phone call, and reports back who clicked it, from where, on what.
Free forever plan. 10 links a month. No card details.
Working with
- Ziptron
- Dr. R.K. Thakur Hospital
- RBM Hospital
The difference
What a raw URL costs you.
None of this is hypothetical. It is what happens to a long link between you writing it and somebody opening it.
Pasting the long one
- A hundred and eighteen characters of UTM parameters, eating the first line of an Instagram caption
- Unreadable down a phone line, so nobody ever types it in
- Printed on a flyer in March, pointing at a page you deleted in June
- No idea whether anyone clicked, or which post sent them
- Wrapped across two lines by an email client, and now broken
Sharing a gc.mw link
- Ten characters, caption and all
- Readable aloud, letter by letter, without spelling anything twice
- Repointed whenever you like, with the printed code untouched
- Clicks, countries and referrers within seconds of happening
- One unbroken string, wherever you paste it
Start to finish
Four steps, about twenty seconds.
No account needed for the first one. Links made without an account last thirty days and can be claimed into an account afterwards.
- 01
Paste the long URL
Anything http or https. Query strings and UTM tags come along intact, exactly as you wrote them.
- 02
Take the code, or pick one
Random is 5 characters free and 4 on a paid plan. Or type your own alias and use a real word.
- 03
Share it
Copy the link, or take the QR code straight to print. Both point at the same record, so both update together.
- 04
Watch the clicks
Country, referrer, device and browser, updating within seconds rather than tomorrow morning.
Try it, no account
Shorten something right now.
This is the real shortener, not a mock-up. The link you get works, lasts thirty days, and can be attached to an account afterwards without the URL changing.
What is included
Everything you need on a link, nothing to configure first.
All of this is on by default. There is no setup wizard and no integration step standing between you and your first working link.
Aliases you choose
gc.mw/launch rather than a random code. Four to sixty four characters. Uniqueness ignores case, so Sale and sale can never point at two different places.
QR codes that print
SVG for print and PNG for screens, from the same link. Put your logo in the middle. The code keeps working after you change where it goes.
Password and expiry
Lock a link behind a password, stop it on a date, or cap it at a number of clicks. Useful for pricing sheets and anything embargoed.
Rules per visitor
Send iOS to the App Store, Android to Play, everyone else to the website. Or split traffic between two destinations to find out which converts.
Bulk from a spreadsheet
Upload a CSV and get a column of short links back. Built for catalogues, print runs and event badges where you need hundreds at once.
Links that outlive campaigns
Anonymous links last thirty days and free account links twelve months. On any paid plan they do not expire while the plan is active.
Readable by design
A code you can say out loud.
The alphabet is base58, which drops the characters people confuse: no zero against capital O, no capital I against lowercase l. That stops mattering the moment a link is only ever copied and pasted, and it matters enormously the moment somebody has to read one down a phone line.
- 5 characters on the free plan, 4 on paid
- Codes lengthen automatically before the space gets crowded, so they stay short for years rather than colliding
- Uniqueness ignores case, so no two links can differ only by a capital letter
- Reserved words are refused, so a code can never shadow a real page on the site
Off the screen
The same link, printed.
Every link carries a QR code you can put on a menu, a hoarding, a delivery box or the back of a business card. Because the destination stays editable, printing stops being a commitment you have to live with for a year.
- SVG for print and PNG for screens, generated from one link
- Your logo in the middle and your colours around it
- Repoint it as often as you like without reprinting anything
- Scans are counted exactly like clicks, in the same dashboard
gc.mw/menu
Printed once in March. Repointed twice since.
Your name on it
Or put your own domain in front.
Point a CNAME at cname.gc.mw, add one TXT record so we can confirm the domain is yours, and your links read links.yourbrand.com. The certificate is issued and renewed for you, and nothing runs on your own infrastructure.
- Two DNS records, re-checked every five minutes until they propagate
- TLS issued and renewed without you thinking about it
- Three domains included on Business and Team
- Analytics, QR codes and rules all behave exactly as they do on the shared host
Your DNS, two records
Every feature
The whole list, and which plan it needs.
Written out rather than hidden behind a comparison grid, because the thing you are looking for is usually the one nobody thought to put in the grid.
The link itself
- Short codes
- Five random base58 characters on free, four on paid. The alphabet omits look-alike characters, and codes grow in length automatically before the namespace fills up.
- All plans
- Custom aliases
- Choose the words after the slash. Four to sixty four characters of letters, digits, hyphens and underscores, with uniqueness enforced without case.
- Pro and above
- Editable destination
- Change where a link points at any time. The redirect updates within about a second, because every edit invalidates the cache rather than waiting for it to expire.
- All plans
- Redirect status
- 302 by default so the destination stays editable and every click is counted. Switch an individual link to 301,307 or 308 where you need permanence or method preservation.
- All plans
- UTM parameters
- Attach source, medium and campaign once and have them appended on every click, instead of editing the long URL by hand each time.
- Pro and above
Control
- Password protection
- A link that asks for a password before it redirects. The password is stored hashed, never in plain text.
- Pro and above
- Expiry and click caps
- Stop a link on a date, or after a fixed number of clicks. For embargoes, limited offers and anything you would rather did not circulate forever.
- Pro and above
- Scheduling
- Set a link live at a future moment. Before that it behaves as though it does not exist rather than 404ing awkwardly in front of someone.
- Pro and above
- Device and country rules
- Route iOS, Android and desktop to different destinations, or send particular countries to local pages.
- Business and Team
- A and B split testing
- Send a percentage of traffic to each of two destinations and compare them in the same dashboard.
- Business and Team
Measurement and scale
- Click analytics
- Clicks and unique visitors by day, country, referrer, device and browser, read from daily rollups so the page stays fast under real traffic.
- All plans
- Public stats page
- Append a plus sign to any link to show its statistics publicly, the convention people already know from other shorteners.
- All plans
- CSV export
- Take the numbers out whenever you want them somewhere else. No support ticket and no export queue.
- Pro and above
- Bulk creation
- Upload a spreadsheet and get short links back in a column, for print runs and catalogues.
- Business and Team
- REST API and webhooks
- Create and read links programmatically with scoped keys, and be told when something happens instead of polling for it.
- All plans, higher quota on paid
The part that pays for itself
Which post actually worked?
Clicks land in the dashboard within seconds of happening. They are read from daily rollups rather than raw rows, which is why the page stays fast on the day a link goes properly viral.
- Clicks and uniques
- Both, counted separately
- Country and city
- Where they were
- Device and browser
- iOS, Android, desktop
- Referrer
- Which post sent them
Clicks, last seven days
Top referrers
Is this for me
Three people who were losing something.
A creator with one link in the bio
Every reel pointed at the same page, so there was no way to tell which one sent the traffic that mattered.
A link per post. The answer now fits on one screen, and next month's plan writes itself.
A sales head with printed catalogues
Forty thousand boxes carried a QR code pointing at a campaign that ended in June.
The same code now opens the reorder form. Nothing was reprinted.
An advisor who has to prove delivery
Compliance wanted evidence that each client had received their factsheet, and email receipts were not enough.
A link per client, with the open logged. The audit question answers itself.
Who uses this
Anywhere a URL has to be short, printed, or measured.
The pattern is always the same. A link ends up somewhere you cannot edit later, so the link itself has to be the thing that changes.
Instagram and WhatsApp
One link in the bio and one in every story, each with its own click count and referrer breakdown.
Print and packaging
A QR on the box that you can repoint long after the box has been printed and shipped.
Sales outreach
A link per prospect, so you know who opened the proposal, when, and how many times.
Support and docs
Short links to articles that survive the documentation site being restructured next quarter.
Straight comparison
Against the shortener you are probably using.
Checked against published pricing and public feature pages. If a rival has changed something, tell us and we will fix the row.
| gc.mw | Bit.ly free | TinyURL free | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Link length | 10 characters | 14 characters | 19 characters |
| Links per month, free | 10 | 10 | Unlimited |
| Custom alias, free | |||
| Edit destination after sharing | Paid only | ||
| Click analytics, free | Full | Limited | Basic |
| QR code, free | |||
| Own domain | Included on Business | Paid | Paid |
| Bio page and digital card | Separate product | ||
| Price to remove limits | $15 a month | Higher | Higher |
Rival pricing and limits are re-checked every quarter. Figures are for the free tiers except where stated.
In practice
What changed after switching.
“Compliance needs every client document logged. A link per client means I can show exactly when a factsheet was opened, without asking anyone to confirm they got it.”
“We moved four thousand documentation links over in an afternoon with the CSV import. Nothing returns a 404 any more when we restructure the docs.”
“Ten characters means the link fits in the caption without eating the first line. I can finally see which reel sent people to the recipe.”
One story in full
A QR code on forty thousand boxes, repointed twice.
“We printed the code in March pointing at a landing page. In June it became a festive offer, and in August a reorder form. Same boxes, same code, three campaigns. Reprinting would have cost more than the packaging did.”
Underneath
Fast where it counts, and honest about the rest.
A shortener is infrastructure. If the redirect is slow or wrong, nothing else about it matters very much.
Cached redirect
In memory first, then Redis, then Postgres. Most redirects never reach the database at all.
Clicks never block
The redirect fires first and the click is queued behind it, so analytics can never slow a visitor down.
Malware screening
Destinations are checked when created and again afterwards. A link that comes back malicious is stopped rather than passed on.
Nothing disappears quietly
Free links are warned before they expire, and paid links do not expire while the plan is active.
Last 30 days
The awkward questions
What happens to the data, and to the links.
Worth reading before you put a client list through any shortener, including this one.
Scoped API keys
A key per integration, with its own permissions and its own daily quota. Revoke one without touching the others.
Click data is not sold
Clicks are yours. They are used to draw your dashboard and for nothing else.
Export whenever
CSV export on demand. Leaving is a download, not a support ticket and a two week wait.
Abuse reporting
Anyone can report a link from the link itself, and a confirmed bad destination is blocked rather than quietly redirected.
Fits what you already use
No migration project required.
Paste links wherever you already paste them, or drive the whole thing from the API with a key per integration.
Already using something else
Moving over without breaking what is printed.
The awkward part of leaving a shortener is the links already in circulation. They do not have to move on the same day as everything else.
- Bring the new ones here firstCreate new links on this account while the old ones keep running where they are. Nothing has to be switched off to start.
- Import the listExport a CSV from your current tool and upload it. You get the same destinations behind new short codes, in one pass.
- Point your domain hereIf you already use a custom domain, move the CNAME. The paths stay the same, so links printed under it keep resolving.
- Leave the old ones runningAnything printed on packaging can keep pointing at the old service until the stock runs out. There is no cut-over deadline.
Pricing
Free until the volume is real.
Prices below are per month, billed yearly. Everything on the free plan stays free, and there is no trial that expires.
Free
Enough to judge it properly
- 10 links a month
- 5 character codes
- Full click analytics
- QR codes
- Links last twelve months
Pro
Most popularFor one person who shares a lot
- 500 links a month
- 4 character codes
- Custom aliases
- Password, expiry and scheduling
- Links never expire
- One subdomain
Business
For a team with a brand to protect
- Everything in Pro
- Three custom domains
- Device and country rules
- Split testing
- Webhooks and bulk import
- Three seats
Every plan includes the API. Yearly billing is shown; monthly costs slightly more.
Which one am I
Answered as a sentence, not a matrix.
- You want to find out whether short links change anything at all
- Free
- 10 links a month with full analytics is enough to run a real campaign and judge the result, and it does not ask for a card.
- You post often and want the link to read as a word
- Pro
- Custom aliases and shorter codes are the difference between a link that looks deliberate and one that looks automated. Links also stop expiring.
- Your links carry a brand that is not ours
- Business
- Three custom domains, so the host in the URL is yours. Device and country rules and split testing come with it.
- More than a handful of people create links
- Team
- Seats, shared workspaces, and per seat pricing that falls as headcount rises. Ask us if procurement needs paperwork.
Buy two, save 20%
The link, the card and the name are one account.
Most people who shorten links end up wanting their own name in front of them, and a card to hand over. Take more than one and the price drops.
Before you ask
Questions people actually ask.
Do I need an account to shorten a link?
No. The box on this page works without one and gives you a link that lasts thirty days. If you make an account afterwards, that link can be claimed into it and kept, and the short URL does not change when you do.
Do links expire?
Anonymous links expire after thirty days. Links in a free account last twelve months from the day you make them, and you are warned before they go. On any paid plan they never expire while the plan is active.
Can I change where a link points after sharing it?
Yes, and this is the main reason to use a shortener at all. Edit the destination and the redirect updates within about a second. The short link and its QR code stay exactly as printed.
Which redirect status do you use?
302 by default, so the destination stays editable and the click is always counted. You can switch an individual link to 301,307 or 308 if you need a permanent or method preserving redirect.
Can I use my own domain?
Yes. Business and Team include three. Point a CNAME at cname.gc.mw, add the TXT record we show you, and we issue the certificate. Pro can add one as a paid extra.
What stops someone shortening a phishing page?
Destinations are screened when a link is created and re-checked afterwards. A link that comes back malicious is blocked rather than redirected, and anyone can report one from the link itself.
Is there an API?
Yes, on every plan including free, with per key scopes and a daily quota that rises with the plan. The reference is generated from the same schemas the server validates against, so it cannot drift from the real behaviour.
How does this compare with the shortener I already use?
Shorter links, full analytics on the free plan, and a bio page and digital card on the same account rather than as separate products. The comparison pages carry the current numbers side by side.
Read first, buy later
Understand it before you pay for it.
Everything below is free to read and none of it needs an account.
Shorten a link with no account
The same engine as the paid product, with nothing to sign up for. Good for a one off.
Free toolBuild UTM parameters properly
Get source, medium and campaign right once, so the analytics are worth reading later.
GlossaryThe vocabulary, defined
Redirect codes, UTM parameters, referrers and the rest, in plain words with the detail that matters in practice.
ComparisonsHow we compare
Side by side with the other shorteners and bio tools, with checked prices and a verdict rather than a shrug.
BlogGuides from the people who run it
Redirects, UTM tracking, QR for print and link safety, written from operating the thing rather than from a keyword list.
Everything else
Written up in more detail.
Shorten one and see.
It takes about twenty seconds, and you do not need an account to find out whether you like it.
Free forever plan. No card details. Anonymous links can be claimed later.