How to Move Your Links Off Bitly

Most "how to migrate" guides start with the export button. That is the wrong place to start, because it skips the question that decides whether migration is even possible for you.

Here it is: short links live on a domain, and you cannot take someone else's domain with you.

Everything below follows from that one fact. We build QCK, so read this knowing where it comes from, but the mechanics here apply to moving between any two shorteners.

First, work out which kind of Bitly user you are

Look at the links you have out in the world. They are one of two shapes:

Your links look like	What you can do
bit.ly/3xY2z1	The old links stay with Bitly. Permanently.
go.yourbrand.com/spring-sale	The domain is yours. It can move, and old links can keep working.

If you are in the first row, no tool can migrate those URLs. bit.ly is Bitly's domain. A link printed on a business card, a poster, or a physical product will resolve through Bitly for as long as Bitly chooses to resolve it, and there is no export that changes this. Anyone promising otherwise is selling something.

If you are in the second row, you have a real migration path, because you own the domain the links point through. That is the whole game.

If you use bit.ly links: the honest version

You cannot move them, so the goal changes from "migrate" to "stop the bleeding and switch going forward."

1. Leave your existing bit.ly links alone. Do not delete your Bitly account, and think hard before downgrading it. Deleting an account can take its links down, which breaks anything already in circulation.
2. Switch new link creation to your new tool starting today, ideally on your own domain so you never have this problem again.
3. Update what you control. Website links, email footers, scheduled social posts, docs, and link-in-bio pages can all be repointed. Print and anything already shipped cannot.
4. Let the old links age out. Most short links do the vast majority of their traffic in the first weeks. The long tail matters less than it feels like it does.

This is slower than a migration button, and it is the actual situation. Plan for a period where both tools are live.

If you use a custom domain: the clean path

Because the domain is yours, you can point it somewhere new and rebuild the same paths behind it. Done carefully, visitors never notice.

Step 1: Export everything before you change anything

Get your full link list out of Bitly first, while the account is untouched. What you want, at minimum, is the short path (the part after the domain) and the destination URL for each link. Bitly's export options vary by plan, so check their current documentation for what your tier allows. If export is not available to you, the API is the fallback.

Keep this file. It is your only record if something goes wrong later.

Step 2: Check the destinations before you rebuild

This is the step everyone skips and later regrets. An export is usually the first honest audit of a link estate anyone has done in years. Expect to find:

• destinations that now 404
• links pointing at a staging or preview URL nobody meant to publish
• dozens of near-duplicates from a campaign that was rebuilt three times
• UTM parameters that were wrong from the start, quietly polluting years of reporting

Fix these now, in the spreadsheet. Migrating broken links just moves the mess.

Step 3: Recreate the paths

To preserve links, the path after your domain has to match exactly. go.yourbrand.com/spring-sale has to stay spring-sale.

That means you need custom aliases, and on QCK that starts on Basic at $19/mo. The Free plan generates its own short codes, which is fine for new links but cannot reproduce your existing ones. If you are migrating an existing estate, Free is not the plan for it, and it is better to know that now than three steps in.

Bulk import handles the volume, in batches that scale by plan:

Plan	Links per import batch	Custom aliases
Free	25	No
Basic ($19)	100	Yes
Growth ($49)	500	Yes
Pro ($99)	2,500	Yes
Business ($249)	10,000	Yes

Larger estates run as several batches rather than one. Import in campaign-sized chunks anyway, so a mistake affects twenty links instead of two thousand.

Step 4: Test before you cut over

Add your domain to the new tool and verify a handful of paths resolve correctly there before touching DNS. Get SSL confirmed working. Only then change the DNS record.

Pick a genuinely quiet window. DNS changes propagate unevenly, so for a period some visitors reach the old destination and some the new. This is normal and it is exactly why step 1 said not to delete anything.

Step 5: Watch, then keep the old account a while

Watch your click data for a few days. A path you missed shows up as traffic that stops, or as 404s.

Keep the Bitly account alive through at least one full reporting cycle. The cost of a month you did not need is trivial next to discovering in week three that a path was mistyped and you have no record of what it pointed to.

What does not come with you

Be clear-eyed about this before you start:

• Click history. Analytics stay with the tool that recorded them. No shortener can import another's click data, because the raw events were never yours to move. Export any reports you care about as a static archive first.
• QR codes printed with a bit.ly URL. The QR encodes the URL. If the URL cannot move, neither can the code. QR codes pointing at your own domain are fine.
• Integrations. Anything wired into Bitly's API needs repointing at the new API.
• The bit.ly domain itself. Worth repeating, because it is the assumption most migration plans quietly rest on.

When you should not migrate

A comparison page will not usually tell you this, so: staying put is sometimes correct.

Stay on Bitly if a meaningful share of your traffic runs through bit.ly links you cannot update, and that traffic still matters. Migration will not save those links, and splitting your estate across two tools for years is worse than staying on one.

Stay if your organisation has already been through procurement and security review with Bitly, and the cost of doing that again exceeds what you would save. That is a real cost, and it is not a technical one.

Stay if bit.ly recognition genuinely helps you. Some audiences trust a domain they know. It is a smaller effect than it used to be, now that free links can show an ad interstitial, but it is not zero.

QCK is newer and smaller than Bitly. We are straightforward about that on our comparison pages. If those reasons apply to you, the honest answer is that switching is not worth it right now.

The one thing to do today

Whatever you decide, do this: stop creating links on a domain you do not own.

Every bit.ly link you make today is a link you cannot move tomorrow. Every link on your own domain is portable forever, regardless of which tool sits behind it. A custom domain is included on every QCK plan, including Free, and most shorteners offer one on paid tiers.

The migration problem is not really a migration problem. It is the cost of having built on rented ground. The fix is to stop adding to it, starting with the next link you create.

Bitly plan details referenced here were verified against bitly.com in July 2026. Check both pricing pages before deciding; they change.