I Built My Own URL Shortener Because Bit.ly Charges for Custom Aliases

I Built My Own URL Shortener Because Bit.ly Charges for Custom Aliases

TL;DR: Bit.ly puts custom short links behind a paywall. So I built URLzap — a production-ready URL shortener with custom aliases, expiry, QR codes, click analytics, and JWT auth. It's live, free to use, and fully open source.

The Problem

I was sharing links to my side projects — Monitorly, my portfolio, GitHub repos — and wanted clean, memorable short URLs like urlzap.me/pulsewatch instead of a random string of characters.

Bit.ly's answer? Pay for a premium plan.