When comparing is.gd vs bitly, the Slant community recommends bitly for most people. In the question“What are the best URL shorteners?” bitly is ranked 4th while is.gd is ranked 35th. The most important reason people chose bitly is:
Bitly is one of the oldest and largest link shorteners, meaning you can trust that it won't go away anytime soon.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Links last forever
The links created by is.gd will never be deleted down the road, meaning you can continue to use them years down the road without worry.
Pro 19 characters long
Including the "https://" at the start of links, short links are typically 19 characters long (so 11 characters plus the https://).
Pro Reliable
Bitly is one of the oldest and largest link shorteners, meaning you can trust that it won't go away anytime soon.
Pro Customizable domains
You can set up bitly to use a custom domain, so you don't have to develop or maintain your own.
Pro Widely trusted
When people see a bit.ly link, they don't usually think, "ooh sketchy link".
Pro Flexible and easy to use API
The bitly API provides jsonp callbacks, XML, CORS, and data metrics. The API is simple, and easy to use with good documentation. It is clearly thought out and is up to date with support for new API technologies.
Pro Shortest and multiple short domains
Bitly provides bit.ly bitly.com and j.mp
If character count matters, you cannot get a domain shorter than j.mp
Pro Protection from malicious sites
Anti spam measure and tools mean people that follow your bitly links can be confident that they won't lead to a dangerous site. Bitly links cannot be changed, meaning a trusted link will stay safe.
Cons
Con No central location to see all your links
If you want to see data for your short links, you will have to visit each link individually and adding a dash (-) at the end of the link, or enabling automatic previews.
Con Limited clicks for free users
10k Clicks a month, if you want to add an branded domain then you only have 500 clicks a month for that. You want more? $950 per month for their business plan.
Con 500$ on enterprise
Con Cannot edit the destination URL as a free user
This is one of the main purposes of using a URL shortener.
Con There is no way to delete the shortened link
Con Errors often
It will often claim that it couldn't shorten a url.