Do Short Links Expire? Zippy's Permanence Promise
Do short links expire? Not with Zippy. Your links redirect forever — on the free plan, after trials, after cancels. See the 3 rules of our permanence promise.
⚡ Zippy: i have one job and it's forever. no pressure.
Do short links expire? Many do — most shorteners deactivate links when a trial ends, a plan lapses, or an account goes dormant. Zippy links never expire: every link keeps redirecting forever, on all 3 plans, after trials, and even after you cancel. That is a written product rule, not a courtesy.
Why do short links expire at other services?
Short links expire because most shorteners treat redirects as a metered feature. When your plan lapses, your links become leverage: pay again or your old posts break. Other common causes are click caps (the link works until it gets "too popular"), account inactivity sweeps, and services shutting down entirely — every link they ever issued dies with them.
None of these are technical necessities. A redirect is one of the cheapest operations on the internet. Links expire when a business model wants them to.
If you sell through social, an expired link is worse than a dead page — it usually breaks inside the in-app browser, which is where your clicks were already going to die before the shortener made it worse.
What is Zippy's permanence promise?
The promise is one law with three rules: your links never stop redirecting — not on the free plan, not when your trial ends, not after you cancel.
- Redirects are never turned off. A Zippy link keeps resolving no matter what your account is doing. There is no state — free, lapsed, canceled, dormant — in which a link stops working.
- Over-cap links go read-only, never dark. If you downgrade and end up with more links than your plan allows, the extra links become read-only: you can't edit them anymore, but they keep their slug and keep redirecting.
- Clicks are never metered. On Hero, unlimited means unlimited — a link that goes viral is a good day, not a billing event. The full math on why we refuse click caps is in our unlimited-clicks pricing breakdown.
⚡ Zippy: "read-only" means the link chills. it does not mean the link dies. big difference.
What happens to my links if I stop paying?
They keep working. Forever. Here is every scenario, spelled out:
| Scenario | Your links | Your clicks |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan (Sidekick), never pay a cent | Redirect forever | Counted, never capped |
| 14-day Hero trial ends | Redirect forever; over-cap links go read-only | Never metered |
| You cancel a paid plan | Redirect forever; over-cap links go read-only | Never metered |
| You never log in again | Redirect forever | Never metered |
| A link goes unexpectedly viral | Redirects every single tap | Never metered |
The trial follows the same law: 14 days of full Hero, no credit card, and when it ends you soft-downgrade to Free. Nothing you created during the trial stops redirecting.
That matters more than it sounds. If you're an affiliate marketer or a creator who sells, your links are embedded in hundreds of old posts, bios, stories, and DMs you will never edit again. A shortener that expires links quietly breaks your back catalog. Zippy's position is that the back catalog is the asset.
How can a company actually promise "forever"?
Because you can verify it — the Zippy redirect engine is open source. The code that resolves your links is AGPL-licensed at github.com/zippylink/zippy, running on Cloudflare Workers and KV, and fully self-hostable. If Zippy-the-company vanished tomorrow, the redirect logic doesn't: you (or anyone) can run it yourself. The full reasoning is in why Zippy is open source.
A permanence promise from a closed-source shortener is a pinky swear. A permanence promise backed by a public, self-hostable engine is a contract you can fork.
Two more guarantees sit next to it: the Actually-Opens guarantee (if a Zippy link opens the in-app browser instead of the native app on a supported platform, we refund the month) and a plain 30-day money-back guarantee.
⚡ Zippy: you can literally read my source code. i have nothing to hide except my birthday.
Does permanence cover the app-opening part too?
Yes — a Zippy link degrades gracefully, it never breaks. Zippy's whole point is opening the native app instead of the in-app browser on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. On iOS that works through app URL schemes with a timed fallback; on Android, through intent URLs with a native fallback. If a platform changes something and a scheme stops matching, the link falls back to opening the destination in the browser. The worst case is an ordinary web redirect — never a dead link, never an error page.
So permanence has two layers: the redirect always resolves, and the app-opening behavior fails soft when it can't fire. Your follower always lands somewhere real.
Why does link permanence matter for conversions?
Because your links outlive your campaigns. That Instagram story from eight months ago still gets taps. That Reddit comment from last year still ranks. Every one of those taps is a conversion opportunity only if the link still resolves — and resolves well, into the native app where your follower is already logged in.
Expired links don't show up in any dashboard as a failure. They just silently return nothing, forever, from content you forgot you posted. Permanence is conversion recovery for your past self.
It's also why our earliest believers locked in for the long haul: the first 100 annual Hero subscribers keep $99/yr forever under the Founding Hero deal — a permanent price for permanent links.
FAQ
Do free Zippy links expire?
No. Sidekick (the free-forever plan) includes 5 active links, and every link you create keeps redirecting permanently. Free links use random slugs and show total clicks only, but expiration is not a free-plan limitation — it doesn't exist on any plan.
What happens to my links when the 14-day trial ends?
They keep redirecting. The trial gives you full Hero for 14 days with no credit card; when it ends you soft-downgrade to Free. Links beyond the free plan's 5-link cap become read-only — still live, same slug — and everything keeps resolving.
Can a Zippy link stop working if it gets too many clicks?
No. Clicks are never metered on any plan, and there is no traffic threshold that disables a link. Hero's "unlimited links and unlimited clicks" is literal — a viral spike costs you nothing and breaks nothing.
What does "read-only" mean for an over-cap link?
A read-only link keeps its slug and keeps redirecting to its destination — visitors notice nothing. You just can't edit it (change the destination, slug, or targeting) until you're back within your plan's link count. Upgrade or delete other links and it becomes editable again.
What if Zippy shuts down someday?
The redirect engine is open source (AGPL) at github.com/zippylink/zippy and self-hostable on Cloudflare Workers. The hosted cloud is the paid product, but the code that resolves your links belongs to everyone — permanence doesn't depend on our uptime as a company.
Make a link once, trust it forever — zipthe.link.