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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#1

Post by nemz44 »

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 :)

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

#2

Post by 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 :)

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

#3

Post by jcwayne »

ftyhbhyjnjk wrote: post #2

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 :)

> It's largely free

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

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

#4

Post by 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

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

#7

Post by nemz44 »

jcwayne wrote: post #3
ftyhbhyjnjk wrote: post #2

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 :)

> It's largely free Looks like it's $30/mo for a useful plan.

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.

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

#8

Post by nemz44 »

ftyhbhyjnjk wrote: post #2

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 :)

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!

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

#9

Post by nemz44 »

jraph wrote: post #4

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=570…

Thanks for your comment, I'll be look into these posts today.
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