Sending out short urls

Updated 1 week ago

We support URL shortening for both SMS and SMS Campaign, making it easier to craft a more digestible message for your recipients and also allowing you to save characters in your messages at no additional cost.

Some limitations to be aware of are:

Only valid links are processed. A valid URL must include a proper protocol (e.g., `http://` or `https://`) and a valid domain (e.g., `example.com`). The following links are considered invalid:
- google.com (does not contain a valid protocol)
- www.google.com (does not contain a valid protocol)
We can shorten links up to 250 characters in length
Your message can only contain one link if you're looking to use our URL shortening feature. Should you need to include more than one shortened link in the message, please upvote this feature request - https://clicksend.canny.io/feature-requests/p/multiple-short-urls

SMS

For SMS messages, URL shortening automatically detects and replaces one URL in each message with a shortened link in the format smsu.io/xxxxxx. The xxxxxx placeholder represents a unique six-character alphanumeric string that is generated for each recipient during the actual sending process.

You should use this endpoint (v3/sms/send) if you wish to send out a link that is specific to the recipient, such as order tracking links, or customised feedback forms.

You are also able to use this in conjunction with the Custom Fields in the contact list to easily manage and send out personalised URLs to your recipients

{
    "messages": [ 
        { 
            "body":"test message, please ignore https://help.clicksend.com/article/(Cust. 1)", 
            "from": "{{from}}", 
            "list_id": "{{list_id}}" 
        } 
    ],
     "shorten_urls": true 
}

Note that link tracking and statistics for SMS messages using shortened URLs is not currently available, but will be coming soon.

To view our developer documentation on this, visit https://developers.clicksend.com/docs/messaging/sms/#operation/send-sms

SMS Campaign

URL shortening and link tracking is also supported in SMS campaigns.

When using the short url functionality in SMS Campaign, all recipients will receive a shortened link in the format smsu.io/xxxxxx. The xxxxxx placeholder represents a unique five-character alphanumeric string that is generated for each recipient during the actual sending process.

You should use this endpoint if you're sending out the same link to many recipients and wish to track its engagement such as whether the link was opened.

To use short URLs when sending a SMS campaign, visit https://developers.clicksend.com/docs/messaging/sms-campaigns/#operation/send-sms-campaign