Shortening Links
Customise your slug
Pick a memorable slug, keep it short for QR codes, and avoid the case-sensitivity gotchas.
Updated 2026-05-09
A slug is the bit after the slash: in s.elido.me/spring-sale, the slug is spring-sale. Choosing a good one is mostly about being kind to the people who'll have to type it.
Constraints#
- Length: 1–80 characters.
- Character set: ASCII letters, digits, hyphens, and underscores (
[A-Za-z0-9_-]). - Case sensitivity: Slugs are case-sensitive.
Spring-Saleandspring-saleare two different links and you can register both. Most teams stick to lowercase to avoid the support tickets. - Reserved words: Slugs that conflict with Elido's reserved paths (
api,admin,qr,login, etc.) are rejected. The full list is in the API reference.
Auto-generated slugs#
If you leave the slug blank, Elido generates a 6-character base62 code (e.g. aB3xK9). The collision space is 56 billion, which is more than enough for the lifetime of any single workspace.
Slug suggestions (Assist)#
If your workspace has Elido Assist enabled, the create-link form shows three AI-suggested slugs based on the destination URL and the tag you picked. Pick one with the keyboard arrows and Enter to accept.
Editing a slug#
You can change a slug after the link is created — but the old slug stops working immediately, so any printed QR codes or business cards become broken.
When you do edit a slug, the link's analytics history is preserved. The new slug shows the full click count, including clicks that came in under the old one.
Slug aliases#
For Pro and Business workspaces, you can register up to five aliases per link. All aliases redirect to the same destination, share the same analytics, and survive destination edits. Use them for:
- Vanity short URLs for press releases (
elido.app/press+elido.app/news). - Migration from a previous shortener (so old links don't break).
- Multilingual campaigns (
elido.app/sale-de+elido.app/sale-fr).
Naming conventions#
For team workspaces, agree on a naming convention up front. Two patterns we see work:
<campaign>-<channel>-<variant>— e.g.spring-twitter-a,spring-twitter-b. Lets you UTM-tag at the link level rather than appending UTMs to a clean slug.<year>-<initiative>-<asset>— e.g.2026-q2-launch-pdf. Useful when you have a long retention horizon and want sortable archives.