Why we closed our open link shortener

The first version of shorturl.la had no accounts. Paste a long URL, get a short one — done. That simplicity is exactly what made it useful. And it's exactly what turned it into a problem.

The idea was modest: a weekend tool that does one thing well. No sign-up, no friction, no extra screens between the person and the short link. Within days people were using it for very real things — sharing in chats, labels on printed materials, links in emails.

But the openness that made the tool pleasant was the same openness that made it a target. A shortener with no owner is a gift to anyone who wants to hide where a click really leads.

The spam came fast

It didn't take long. The same mechanism that shortened honest URLs started masking malicious ones. There was no way to trace who created which link, no one to turn to, nothing to switch off short of the whole tool.

We faced a familiar choice: pile on filters and blocklists and play an endless game of whack-a-mole, or change the very foundation of the product.

Every link should have an owner. That was the single rule that solved both the spam and the direction of the product at once.

What changed

We added sign-in and a real dashboard. Now every link lives in one place where you can name it, tag it, change where it points, and see exactly how it's performing. Ownership isn't a restriction — it's a feature.

Spammers lost their anonymity, and honest users gained control. What began as a throwaway gadget turned into something worth coming back to.

It's still a young, independent project — and that's the part I like most. We're small on purpose, because being close to the people who use the tool is exactly what helps us solve the right problems.

— End