The most powerful free affiliate link management and URL shortener plugin for WordPress.
Royal Links is a complete link cloaking, click tracking, and link management solution that gives you every tool you need to shorten, cloak, track, and optimize your affiliate links and marketing URLs — without paying a cent. No “lite” version, no feature gates, no upsells. Everything competitors charge $200/yr for is included free.
Whether you manage affiliate links, run marketing campaigns, track click performance, or just want clean branded short URLs on your own domain, Royal Links has you covered.
What You Can Use Royal Links For
Royal Links works with any URL — cloak, shorten, track, redirect, or A/B test it. Common use cases:
- Affiliate networks — Cloak and track clicks for Amazon Associates, ShareASale, CJ Affiliate (Commission Junction), Impact, Rakuten Advertising, Awin, ClickBank, Skimlinks, Shopify Affiliate, Bluehost Affiliate, ConvertKit Affiliate, FlexOffers, PartnerStack, and any other affiliate program.
- Link in bio — Track clicks from your Instagram, TikTok, Twitter (X), YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or Threads bio links and route to specific destinations on your site.
- Marketing campaigns — Build UTM-tagged URLs for Google Analytics 4, Plausible, Fathom, or Matomo without leaving WordPress and measure campaign performance per source.
- Branded short URLs — Replace ugly tracking URLs with clean links on your own domain (e.g.,
yoursite.com/go/productinstead ofnetwork.com/ref?id=12345). A free alternative to Bitly, Rebrandly, TinyURL, or Switchy. - A/B testing — Test multiple landing page destinations and see which converts best — replaces paid tools like Bitly Pro and Rebrandly Premium.
- QR code campaigns — Generate QR codes for business cards, flyers, packaging, posters, or in-store signage and track scan-through performance separately from web clicks.
- Geo-targeted offers — Send US visitors to amazon.com, EU visitors to amazon.de, UK visitors to amazon.co.uk — region-specific storefronts and promo offers from a single shareable link.
- WooCommerce / Easy Digital Downloads / Shopify — Track clicks from your store to external partners, suppliers, or affiliate offers. Auto-link product names to tracked Royal Links.
- YouTube descriptions and podcast show notes — One short link per episode that you can re-route as offers expire, without re-uploading or editing the description.
Link Management
- Branded Short URLs — Create clean links using your own domain
- Multiple Redirect Types — 301, 302, and 307 redirects
- Link Categories & Tags — Organize everything with taxonomies
- Nofollow / Sponsored / UGC Attributes — Stay compliant with search engine guidelines
- Password-Protected Links — Gate access to sensitive destinations
- Link Scheduling — Set start and end dates for any link
- Affiliate Disclosure Notices — Automatically display FTC-compliant disclosures
Click Tracking & Analytics
- Detailed Click Analytics — Browser, device, OS, referrer, and country data
- Dashboard Widget — At-a-glance stats with period-over-period comparison
- QR Scan Tracking — See how many clicks come from your QR codes
- UTM Parameter Builder — Build campaign-tagged URLs without leaving WordPress
Advanced Redirects
- Geo-Targeting — Redirect visitors to different URLs based on their country
- Device-Based Redirects — Send desktop, mobile, and tablet users to different destinations
- Time-Based Redirects — Automatically swap destinations on a schedule
- A/B Split Testing — Test multiple destinations and track which converts best
Content & Display
- QR Code Generator — Generate downloadable QR codes for any link
- Product Display Boxes — Eye-catching product cards with images and CTAs
- Automatic Keyword Linking — Define keywords and Royal Links auto-links them across your content
- Gutenberg Block & Classic Editor — Insert links from either editor
Site Health
- Broken Link Checker — Automatic monitoring flags dead destinations
- Link Health Dashboard — See all link issues at a glance
Migration Wizard
Switching from another plugin? Royal Links imports your links, categories, and click data in one click:
- Pretty Links — Full import including groups and clicks
- ThirstyAffiliates — Full import including categories and click data
- BetterLinks — Full import including analytics
Why Royal Links?
Most link management plugins offer basic features for free and lock the good stuff behind a paid upgrade. Royal Links takes a different approach — every feature is included from day one. Geo-targeting, A/B testing, QR codes, auto-linking, product displays, device redirects, and link scheduling are all built in with no restrictions.
Powered by Royal Plugins
Royal Links is built by the team behind Royal MCP and SiteVault — free WordPress plugins trusted by thousands of sites. We believe powerful tools should be accessible to everyone.
External Services
This plugin connects to the following external service under specific conditions:
ip-api.com
Royal Links uses the ip-api.com geolocation API to determine a visitor’s country for the geo-targeting feature. This service is only contacted when a site administrator has configured country-based redirect rules on a specific link. If no geo-targeting rules are configured, no data is sent to this service.
When geo-targeting is active on a link and a visitor clicks that link, the visitor’s IP address is sent to ip-api.com to determine their country. The country result is then used to decide which destination URL the visitor should be redirected to.
- Service URL: http://ip-api.com
- Terms of Service / Privacy Policy: https://ip-api.com/docs/legal
- Data sent: Visitor IP address (only when geo-targeting rules exist on the clicked link)
- Data received: Country code for the visitor’s IP address
- Data retention: Royal Links does not store the IP-to-country lookup. The country is used only for the redirect decision. IP addresses are only stored in the click log if the “Store IP Addresses” setting is enabled (disabled by default).
- When it is used: Only when a visitor clicks a link that has geo-targeting redirect rules configured by the site admin
- When it is NOT used: If no links have geo-targeting rules, this service is never contacted
