If you’re into affiliate marketing or need to tidy up unwieldy URLs on your WordPress site, there’s a gem of a free plugin called Cute Links. This handy tool helps you cloak messy affiliate links into sleek, branded shortcuts—making your site look polished and more trustworthy.
What Is Cute Links?
Cute Links is a lightweight, user-friendly WordPress plugin designed to cloak and manage affiliate links elegantly. It’s created by Sadhan Pal and aims to enhance link aesthetics while helping to boost your affiliate revenue.
Key Features
- Link Cloaking: Hide the long, messy URLs behind clean, branded slugs.
- Simple Interface: No coding needed. Create and manage links with ease from your dashboard.
- One-Click Copy: Quickly copy your “cute links” directly from the plugin interface.
- Link Management: Search, edit, or delete links without hassle.
Installation & Use Guide
- Install & activate the plugin via your WordPress dashboard or upload it directly.
- Navigate to the “Cute Links” section in your admin menu.
- Create a new cloaked link, copy it with one click, or edit/delete as needed.
Screenshots
What Sets It Apart
While Cute Links keeps things simple and straightforward, other plugins—like Pretty Links or BetterLinks—offer more advanced features and customization:
- Pretty Links includes robust branding, tracking, redirection types, automation, split testing, and tight integration with tools like MonsterInsights.
- BetterLinks offers advanced analytics, UTM tracking, broken-link checking, Gutenberg and Elementor integration, and more—all in a beautiful UI.
Despite this, Cute Links remains an excellent entry point for beginners or those who want a clutter-free, easy-to-use plugin without overwhelming features.
Pro Tips & Considerations
- Affiliate Compliance: Always ensure cloaked links comply with affiliate programs like Amazon. Using a simple shortened link is usually acceptable, but full cloaking (masking the destination completely) may violate terms.
- SEO & Crawl Efficiency: Although Cute Links lacks advanced noindex/nofollow settings, if you plan to scale up, consider SEO implications—link-heavy pages can impact your site’s crawl budget. (Plugins like Pretty Links offer better control here.)
- Plugin Growth: Cute Links currently has over 10 active installations, is compatible with WordPress 6.7 or higher, and works fine up to version 6.8.2 using PHP 7.2+. It was last updated just 1 day ago, showing good maintenance.
Final Thoughts
Cute Links is perfect if you’re looking for:
- A lightweight and free way to cloak links
- A no-fuss plugin with essential features for beginners
- Clean, simple affiliate link management without overwhelming options
If you are using Pretty Links ($99 per year) or other link cloaker plugin, then Cute Links ($29) is the best cheapest alternative.