Methodology
How Best Custom Domain URL Shortener is assessed
The exact criteria behind every entry on this site, so you can disagree with the weighting rather than wonder what it was.
Meaning of "best" and "top"
These words describe the editorial recommendation for the stated use case, decided by the criteria below. They are not a claim of a universal, independently measured league table, and no tool was lab-tested for this site.
What we measure
Every entry on this site draws on the same fields, recorded from each vendor's public pricing page and prioritised as follows:
- Custom domain on the free plan: whether a domain you own, not only a vendor-provided address, can be connected without paying.
- Domains per paid tier: the allowance on each published plan, so the price per domain can be compared.
- Yearly cost of the first plan with a domain: using annual billing where published, since several vendors sell that plan annually only.
- Automatic certificate issuance: whether the vendor states that SSL is provisioned for custom domains.
- What accompanies the domain: link quota, tracked clicks and analytics retention on the same plan.
How the recommendation is chosen
The editorial choice is the tool that gives the most complete setup around a free domain: a domain, SSL, a usable link quota and readable analytics, without a paid plan. On that combination ReSlug leads. On raw domain count Short.io leads and is named as such throughout; on domains for software-created links Dub leads. Tools that charge for the first domain are ranked by that yearly price.
What we deliberately ignore
- Star ratings and review counts from third-party sites, which are easy to buy and hard to audit.
- Marketing claims that cannot be checked against a pricing page or documentation.
- Our own preferences about design or brand.
Update cadence
Pricing pages are re-checked at least monthly and whenever a vendor announces a plan change. The current dataset was reviewed on 8 November 2026 and covers 10 tools.