# Branded short links with per-recipient tracking - Canonical URL: https://www.broadnet.me/products/link-shortener - Language: en - Last updated: 2026-10-01 - Publisher: BroadNet (https://www.broadnet.me) - Markdown version of the page above, generated from the rendered page. b1.lc · free branded link shortener · real-time analytics Convert long URLs into short, branded links built for SMS, WhatsApp and email — served free on BroadNet's b1.lc domain, or bring your own. Per-recipient click tracking, real-time analytics and phishing protection, with a sub-50ms redirect from the global CDN edge. [Wire in your branded short links](https://www.broadnet.me/contact?topic=branded-links&product=link-shortener) [Talk to a telecom engineer](https://www.broadnet.me/contact?topic=telecom-engineer&product=link-shortener) Free with every workspace Phishing protection QR auto-generated Real-time analytics ![A long tangled thread of light passing through a ring and coming out as one short branded link](https://www.broadnet.me/marketing/art/pr-link-shortener.webp) BroadNet · tracked links b1.lc Real-time Analytics 200+ Countries 99.99% SLA Custom domains b1.lc Bring your own short domain — SSL handled, branded everywhere. Click analytics Real-time Country, device, time-of-day breakdowns the moment a tap lands. QR codes Auto Every short link ships with a download-ready QR — SVG and PNG. Privacy-first GDPR IPs anonymised, aggregate by default, DPA on file for every workspace. From mint to attribution ## One short URL, five hops of intelligence. The anycast edge resolves the slug in 20ms and the click event lands in your dashboard before the user sees the destination page render. IP anonymisation happens before storage — not after. 1. 01 · Mint Mint a short link Long URL, optional alias, UTM tags, expiration. Bulk endpoint accepts up to 5,000 URLs per call for campaign generation. p50 < 40ms 2. 02 · Personalize Per-recipient slug Optional: mint a unique short URL per recipient so click events tie back to a specific MSISDN without leaking PII into the URL. 5K URLs / 800ms 3. 03 · Edge Global redirect Anycast edge resolves the slug in <20ms. Geo and device branching rules evaluated before the 302 is written. p50 < 20ms 4. 04 · Track Click event Country, device, OS, referrer, time-of-day captured. IP is anonymised at the edge before it ever lands in storage. Fire-and-forget 5. 05 · Stream Webhook + dashboard Click events stream to your webhook in <2s p95 and into the dashboard live. CSV export and SIEM forwarding on enterprise. p95 < 2s 6. ← click event · webhook 01 · Mint Mint a short link Long URL, optional alias, UTM tags, expiration. Bulk endpoint accepts up to 5,000 URLs per call for campaign generation. p50 < 40ms 02 · Personalize Per-recipient slug Optional: mint a unique short URL per recipient so click events tie back to a specific MSISDN without leaking PII into the URL. 5K URLs / 800ms 03 · Edge Global redirect Anycast edge resolves the slug in <20ms. Geo and device branching rules evaluated before the 302 is written. p50 < 20ms 04 · Track Click event Country, device, OS, referrer, time-of-day captured. IP is anonymised at the edge before it ever lands in storage. Fire-and-forget 05 · Stream Webhook + dashboard Click events stream to your webhook in <2s p95 and into the dashboard live. CSV export and SIEM forwarding on enterprise. p95 < 2s What you get ## A shortener built for campaigns, not just for shrinking. Every link is branded, tracked and routable. QR codes generate themselves. UTM tagging stays consistent. Bulk operations stream. Privacy lives in the defaults. ### Ship on b1.lc — free Ship links on b1.lc, BroadNet's free branded short domain — or bring your own (yourbrand.co, whatever scans on a billboard). SSL provisioning, renewal and DNS health are handled for you, end-to-end. Domains Unlimited SSL Auto-renew DNS Health-checked ### Click analytics, broken down Every redirect is segmented by country, device, OS, referrer and hour-of-day. Filter by campaign, export to CSV, or stream to your warehouse over webhooks. Latency Real-time Dimensions 8+ Export CSV · API ### QR codes, auto-generated Each short link is paired with a high-resolution QR — vector SVG for print, PNG for screens, with optional centre-logo overlay in your brand colours. Formats SVG · PNG Logo Optional Ready On create ### UTM auto-tagging Pin a UTM template to a campaign and the platform appends source, medium, content and term to every destination URL — consistent attribution without manual concatenation. Templates Per campaign Params All UTM Override Per link ### Bulk shortening API Shorten ten million URLs in a single batch call. Streaming response, token auth, per-link tags. Built to fan out personalised links per recipient at send time. Per batch 10M Throughput Streamed Token auth Yes ### Smart geo / device redirects One short link, many destinations. Route iOS to the App Store, Android to Play, EU traffic to a localised landing page — all under the same branded URL. Rules Geo · OS · device Locales Per region Fallback Default URL Where short links earn their keep ## Three surfaces. One link primitive. From a 160-character SMS to a billboard with a QR — the same short link, the same dashboard, the same audit trail. 01 ### SMS campaigns A six-character branded link reclaims 150 characters of payload — and tells you which recipient tapped, when, and from which country. Save 150 chars 02 ### In-app & push Personalised deeplinks that fall back to a web page when the app is missing. Same URL, two surfaces, one set of analytics. Universal deeplinks 03 ### Print & out-of-home Pair a memorable short URL with a vector QR for billboards, packaging and POS — track scans by city without changing the artwork. SVG QR included Customer stories ## Three teams that turned a short link into a measurement. Cross-border retail group Retail · GCC + North Africa AE SA EG **Challenge** CRM teams could not attribute SMS clicks down to a segment without pushing PII into the URL. **Approach** Per-recipient short URLs minted at send time tie clicks to the MSISDN server-side, leaving the link itself opaque. Performance marketing lead (reference under NDA) Per-recipient Attribution North African flag carrier Airline · North Africa EG **Challenge** Boarding-pass SMS needed to deliver passengers to the right destination across iOS, Android and Wallet from a single link. **Approach** Device-branch rules route iOS taps to the App Store, Android taps to Play, and qualifying iOS taps directly into Wallet. Mobile channels lead (reference under NDA) West African mobile operator Telecom · West Africa NG **Challenge** A local data-protection audit required click logs with no raw IP addresses retained at rest. **Approach** BroadNet anonymises at the edge before any storage path, removing the need for in-house scrubbers. Privacy officer (reference under NDA) Compliance & privacy ## Tracking that respects the recipient by default. Click data is aggregated unless your campaign explicitly opts in to per-recipient attribution. IP addresses lose their last octet before they ever touch storage. Retention windows and residency are configurable per workspace, and every redirect emits an audit event you can replay on demand. Default mode: aggregate · IP-anonymised · 12-month retention GDPR & DPA Aggregate-only by default; full Data Processing Agreement on every workspace. IP anonymisation Last octet stripped before persistence — no raw IP retained without opt-in. Audit trail Every redirect event logged, 12-month retention out of the box. Residency choice EU and Gulf data residency available per workspace, configurable on creation. Pairs with [Bulk SMS](https://www.broadnet.me/products/bulk-sms) [WhatsApp Business](https://www.broadnet.me/products/whatsapp-business-api) [Omnichannel](https://www.broadnet.me/products/omnichannel) [A2P SMS](https://www.broadnet.me/products/a2p-sms) Questions buyers ask ## Link shortener, answered honestly. Yes — bring your own (e.g. b1.lc, cf.me, ek.app). You point a CNAME at our edge, we issue and rotate the SSL cert via ACME, and the short links render under your brand. Setup is typically under 15 minutes. Enterprise can host on a dedicated edge IP for compliance reasons. When you ship a bulk campaign with personalisation, the platform mints a unique slug for each recipient and substitutes it into the message body in place of {short_link}. The click event then ties back to the exact MSISDN — without that phone number ever appearing in the URL itself. PII stays out of the link, attribution stays sharp. Included free with every Bulk SMS, SMS API, RCS, and WhatsApp account up to 1M clicks/month. Beyond that, clicks bill at $0.0004 each, dropping to $0.00015 at 50M+/month. Custom domains free. Bulk minting (up to 5,000 URLs/call) free. QR generation free. p50 under 20ms at the edge, p95 under 80ms globally. We run anycast POPs in 14 regions including Dubai, Riyadh, Cairo, Frankfurt, Mumbai, Singapore, São Paulo, Virginia, and Sydney. A tap from the GCC resolves at the Dubai POP, not via Europe. Yes — set an expiry at mint time (ISO 8601 timestamp) or revoke any time via the dashboard or API. Expired and revoked links return a configurable page (your branded 410 by default) and the action is logged with the operator's user ID for audit purposes. IPs are anonymised at the edge — the last octet on IPv4 and the last 80 bits on IPv6 are dropped before the click event hits our storage. Aggregate-only dashboards are the default; raw click-by-click export requires an explicit DPA addendum. Right-to-erasure exposed via API. Yes: the bulk API accepts up to 5,000 URLs per call and returns the slugs in under one second. We also support sync from CSV upload and direct from any campaign template — most customers never call the bulk endpoint directly because the Bulk SMS composer does it on send. Webhook fires within 2s p95 of every click. Dashboard export to CSV or JSON. SIEM forwarding to Splunk, Datadog, Sentinel on enterprise. Direct sync to Snowflake, BigQuery, and Redshift via the streaming connector (also enterprise). Question not here? [Ask our engineering team](https://www.broadnet.me/contact) Further reading [Branded Short Links for SMS in 2026: Deliverability, Attribution and Trust](https://www.broadnet.me/blog/branded-short-links-sms-attribution-2026) ![The BroadNet snow leopard on a glowing highway of light under the infinity loop](https://www.broadnet.me/marketing/art/band-products.webp) Carrier-grade delivery ## Delivered to 200+ countries, direct to the operator in 86. No grey routes: a direct operator bind wherever one is commercially available, otherwise a labelled partner-managed route. One API to every channel, on a network built since 2003. 200+ Countries 1,000+ Operator connections 300M+ Msgs·day [Talk to sales](https://www.broadnet.me/contact) Branded short links ## Put your brand on every click. Spin up a branded domain, batch-shorten your links in bulk, and watch the analytics land in real time — bundled free with every BroadNet messaging workspace. [Wire in your branded short links](https://www.broadnet.me/contact?topic=branded-links&product=link-shortener) [Talk to a telecom engineer](https://www.broadnet.me/contact?topic=telecom-engineer&product=link-shortener) $ open https://b1.lc ## Related guides & answers Go deeper on the concepts behind this product. - [What is an SMS short link Read](https://www.broadnet.me/answers/what-is-a-sms-short-link) - [What is smishing Read](https://www.broadnet.me/answers/what-is-smishing) - [What is SMS marketing automation Read](https://www.broadnet.me/answers/what-is-sms-marketing-automation) - [What are SMS marketing best practices Read](https://www.broadnet.me/answers/sms-marketing-best-practices) - [How do you measure SMS marketing ROI Read](https://www.broadnet.me/answers/sms-marketing-roi) - [SMS marketing vs transactional SMS — what's the difference Read](https://www.broadnet.me/answers/sms-marketing-vs-transactional)