About PocoLink

We started PocoLink because we were frustrated. Here's the honest story of what we built, why, and how it actually works.

The Problem We Faced

We were building a small social media campaign and wanted to track which links were getting clicks. Simple enough, right? Then we saw the pricing pages.

Most URL shorteners lock basic analytics — things like seeing which country a click came from, or knowing if a user was on mobile or desktop — behind a $29/month plan. For a small team or solo creator, that's a hard sell just to know if your Instagram post actually drove any traffic.

We also noticed something else: when you share a YouTube link on mobile, it often opens in a browser instead of the YouTube app. That's a worse experience for the person clicking, and lower engagement for the person sharing. Fixing this with "deep linking" was possible — but the tools that did it well all cost money.

So we built PocoLink to solve both problems at once — and kept it free.

How Our App Detection Actually Works

When someone clicks a PocoLink, a small redirect page runs before sending them to the destination. That page reads the device's user-agent string to determine the operating system (iOS, Android, or desktop), and then checks the destination URL against a list of known app deep-link schemes.

For example, a YouTube URL like youtube.com/watch?v=abc123 gets rewritten to the iOS scheme youtube://watch?v=abc123 or the Android intent equivalent. If the app is installed, it opens. If it's not, the redirect falls back to the web URL automatically — so no one ever hits a broken link.

Platforms we currently support:

• YouTube (iOS & Android)• Instagram• Twitter / X• TikTok• Spotify• Reddit• Amazon• LinkedIn

The redirect itself is under 100ms because we run it on edge infrastructure — the same technology CDNs use to serve content close to the user geographically.

What We Collect and Why

When a click happens, we log: approximate geographic region (country and city, derived from IP — the raw IP itself is not stored), the device type and OS, the browser, the referrer domain if one was passed, and the timestamp. That's it.

We do not store the full IP address. We do not build user profiles on link clickers. We do not sell any data. We surface this aggregate information to the link creator so they can understand how their content is performing.

How we stay free

We display non-intrusive ads on informational pages (like this one and our blog) through Google AdSense. The core app — link creation, your dashboard, all analytics — is and will remain ad-free. This is our sustainable model, not a "free tier before the upsell."

What We're Working On

Our current roadmap is focused on three things. First, expanding app detection to cover more platforms — we're adding support for Pinterest, Twitch, and several podcast apps in the next release.

Second, we're building a link expiry and scheduling feature. This lets you set a date after which a link redirects to a different URL — useful for time-limited promotions or seasonal campaigns.

Third, team workspaces. Right now, PocoLink is single-user per account. We're building shared link libraries so small teams can manage links collaboratively without sharing login credentials.

We publish our progress openly. If you want to follow along or suggest a feature, the best place is our contact form.