Link shortener without an account and without investors — does it make sense?

Almost every tool you open during the day is backed by someone else's money. Not yours. A fund, a funding round, a spreadsheet with a growth forecast, and one overriding goal: to squeeze a little more out of a single user than yesterday. Everything that irritates you grows from this. "Free plan for five links". "Create an account to continue". An ad glued to a place where there was empty space just a week ago.

And no one here is a villain. That's just how business works, which must grow because it promised someone that it would grow.

cutty.dev is an attempt to do something from the other side. A link shortener without an account, without an investor behind your back, without quarterly pressure. Does it even make sense? Partially no. And that is exactly what this text is about, including that "no".

Anatomy of a typical trimmer

Imagine you are shortening a link to an offer. The third one of the day. The first one went through, the second one went through, and with the third one, a pop-up appears: "you have reached the limit, please register". In other words, give up your email just to get what you were getting for free a moment ago.

It is not a coincidence. It is a design. The limit is there intentionally, set exactly at the point where you start truly using the tools. Your click statistics? They often wander further, to someone who profits from them. And every few weeks, a new banner, subtly suggesting that "a higher plan will solve your problems."

I will repeat this because it is important. These tools are not designed around you. They are designed around revenue, and you are simply a variable in that equation.

What is different here

cutty.dev is run by one person. Without a team that needs to be paid every month, without a fund that wants a return, without a "increase MRR by 20%" slide. It sounds like a list of disadvantages. And in part, it is. But from this modesty come things that you won't buy in "serious" products for any amount of money.

Shorten without an account. Paste a long address, get a short one, and move on. That's it. An account only comes into play when you want it to, so you can collect links in one place or view statistics.

Everything is free and without ads. Unlimited number of links. QR codes, custom endings, passwords, statistics. Nothing is attached to your addresses, no third-party tracking parameters, no redirects through an advertising page.

Privacy is the default state, not an option in the settings that needs to be found. The server is located in the EU, the visitor's IP address is recorded only as an encrypted hash (it cannot be reversed to a specific person), and no one sells data because there is no one to sell it to and no reason to do so.

And one more thing, seemingly a trifle, but it turns out to be crucial: the suffixes do not return to the pool. Your short link is yours. Permanently.

(A short digression here, because this really hurt me once. Links can live for years. Embedded in a PDF from three years ago, in a video description, in a business card that someone hid somewhere. When a free URL shortener goes down or "cleans up inactive accounts," all those links die one day, quietly, without warning. A person doesn't even know how many things have fallen apart. That is why durability is not a feature on my list. It is a promise.)

Build instead of squeeze

Under each of these decisions lies one principle, painfully banal. The function is meant to serve the person shortening the link, not a chart on someone's dashboard.

There is no department that must close sales before the end of the month. There is no metric that needs to be saved at your expense. There is one item on the to-do list: you shortened the link, it worked, and it will work tomorrow too. The rest is the consequence of this one thought.

The price that is not visible in the price list

Since I am to be honest, let it be to the end. This model costs something, it's just that this cost is hidden in other places.

There is no 24/7 support. Behind the project stands a person, one, who sometimes sleeps. I reply quickly, but not at three in the morning.

There is no enterprise-style guarantee. No compliance certificate, no SLA written into a contract. In practice, it works stably and that is all I can honestly say, but it is "best effort", not a clause you can wave in front of a lawyer.

The roadmap is moving slower. Things appear when they are ready, and not because "it would be appropriate to release something this quarter." Sometimes this means silence for several weeks.

There are no custom domains for now. Maybe someday there will be. There are none today and I do not promise a date.

Who this is for, and who it is not for

If you are a freelancer, a creator, running a small brand or a medium-sized company without an army of auditors, then it probably fits. If you are tired of handing over your link statistics to the advertising industry, it fits. A student, a hobbyist, someone who feels faint from a single "consider upgrading" message? Also fits.

And now the second side, equally important.

This is not a tool for a large corporation with a compliance department and a requirement that data must physically reside in the USA. It is not for a team that needs to plug this into a heavy, complex integration stack. And it is not for someone who generates hundreds of thousands of links per day and needs a guarantee written into a contract.

That is completely fine. I would rather say "it's not for you" than pretend that one small project can replace a platform with an entire floor of engineers. A tool that is for everyone is usually for no one in particular.

Finally, personally

Sometimes I catch myself thinking that I am doing this a bit against common sense. It would be easier to set a limit, add an advertisement, ask for an email "for security purposes." That is what the market does, and the market has its reasons.

But there is a certain quiet satisfaction in it, when someone pastes a link, gets a short address in five seconds and leaves, without leaving behind an account, a trace, or the feeling that they have just been sold something. You don't have to take my word for it. Shorten one link on cutty.dev, without a card and without registration, and see for yourself. And if something grinds or something is missing, write directly to the person who built it: [email protected].

Maybe it doesn't make sense as a business. But as a tool? For the right person, it has far too much.