## Are you looking for a free way to get an insight into your audience? If yes, then Urlefy is the right place for you. 

#### What is Urlefy?
Urlefy is a smart URL shortening service. There are plenty of intact features that include data collection, data analytics, future forecasting, and much more. Urlefy helps you shorten your links and collects the data for you every time the link is clicked. In the end, you have beautiful and smart links ready to help you build your company with data-driven analysis.

#### What kind of insights can you get?
Instead of beating around the bush, let's talk business. Here's a list of insight and data which Urlefy can help you gather.

- Source information
- User device information
- Browser Information
- Date, Day, and hourly analysis
- Geo-Location and heat maps
- Unique clicks and Total clicks 
- IP Addresses
- and the list goes on.

The most important point is all this information is elegantly plotted as graphs. The graphs make the data understandable at a glance.

#### How to use it?
Well, it's as simple as riding a bike ( or walking — for those who prefer this easy). Simply, login into the dashboard. Create a new link from the links section. Pass the link to the clients and customers. Wait for the data to be collected and watch Urlefy developing insights for you.

#### How much does it cost?
It doesn't cost at all. The data collection doesn't charge right now. Therefore you can collect unlimited analytics for your business links.

What are you waiting for? It takes one step to know your customers better. It takes one step to switch from blindfolded walking to data-driven Surfing.

[Sign up](https://urlefy.com/signup) before free trials run out.

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How to get unlimited analytics with Urlefy

Is it intriguing to think about how we build Urlefy? Which small components build up this megastructure. Well, let's figure it out.
I will write about our previous architecture in another post. The entire Urlefy's structure could be divide into four major components.


1 - The Frontend 
2 - The Redirection Server
3 - The Backend User Server
4 - Headless Content Management System

### The Frontend
The frontend has created using [Nextjs](https://nextjs.org/). Hosting has done using [Vercel](vercel.com/). I'm a crazy fan of [SEO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization) and thus choose Nextjs for the frontend. It took a lot of time to de-structure the entire website into small usable components. There were lots of customized graphs, maps, tables, and an enormous amount of data. The main focus was [Server Side Rendering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server-side_scripting). We added Google authentication and used cookies for authorization.

### The Redirection server
The redirection server is running in an [AWS EC2](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/) instance. This server is the heart of the architecture. It redirects users from https://urlf.in/link to their respective links. This is where the magic happens.

### The Backend User Server
The B.U.S ( Backend User Server ) contains business logic. It runs on a separate AWS EC2 instance. This server acts as a REST API for our frontend. It connects to two databases - [MongoDB](https://www.mongodb.com/) and [AWS Simple Storage Service](https://aws.amazon.com/s3/). 
The API does the following
- Authenticating and Authorizing Users
- Generating, updating, deleting the links.
- Payment gateway implementation.
- Mail serving. 
- Data preprocessing and transfer. 
- All other user and link related business logic.

### The Headless CMS
We needed a server to access to the blogs in the frontend with API calls. A server that allows us to modify the blogs with GUI. Finally, we decided to use Strapi. Strapi server is hosted on Heroku and is using PostgreSQL. The images for Blogs is maintained using CLOUDINARY. 

We have done a lot of research to make the website efficient. Hundreds of hours of debugging and thousands of lines of code are what makes Urlefy. I haven't covered a lot of details and this is just an overview of our structure. If this blog intrigued you, stay tuned for more upcoming blogs. 

Don't forget to signup to use free analytical services. 🚀

Explanation of how urlefy's architecture works

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The urlefy's Architecture

Are you interested in knowing what kind of free analytics you can get over Urlefy? In this blog, I am going to tell you about the analytics Urlefy provides you.

### Quick Highlights Section
At the top of the dashboard, you will be getting a quick highlight of all the links you've created telling you about the total clicks, unique clicks, top sources, etc.


### Link Performance & Device Analysis
In this section, you'll be getting the information related to each link describing its trends and clicks. Device analysis will be presenting a doughnut chart showing the devices where your link has opened.


### Map Section
In this section, you will be getting two types of Maps. One is the User Map, another one Heat Map. The User Map will be showing you the locations where your link has opened. The heat map will help you visualize the area in which your link has used the most.


### Hourly Analysis & Location Analysis
Hourly Analysis will be presenting a line chart where you will be getting the info about the time in which your link has used the most. Location Analysis will be telling you the info about what are the locations in which your link is opened, telling you about the total clicks, unique clicks, trend graph, and the devices in which the link has been opened.


### Daily Analysis & Browser Analysis
The Daily Analysis section will be presenting a bar chart showing you the weekly usage of your Links. Browser Analysis will be presenting a bar chart showing the browsers in which your links are clicked most.


### Source Analysis
This section will be telling you the sources from where your link has clicked whether from Facebook, Instagram, or just by using a simple browser.


### Top Users
Top Users will be giving you the info of the users who use your links most. Giving you the IP Address, Location, and Devices frequently used.


I've missed a lot of detail. There is so much more to explore on our website. Each login takes you on new journey signup [here](urlefy.com/signup) to get started.

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Free Analytics you get over Urlefy

Ever wondered how our website comes at the top during Google Search. Here's why

We've created Urlefy over [**NextJs**](https://nextjs.org/). according to official docs, NextJs is a production-ready web framework. Migrating from a NodeJs app to any other framework, we needed something which can offer us reusable components, [Dynamic Rendering(SSR)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server-side_scripting) and best SEO.


So why did we use NextJs why not React, just because it fails to produce good SEO on the website while Next offers you some key features:

- Server-Side Rendering
- Cache Support
- Reusable Components
- Automatic Code Split
- Predefined routes
- Lambda function support(API Routes)


Server rendered pages mean better SEO resulting in more and more clients for us. We don't have to download code on the client-side. It is served directly from the server. Reusable Components mean less code means less repetition. Pre-defined routes mean no need to set up routes manually.


It provides static regeneration of pages with cache support resulting in fast loading of pages. It uses webpack for bundling means less size of production code. Easy optimization of Images. we can prefetch the data from the server before rendering the page on the client-side. It has an easy deployment process over [Vercel](https://vercel.com/).


As it fulfilled all our needs, we decided to choose NextJs as our frontend framework, If you want to try our web application and its performance feel free to signup for free at [here](https://urlefy.com/signup).

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Why we choose NextJs for our frontend

Do you post content on Social Media? Do you have Linkedin, Instagram, WordPress, or Facebook accounts? Do you want to know about your customers in 1 minute? If yes, then Urlefy can help you advance your marketing.

Urlefy is a URL shortening service. All you need to do is [create your account](https://urlefy.com/signup) for free. Login to the dashboard and shorten your Link.

All your marketing links can be urlefy-fied. That makes the links understandable and easy to remember. Then your marketing team can post these links everywhere. The data is collected every time the links get clicked.
 
The data collected will then be analyzed with our algorithms. So you can understand which channel is bringing most of the traffic and when. We provide information including : 
- The device used by each client.
- Global Heatmaps to understand the traffic geographically.
- Which day of the week is most productive.
- At what time most of the traffic is coming.
- And much more.

Relax while Urlefy does all the work for you.  Login to your dashboard and check out the updates on your links.



BLOG, 2021-01-10

How to get unlimited analytics with Urlefy

The urlefy's Architecture

Free Analytics you get over Urlefy

Why we choose NextJs for our frontend

Free analytics for your Marketing Channels