Routing is the product
Marketing shorteners bolt multi-destination routing on as a campaign feature and cap how many links you can make. Divertly has no link caps, an API on every plan, and pricing based on traffic.
Why Divertly?
Not a marketing tool. Not a DNS load balancer. Not another thing to self-host.
There are good tools near this problem. None of them treat link routing as the whole job. We do. That means unlimited routes and targets, an API on every plan, and a price that follows traffic.
vs. marketing link tools
vs. DNS & load balancers
Any URL you can reach
DNS and origin-layer products route infrastructure you already own, and assume a cloud account and health-checked origins. Divertly routes any destination by URL, at the link layer. Nothing to configure in a cloud console.
vs. self-hosting
The part you'd rather not run
You can run this on a worker or an open-source shortener. Then you own SSL, custom domains, abuse handling, uptime, and the routing logic. Divertly is that, hosted, with an API.
Side by side
How the alternatives differ.
You might be using
What it is
How Divertly differs
Bitly, Short.io, Rebrandly
Marketing link platforms. Some offer A/B testing or rotation.
They treat multi-destination routing as a campaign feature, priced and capped per link. Divertly makes routing the core: unlimited routes and targets, API-first, priced on clicks.
Dub
Open-source link attribution and affiliate platform.
Dub's center of gravity is attribution and partner programs, billed on events. Divertly is about routing: weighting, targeting, cutover, with simple click-based pricing.
Route 53, Cloudflare Load Balancing
DNS and origin-layer traffic management.
They route infrastructure you already own. Divertly routes any URL, at the link layer, with your own link domain and no cloud account to set up.
Shlink, Cloudflare Workers
Self-hosted, or build-it-yourself.
Low cost to start, but you run it. You own SSL, domains, abuse handling, uptime, and the selection logic. Divertly is hosted, with an API.
Based on each product's public positioning. Features and pricing change, so check the vendor before you decide. If we've got something wrong, tell us at support.divert.ly and we'll fix it.
Honest answer
Why not just build it yourself?
You can, and plenty of good engineers have. The redirect is an afternoon. The rest is the job:
- SSL provisioning and renewal for every domain
- Custom-domain handling and verification
- Abuse and phishing mitigation
- Analytics storage and retention
- Uptime, and a pager for it
- Multi-target selection logic
what we won't claim
We aren't the only one
Several tools can route to more than one destination. What we offer is a different shape: routing as the core product, an API on every plan including Free, and pricing that follows traffic instead of link count.
We're also early. Divertly's core routing path runs today, and we're expanding our infrastructure and our reliability commitments as we grow.
Compare it yourself.
The Free plan includes the API, so you can build the same route here and in whatever you use today.