Pretty Links Review | What It Does, Pricing, Alternatives, My Verdict
WORDPRESS PLUGINS · TOOL REVIEW

Pretty Links

★★★★

Does one job well. Necessary once you have affiliate links across more than a handful of posts.

CATEGORY
Link management
PRICE
Free / Paid
MY RATING
4 / 5
LINK TYPE
Affiliate
BEST FOR
Cloaking and tracking affiliate links

What it is

Pretty Links turns long affiliate URLs into tidy links on your own domain, tracks clicks on them, and lets you change the destination in one place.

The last part is the real value. When an affiliate programme changes its URL structure, you update one redirect rather than editing forty posts.

It is a small plugin doing an unglamorous job that becomes essential the moment you take affiliate marketing seriously.

What it does

Creates branded short links on your domain that redirect to the affiliate destination, with the redirect type you choose.

Click tracking per link tells you which recommendations people actually follow, which is data no affiliate network gives you at page level.

Central destination management means one edit updates every instance of that link across the site.

Paid tiers add automatic keyword linking, link rotation, geo-targeting and split testing. The free version handles creation, redirection and basic tracking.

Who it's for

01Bloggers with affiliate links in more than a few posts.
02Anyone whose affiliate programmes change URLs occasionally.
03Sites wanting click data on individual recommendations.
04Publishers running comparison and review content.
05People who want tidy links rather than long tracking strings.

Features

Branded short links
Links on your own domain rather than the network's.
Central destination management
Change one redirect, update every mention.
Click tracking
Per-link data on what people follow.
Redirect type control
301, 302 or cloaked, per link.
Automatic keyword linking
Convert chosen phrases into links automatically, on paid tiers.
Link rotation and split testing
Test destinations against each other, on paid tiers.

Pros and cons

PROS
Central destination management saves real work.
Click data per link is genuinely useful.
Tidy links look better and get shared more.
Free version covers the essentials.
Lightweight for what it does.
CONS
Auto-linking and rotation are paid features.
Adds a redirect layer to maintain.
Annual per-site licensing on paid tiers.
Overkill for a site with three affiliate links.
Requires disclosure discipline regardless of how tidy the links look.

Pricing

PLAN WHAT YOU GET WORTH IT FOR
Free Link creation, redirection, basic click tracking. Sites with a modest number of links.
Beginner Auto-linking, more tracking, one site. Growing affiliate sites.
Marketer and Super Affiliate Rotation, split testing, more sites. Serious affiliate publishers.
Renewal Annual, per site count. Budget ongoing.

The free version is sufficient until you have enough links that manual insertion becomes the bottleneck, usually around fifty.

MY RECOMMENDED PLAN

The free version until you have around fifty links, then the Beginner tier for automatic keyword linking, which is the feature that saves the most time.

Alternatives

ThirstyAffiliates
Direct competitor with a similar free tier and feature set.
Manual redirects in your SEO plugin
Free and workable if you have few links and will maintain them.
Affiliate network dashboards
Give you conversion data but no page-level click data.
Nothing
Genuinely fine if you have fewer than ten affiliate links.

My verdict

Pretty Links does a narrow job and does it properly. The moment your affiliate links are spread across thirty posts, central destination management stops being a convenience and becomes the reason your links still work after a programme changes its URLs.

Click tracking is the underrated part. Knowing which specific recommendation people follow tells you which reviews are doing commercial work, and no affiliate network reports that at page level.

Start free. Upgrade when manual link insertion becomes the thing slowing you down, and keep your disclosures visible regardless of how clean the links look.

Try Pretty Links →

Who should use it

01Bloggers with affiliate links across many posts.
02Publishers running review and comparison content.
03Anyone wanting per-link click data.
04Sites whose affiliate URLs change from time to time.

Who should avoid it

01Sites with fewer than ten affiliate links.
02Anyone who will use cloaking to hide commercial relationships.
03People happy managing redirects in their SEO plugin.
04Sites with no affiliate income at all.

Affiliate disclosure

Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you buy through one, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you, and it never changes the price you pay. It also does not decide what appears on this page: I recommend tools with no affiliate programme just as readily, and leave off tools with generous ones when they do not deserve the space.

All recommended tools Last reviewed September 2026