How to Migrate Your Links from Bitly, Short.io or Rebrandly

Switching link platforms sounds scarier than it is. Your links are just rows of data — a short address and a destination — and every major shortener lets you export them as a CSV file. This guide walks through getting that file out of Bitly, Short.io or Rebrandly and importing it into a LinkProfit-powered dashboard in minutes. The import wizard recognises all three export formats automatically, so most of this guide is reassurance rather than instructions.

What moves and what does not

Before you start, set expectations correctly:

Moves cleanly:

• Destination URLs — the pages your links point to.
• Custom slugs (the part after the slash) — as long as they are free on your new domain.
• Titles and tags, where the old platform exports them.

Cannot move:

• The old domain itself. Links printed as bit.ly/xyz will keep working only as long as you pay Bitly. What you migrate is the content of your links onto your own domain — go.yourbrand.com/xyz. If your old links used a custom domain you own, point that domain at your new platform and the slugs keep resolving.
• Click history. Analytics start fresh on the new platform. Export your old statistics separately if you need them for reporting.
• QR codes already printed. A QR code encodes a full URL, including the old domain. Codes pointing at your own custom domain survive a domain move; codes pointing at bit.ly do not.

Step 1: Export from your current platform

Bitly

1. Open Links in the left sidebar.
2. Select the links you want (or the checkbox at the top for all of them).
3. Choose Export and pick CSV.
4. Bitly emails you a download link or downloads the file directly, depending on plan.

The file contains a link column (the short bitlink) and a long_url column (the destination), plus title, creation date and tags on paid plans. The import wizard takes the slug from the bitlink path automatically — bit.ly/summer-sale becomes summer-sale on your new domain.

Short.io

1. In the dashboard, pick the domain whose links you are exporting.
2. Open Links and use Export → Export as CSV.
3. The file downloads immediately.

Short.io exports include Short URL, Original URL, Path, Title and Tags columns. The wizard maps Path to the short address and Original URL to the destination automatically.

Rebrandly

1. Open Links in the main navigation.
2. Click the export icon (or Actions → Export).
3. Choose CSV; the export arrives by email on larger accounts.

Rebrandly's file uses slashtag for the short address and destination for the target URL — both are recognised automatically. The domain column of the export names the old domain; the wizard ignores unknown domains and creates links on your connected domain instead, so you do not need to edit the file.

Step 2: Import the file

1. In your dashboard, open Campaigns → Bulk import.
2. Upload the CSV. The wizard announces which format it detected — "Looks like a Bitly export" — and pre-maps the columns.
3. Check the mapping. Five fields are available: destination URL (required), short address, title, tags and domain. Any column can be remapped by hand, and a short-URL column can be used as the address source ("take path from short URL").
4. Click Validate rows. Every row is checked individually: malformed URLs, reserved or duplicate addresses and unknown domains are flagged inline. Rows with errors are simply skipped — they never block the rest of the file.
5. Click Import. Links are created in batches of 100 with a progress bar; a thousand rows take well under half a minute.
6. Download the results CSV. It lists every row with its new short link — or the reason it was skipped. Keep this file: it is your migration record.

Files up to 1000 rows import in one pass. For larger collections, split the export — most spreadsheet tools do this in seconds — and run the wizard once per file.

Step 3: Re-point your custom domain (if you had one)

If your old links lived on a domain you own (say go.yourbrand.com on Short.io), the order of operations matters:

1. Import the links first, keeping their slugs, while the old service still resolves them.
2. Connect the domain in your new dashboard (Domains → Connect domain) and follow the DNS instructions.
3. Once the domain is active on the new platform, the same slugs resolve to the same destinations — visitors never notice the switch.
4. Cancel the old subscription.

Because the slugs were preserved in step 1, there is no window where printed materials or published posts break.

Common questions

Do duplicate slugs overwrite my existing links? No. If an address is already taken on the target domain, that row is reported as an error in the preview and in the results file; nothing is overwritten.

What happens to rows without a slug? They get a generated short address, listed in the results CSV.

Are tags recreated? Yes — tag names from the file are matched to your existing tags or created automatically, so your organisation survives the move.

Is there an API alternative? Yes. Everything the wizard does is available through the same platform API used by the dashboard, which is the better route for continuous synchronisation rather than a one-time move.

Migration is the moment platforms traditionally hold your data hostage. An honest CSV import — with per-row validation, preserved slugs and a written record of what happened — is the least a platform owes you on the way in, and the same export exists on the way out.