Dub Review: Features, Pricing, Pros & Cons

Link shorteners are something that most people don't even realize that they are interacting with on a daily basis. That said, most everyone has at some point used Bit.ly to create a short link at one time or another.

I've been using link shorteners for over a decade at this point (back when we were called "CyberBytes", I had even registered the short link cyberbyt.es by pretending I lived in Spain 😅).

Having used self-hosted (open-source) short link services like shlink, to paid solutions like Short.io, I've never actually had a good experience with what's out there.

Short was the most recent solution we used, but it just feels like it was built by an engineer with little front-end chops. The UI/UX is clunky, basic features like search are super convoluted and kludgy + rarely work.

Enter Dub. It's both open-source as well as a hosted solution, built by Steven Tay, a crazy talented open-source focused individual who has taken to the same frustrations as I've had in the space. Difference is, he's a full-stack developer with amazing product chops.

There's no actual enjoyable, or impressive link shortener on the market, until now. If anyone is familiar with the story of Fathom Analytics, I'm willing to bet that Steven does to the Link Shortener world with Dub what Fathom did to the Analytics space.

Tech Stack

Dub is built using the most modern software tooling, leveraging Vercel Edge Functions + Upstash Redis.