If you’re planning on running a website, a link manager or organizer is something you won’t want to do away with. You can, but it will come back to bite you as you publish more and more links. This is especially true for niche websites with plenty of internal, external, and affiliate links.
Pretty Links is probably one of your top choices, hence why you’re here. Having a reliable link manager with a lot of practical functions is only the bare minimum. So I’m making this post to bare it all and give an honest review of how robust (or not) Pretty Links is. Keep reading for my full review.
Easily shorten, cloak, and share links
See tracking results in real time
Automate your content strategy
Manage social links and redirects in minutes
Redirect links in multiple ways without a third party service
Overview of Pretty Links
The Pretty Links WordPress plugin has over 200,000 active installations. If it’s known for anything, it would be that it makes links, well, pretty with shortlinks based on your own domain. It’s easy to use WITHIN your website, which combines the power of third party solutions like bit.ly and a custom solution. Here are other features it’s well-liked for.
What is Pretty Links?
Pretty Links is a link management and organization tool that allows you to shorten, tag, group, and track links on your website, among other things. It has a WordPress plugin, which allows you to use all the functions right from the WordPress admin dashboard.
It also has a feature called Bookmarklet, which lets you create shortlinks even faster from any page on the world wide web. You DON’T have to go to the WP admin dashboard at all!
What Can Pretty Links Do: Features & Functionalities
I can describe what Pretty Links can do in more paragraphs, but it would be easier to just show you the features as we go along. Let me show you around the Pretty Links interface on WordPress and demonstrate what you can do on the free and Pro versions.
The photo on the right shows how the Pretty Links menu appears on the WP admin dashboard. We’ll go through the main ones one by one.
Create Shortlinks Easily
Under the ‘Add New Link tab’, you can start creating a shortlink. Pretty Links allows several types of redirection, from the most common temporary 307 or 302, or permanent 301. The Pro version also expands the selection with choices of Pretty Bar, Cloaked, Pixel, Meta Refresh, or Javascript.
If you go to the Advanced and Pro settings, you can also enable nofollow/noindex, add a sponsored attribute if the link is an affiliate link, set an expiration after a certain date or amount of clicks, and keywords you’d like to replace the link with for faster content management.
NOTE:
Be careful not to assign the exact same URL slugs on different shortlinks you create. The URL will not redirect to the link you intend for it.
Add Tags and Categories to Links
Not all links will be created equal. Some will need extra attention especially if they’re an affiliate link with an expiration. You want all your links to be healthy and not broken. You’ll be able to track and check them easier if you categorize them. The same process goes for tagging links.
TIP:
You can create categories for internal links, outbound links, and affiliate links.
Create Conversion Events in FB Ads
On the Pro version of Pretty Links, you have another option for the redirection type – meta refresh. A meta refresh redirect instructs the web browser to open a page when the link is clicked before redirecting to the actual destination page. When you create a Pretty Link with a meta refresh redirection, you can use that in Facebook ads to run a conversion campaign.
Track Clicks and Split Test
Pretty Links gives you sufficient statistic reports on the hits you’re getting. You can also import this data into a CSV for backing up and export it back if you need to.
In addition, Pretty Links also enables split testing and provides basic reporting on it as well, as long as your clicks are actually getting attention.
Set Default Link Options
Under ‘Options’, there are a lot of default settings you can set universally. Default link options is one of them. Choose the default redirection, slug prefix, slug character count, tracking, and nofollow settings.
Auto Create Links
You can also create shortlinks for every post or page on your website. Just check on the boxes you see above on your Options menu. Your links will be easier to remember and share on socials, unlike the messy links that are usually generated when you create a post or page.
Pretty Bar
This is what a pretty bar looks like… You can customize it just like I did for my website in the Pretty Bar default options.
Pros & Cons of Pretty Links
Every benefit also comes with some setbacks. Here are some pros and cons of Pretty Links...
Pros
Cons
How Much Does Pretty Links Cost in 2020?
Pretty Links offer 3 plans for 3 kinds of users...
Beginner
$
49
/mo
Best seller
Marketer
$
99
/mo
Super Affiliate
$
149
/mo
FAQs
How do I get started with Pretty Links?
Who is Pretty Links recommended for?
Can I migrate existing links to Pretty Links?
Will my links remain if I don’t renew my Pretty Links license?
Final Verdict
Summary
Pretty Links is an excellent tool for link shortening, management, tracking, and sharing. For its beginner price point, it seems to have plenty of advanced features already. The only thing I would like to add, though, would be a link health checker.
Key Features
overall
Ease of Use
Features & Capabilities
Support
Price