Urlicer
Branded short links with QR codes and click analytics
I write my own PHP stack. A frontend framework where components are PHP transpiled to JavaScript, and an async Swoole backend. I wanted something real running on it instead of another demo app, so I built a URL shortener: branded domains, QR codes, click analytics on ClickHouse, teams, an API.
It's been live since 2026. Paddle billing, per-plan entitlements, abuse handling, audit logs, the whole thing. Customers: zero. Not because it doesn't work — because until this week I had posted about it precisely nowhere.
So today I did the unglamorous part. Directory listings, a comparison page, screenshots that don't look like a test database. Somewhere in the middle of it I found a bug that had been breaking QR codes for anyone on a custom domain, which tells you how much attention that path had been getting.
Three things I noticed staring at competitor pricing:
- Rebrandly meters QR codes. 10 a month on free, 3,500 at $99. A QR code is a picture of a link you already made.
- Nobody gives you a second seat cheaply. Bitly has no multi-user plan below enterprise, Rebrandly none until $32/mo, T.LY none until $50.
- So "a colleague also needs access" is this category's real upsell lever. Not link volume, which is what everyone advertises.
I priced against that: 3 seats at $12, 10 at $29, QR codes unmetered on every plan including the free one.
Question for anyone who's done inbound-only. What moved first for you: comparison pages, free no-signup tools, or answering questions in communities? I have all three planned and no evidence about the ordering.
4 Comments
Well, it's a good question.
Comparison pages first, and they're already live — two so far, against Rebrandly and T.LY. Reason: someone searching "<competitor> alternative" is already paying for a tool and already has a grievance. Nothing else I can do starts that warm.
The metric has to come in two stages, because at zero traffic conversion isn't measurable yet:
1. Six to eight weeks: does the page pick up impressions for that query at all? A new domain either gets indexed and ranks somewhere, or it doesn't — and if it doesn't, no amount of rewriting the page fixes it, because the constraint is domain authority.
2. Only then: signups whose entry page was that post. My bar is 2 a month per page to justify writing the next one. Below that I keep the ones I have and stop expanding.
Free tools second — a QR generator and a UTM builder went live yesterday, both no-signup. Metric is tool → account rate. But I'd keep them even at zero conversions if they earn links, because links are what unblocks stage 1.
Communities last, not because they don't work but because they don't compound: every answer is worth roughly one conversation, and I can't bank them. The metric there isn't clicks, it's whether anyone replies to me.
The thing I'm least sure about: whether 8 weeks is long enough to call it on a domain this new.