Shorby Review 2024: Is It Worth The Money?

Welcome to our Shorby review.

The single biggest limitation of Instagram is that you can’t do much in the way of linking. Which means mostly relying on your Instagram bio.

This is why marketers, creators, and business owners all over the world have been turning to a special type of tool to help them. An Instagram bio link tool.

These tools help you make mobile-optimized landing pages designed specifically to help you drive traffic and conversions from platforms like Instagram.

In this review, we’re sharing everything you need to know about one these tools – Shorby.

What is Shorby?

01 Shorby Review Homepage

In a nutshell, Shorby is popular for allowing you to create a Smart Page or micro-landing page that you can use as your Instagram bio link.

Instead of just linking to your homepage or landing, you can create a page with all the links to pages you want to drive traffic and awareness to.

Once the page is created, copy and paste the link of the Smart Page to your Instagram bio. This way, whenever they click on it, they will see all the links you want them to see and visit.

While it’s widely considered as an Instagram bio link app, you can use Shorby to create Smart Pages on other social media platforms as well. This simplifies the links you want to share from your social profiles and create custom links for each.

You can also use it for social media lead generation thanks to its Messenger Links feature. This allows you to create a shortlink that will open call a specific phone number or open up a messaging app (e.g. FB Messenger) so people can contact you for enquiries.

Key features

Aside from micro-landing pages, Shorby lets you create Short Links and Messenger Links.

The former lets you shorten URLs and add tracking pixels into them. This is useful if you’re running a retargeting ad campaign for your business.

The latter lets you create a link where people can reach out to you via your preferred Messenger app or communication method.

Now that you have a better idea of how Shorby works, it’s time to discuss how to use each of them to full effect.

Creating a Messenger Link

Click Create and choose Messenger link.

05 Create messenger link

By default is the Whatsapp messenger where you need to enter your number including your country code.

You can change the messenger where you want people to reach out to you. Below are the other options:

  • Facebook Messenger
  • Telegram
  • Skype
  • Viber
  • Email
  • Phone call

Upon filling out your details, you can add a tracking pixel so you can serve ads to people who clicked on the link.

Creating a Smart Page

This is where things get fun, as Shorby’s Smart Page builder is one of the best ones among the Instagram bio link tools in the market.

Click on the plus icon and select “Smart Page.” It will then bring you to a page where you can create the page from scratch.

06 Select Smart Page

From here, you can begin adding the links you want people to see here, starting with Messengers.

Click on “Add Messenger” to open a box that shows you the different messenger apps and other means of communication that you can fill out.

05 Create messenger link

If you added the links, it will show the icon on the Smart Page that people can click on.

07 Icon display on Smart Page

The landing pages are optimized for mobile view, which explains the content width of the page. That’s why it’s ideal to place the link to the page on your social media bios.

Next, you want to make your Smart Page appear more dynamic using Blocks.

If you click on “Add Blocks,” it will show you a drop-down menu of elements you can add to your page.

08 Add blocks to show dropdown menu

The Button or Card lets you showcase a link to your page.

09 Showcase your link

You can change the appearance of the link to show an image and a price tag.

There’s also an option to make the blocks “pop” out, i.e. animate, schedule the time when they’ll be published on the page. You can also hide them if you don’t want to make the block available at the moment.

If you’re happy with the block, click on the check icon on the top right. If you want to delete it, click on the trash icon.

Here are the four published layouts that you can choose for your block:

10 Published layouts for your blocks

The Subtitle and Text block is a simple text editor. Enter the text that you want to appear on the page.

11 Simple text editor

You can use emojis in the text but there’s no option to edit the text in HTML, so you are left with just plain text.

Here’s how this block would look like after publishing:

12 Look after publishing

You can use this block to introduce yourself and describe the links you included on the page.

The Dynamic Feed block allows you to feature your RSS feed here.

13 Dynamic feed block

Aside from your website and blog, you can use other feeds here like your YouTube channel, Shopify store, and Apple podcast.

Once Shorby can find items from the feed to feature, you can customize their layout (Mixed, Thumbnails, Cards, Tiles) and how many of them do you want to show the page (1-5).

Here’s what the block would look like if we used a blog’s feed using the Thumbnails layout and featuring 5 items:

14 Thumbnail layouts

Using the feed block could prove much better than just linking out to your blog, podcast, or video channel. This way, people can see what content you have and just click on those they’re interested in.

Rounding out the blocks you can add on the page is the Countdown Timer. It allows you to create anticipation for your scheduled links.

15 Add countdown timer

Set the time to make the link available during a period.

If there’s time before the link goes live, it will show the countdown timer that would let people know when the link will be available.

If the link goes past the assigned period, visitors won’t be able to click on the link.

You can also include an image, title, and text on the block to help describe what the upcoming link is about. These elements should help build the suspense to whatever you have in store for your audience.

Here’s how the block would look like once published:

16 Block preview

Finally, we move on to adding Social Links on the Smart Page.

Click on “Add Social Links” to open a box showing you the social media platforms you can add to the page.

17 Add social links

Each social platform tells you what to enter (username, page ID, URL) to successfully include the link on the page.

Here’s how the social link would appear on the page:

18 Social links appearance

Once you’re happy with the blocks on the page, you can customize the page by changing its theme color, editing the bio link alias, and editing the tracking pixel.

Also, you can add the image that will appear on top of the page along with its title.

Analyzing your links

You can monitor the performance of your links from the dashboard. It shows how many people have clicked on your link.

19 Monitor performance of links

If the link you created is brand new, it won’t show you the data for at least 24 hours. After that, you can see the chart that shows the number of clicks the links got over time.

For Smart Pages, it will show you the number of clicks each link you included to the landing page receives.

20 Clicks each landing page receives

The chart is pretty basic in terms of helping you understand how your links performed over time. Nonetheless, it’s a good way to see how they’re faring and what you could do to improve them.

How much does Shorby cost?

Shorby offer a 5-day free trial that allows you to test out the platform. After which, you will have to subscribe to any of their paid plans.

21 Shorby pricing

Below is the breakdown of each pricing plan:

Rocket

For $15/month ($12/month paid annually), this plan contains the basic features you’ll need to create an effective Instagram bio link, among other things.

  • Up to 5 Smart Pages
  • Set unlimited direct messenger buttons
  • Shows the number of clicks that the created links receive over time
  • Gives you a chance to join its Rewards Program and get a chance to win $300 per customer you generate

Pro

This plan ($29/month or $24/month paid annually) includes everything in the Rocket plan with a few additions:

  • Up to 50 Smart Pages
  • Up to 5 Dynamic Pages per feed
  • Up to 7 ad platforms
  • Ability to add Google Analytics pixels to all your links and gather even more data
  • Use custom domain (instead of the default shor.by) for shortened links

Agency

The best and biggest plan ($99/month or $82/month paid annually) is perfect for online businesses managing multiple links and social media accounts.

Below are other things it can do on top of what the Pro plan offers:

  • Up to 250 micro-landing pages
  • Organize 3+ projects and invite 10 members max under your account
  • Up to 500 rich links per landing page
  • Retains up to 1M tracked links

Shorby pros and cons

This Shorby review won’t be complete without analyzing its strengths and weaknesses.

Because, as good as this Instagram bio link tool is, there are some things that the app can improve on.

Below are the pros and cons of Shorby based on my time using it:

Pros

  • Simple and intuitive builder to help you create micro-landing pages optimized for mobile view.
  • Applicable not only to Instagram but also your social media bios. This way, you can just place one link on your bio and not place multiple links that might confuse people.
  • Drive traffic to multiple links from your Smart Pages. Use other blocks (countdown timer, text) to help compel visitors to click on them.
  • Useful analytics for both Smart Pages and Messenger Links.
  • Create “Messenger Links” that trigger Messenger, WhatsApp or Phone calls in one click. Great for lead generation purposes.
  • Custom domains and QR codes for shortlinks are supported.

Cons

  • No templates to help users build their pages faster.
  • Analytics data only limited to clicks – no information about conversion rate for the links.

Final thoughts

Now, let’s wrap up this Shorby review with some final thoughts:

If you want to get a link in your Instagram bio, Shorby will help you do so and then some!

In particular, its micro-landing pages help people make the most out of the link they can place on Instagram.

From here, you can include links to your other landing pages, products and services you’re selling, and affiliate links to boost your conversions.

However, the thing about Shorby is that it’s more than just for Instagram.

You can use the bio links on other social media sites so you don’t have to stuff your bios with multiple links.

Also, you can use its the messenger links to generate leads from social media.

In summary, Shorby is an essential marketing tool to help drive traffic to your landing pages from social networks.


Disclosure: If you buy through links on our site, we may make a commission. This helps to support the running of Startup Bonsai.