Be careful about running a link shortener. They are very prone to abuse. They don't cost money to run because of bloat but because they require a lot of moderation. Spam is incessant.
NearlyFreeSpeech bans very little, but treats link shorteners as equivalent to running a mail server on their service, because they are always found and exploited by spammers. They write: https://faq.nearlyfreespeech.net/section/policy/proxy#proxy >URL shorteners are, unfortunately, a lot more fun to write than they are to >maintain. If you want to set up a URL shortener for your own use, that's fine. >If you let the general public submit URLs to it, expect us to shut it down the >first time it gets exploited. (And it will get exploited.) Properly-run URL >shorteners aren't successful because they have the shortest or cleverest URL, >they're successful because they have a team of people working 24x7 both >proactively and reactively to prevent and mitigate abuse. If you have such a >team, and you want to run a public URL shortener on our service, please >contact us for special arrangements. If you don't have such a team, you'll >have to find another host that's less concerned about the Internet's welfare. Worth bearing in mind. Cheers, Miles.
