ClickMagick vs Bitly: link shortener or click and conversion tracker?

ClickMagick vs Bitly: a tracker and a link shortener

Bitly is a link shortener with click analytics. ClickMagick is a click and conversion tracker that can also make short links. If you only need tidy links, Bitly makes them for $0 on its Free plan, and its click data starts on Core at $10 a month, billed yearly at $120. If you need to know which ad, email or post produced a lead or a sale, Bitly's pages do not list conversion tracking, and ClickMagick Starter covers it for $79 a month on monthly billing or $790 a year. Prices were read on each vendor's pricing page on 3 October 2026 and can change; we compared documentation and have not tested either tool.

ClickMagick Starter vs Bitly Core and Growth on eight criteria

What Bitly does that ClickMagick does not, and the reverse

Bitly: QR Codes, no-code landing pages and a free plan. ClickMagick's pricing page lists none of the three. Bitly's Free and Core links also use Bitly's own bit.ly domain, so there is no domain to set up, while ClickMagick says its generic Smart Link domain cannot be used for social media or email and a custom domain is required there.

ClickMagick: it ties a click to what happened next. A Project records opt-ins, checkouts and sales against the ad or link that sent the visitor, pulls in ad cost, accepts postbacks from affiliate networks and sends conversions back to ad platforms. Bitly's analytics page lists clicks, scans and page views, broken down by city, country, device, referrer and date. One limit to know: ClickMagick's Smart Link guide says Smart Links on their own do not track conversions. That happens in a Project, with code on your pages. See how ClickMagick tracks conversions.

Worked example: 40 new links a month

[your business] publishes 40 new links a month in social posts and newsletters, drawing about 3,000 clicks.

• You only want click counts. Bitly Free allows 5 links a month and lists no click data history, so you need Core: 100 links a month and 30 days of click data for $120 a year. ClickMagick Starter at $790 a year would cost $670 more for a job Bitly already does.
• You want to pay monthly. Core is yearly only, so the monthly route is Growth at $35 a month, which is $420 over twelve months.
• You want to know which post produced sales on your own site. Bitly reports clicks per link. A ClickMagick Project with UTM-tagged links records the sale against the source, and 3,000 clicks sit well inside Starter's 10,000 tracked visitors.

Who needs Bitly, who needs ClickMagick, and who needs neither

• Bitly: social media managers, print and packaging campaigns that need QR Codes, SMS senders, and anyone who wants short branded links with click counts.
• ClickMagick: advertisers and affiliates who spend money on traffic and must connect that spend to leads and sales.

For paid ads, neither short link is the answer: ClickMagick's Smart Link guide says ad platforms generally do not allow redirect links, so ads should point straight at your UTM-tagged page. If you only want channel reports for your own site, GA4 with UTM-tagged links may be enough: see ClickMagick vs GA4.

Switching from Bitly links to ClickMagick Smart Links

Short links you have already published keep their Bitly address, so they stay in Bitly. Bitly says its links do not expire, and Core includes 5 destination changes a month if old links need repointing. For new links, set up a custom domain in ClickMagick first. That is a DNS change, and ClickMagick recommends buying a new domain used only for tracking, because a wrong DNS record on a live site's domain can temporarily break the site. ClickMagick's import article says existing links can be brought in as Smart Links through its API. Warning: a deleted Smart Link cannot be recovered, so archive links you no longer use instead of deleting them. The custom domain guide and the Sub-ID guide cover the next steps.