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Show HN: Pxl.to – A serverless link shortener with no limits and no downtime

10 points by nemz44 ↗ HN
I built a service based on Amazon CloudFront's global edge network of points of presence. This distributed architecture affords the user:

- Protection against network and application layer attacks

- Robust and reliable links that will never go down

- Instant links with low latency no matter where your visitors are in the world

- Unlimited tracked clicks (no cap on clicks/month)

The service has support for teams and custom domains, and auto-generates an SSL cert for every custom domain added, for HTTPS-secure links.

It's largely free and can be found at https://www.pxl.to

I'd love any feedback... no matter how brutal :)

17 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 48.4 ms ] thread
ftyhbhyjnjk
Unlimited links? Dude... people can abuse your service to use as key-value database. Also, unlimited clicks on free plan? With no rate-limits? You might face a massive DOS attack.

Also, I heavily doubt you could afford those plans while still maintaining good QOS.

Anyways, best wishes for your journey :)

jcwayne
> It's largely free

Looks like it's $30/mo for a useful plan.

nemz44
I'd like to offer a free version that is useful for non-pro users. I feel that a limit on link creation is a way to differentiate. That said, I'm still experimenting with pricing so this could well change.
nemz44
There are some measures in place to prevent bots and click-fraud. DOS is less of a concern, as everything is serverless and based on CF/S3. I'm actively experimenting with pricing and it could well change in the future. You've given me plenty to think about!
jraph
Link shorteners are called like this because they shorten the life of links. I'll paste mgdlbp's comment from 21 days ago [1] (about git.io deprecation, which in the end is kept read-only and isn't simply turned off as originally planned):

The problems with url shorteners https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=545565 – 2009-04 (56 comments)

URL Shorteners – the herpes of the web https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=570041 – 2009-04 (17 comments)

Url Shorteners: Destroying the Web Since 2002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=660087 – 2009-06 (57 comments)

URL Shorteners are evil, here's one to prove it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=904941 – 2009-10 (57 comments) – ironically dead

Link shorteners hurt the user experience and destroy the Web https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7803290 – 2014-05 (89 comments) – dead

The URL shortener situation is out of control https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7836626 – 2014-06 (78 comments)

URL shorteners set ad tracking cookies https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25624112 – 2021-01 (207 comments)

Link shorteners: the long and short of why you shouldn’t use them https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27462261 – 2021-06 (145 comments)

There are very few places where you actually need a link to be short, and that's mostly for printed documents or posters. At this point, if you also edit the website, you can build a small and nice URL from your domain. WordPress has a free redirection extension that makes it easy for non-technical users as well.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31163972

nemz44
Thanks for your comment, I'll be look into these posts today.
abdouls
I like the interface, it looks clean!

What kind of information do you have with the analytics?

nemz44
Thanks! We collect OS/browser information from the user agent, country, referrer and query parameters.
Bla2e
Liked the clean simple design and the pages load quickly! What do you mean by "2 pixels" on the Free package and Unlimited pixels for the paid plans?
Hakeemmidan
The UI is quite clean and responsive; it looks great! What is your frontend tech stack if you don't mind me asking?
nemz44
Cheers- Frontend is Next.js React
creativedg
I want also to implement the custom domains for my own project and you are currently using Amazon AWS to handle custom domains and auto-generates an SSL cert? If I'm not wrong Amazon AWS for custom domain is limited to a fixed number of certificate (something less than 1000). How do you plan to scale support a large amount of the customer?
nemz44
Thanks for showing interest. The service doesn't use AWS to auto-generate SSL for custom domains, it uses a dedicated instance of Open Resty with LetsEncrypt.
_justinfunk
I enjoy the "creative" use of the brand bar where people expect to see logos of your customers.
nemz44
Admittedly, I can understand how this would be misleading. I'll fix this soon
allynjalford
Make it useful for Web3 addresses and you may have something great.