Spring collection — 30% off this week
Every piece in the new range, reduced until Sunday.
clik.is/spring
Square thumbnail beside the text, with the link underneath in the same bubble.
Custom link preview
Decide what your link looks like when shared
Set the title, description and thumbnail on the short link itself, so you can change the card without touching the destination site's code. Works on pages you do not own.
Starter and above · No credit card required
app.clik.so/links/new
Destination URL
https://partner.example.com/p/243
OG Title
Spring collection — 30% off this week
OG Description
Every piece in the new range, reduced until Sunday.
OG Image
spring-collection.jpg
JPEG, PNG, WebP or GIF · up to 5 MB · 1200 × 630
Destination checked — no image or description published
Quick answer
What is a custom link preview?
A custom link preview lets you set the title, description and thumbnail that appear when a link is shared, without editing the destination site's code. ClikSo serves those Open Graph tags from the short link in front of the page, so the card can be changed on a website you have no access to — an affiliate page, a PDF, a press article, an app listing.
- The destination website’s code is never touched
- No site editsThe destination website’s code is never touched
- Title, description and image, set per individual link
- 3 fieldsTitle, description and image, set per individual link
- Image upload limit — the file type is checked byte by byte
- 5 MBImage upload limit — the file type is checked byte by byte
- The live preview check runs on every plan, including Free
- FreeThe live preview check runs on every plan, including Free
- Three fields per link: OG Title, OG Description and OG Image URL
- Upload an image (JPEG, PNG, WebP or GIF, up to 5 MB) or point at one you already host
- The live preview check runs on every plan, including Free
- Custom title, description and image start on Starter, from $4.99/month billed yearly
- A link with custom tags returns an HTML page carrying them, not a bare 302
How to set a custom link preview
Four steps, none of which involve the destination website.
Paste the destination and look at Live Link Preview
The panel beside the link shows the card as a scraper would build it, filled in from whatever Open Graph tags the destination already publishes. If the destination publishes none, you see that straight away rather than after you have posted.
Override the three fields that matter
OG Image URL, OG Title and OG Description, set on this link and nothing else. You can paste an image URL or upload a file.
Re-check the card before you share it
The preview check fetches the destination the way Facebook’s crawler does and retries as Chrome if that gets nothing. YouTube, Vimeo and X links take an oEmbed shortcut instead. If no image is found anywhere, the site’s favicon is used so the card is never blank.
Share the short link
When a link carries custom Open Graph tags, the ClikSo redirector answers the scraper with an HTML page that contains those tags and a JavaScript redirect, rather than a bare 302. That is how the tags reach WhatsApp, X, LinkedIn and iMessage — and it is the trade-off worth knowing about.
The same link, three places it gets pasted
X
clik.is
Spring collection — 30% off this week
Full-width image, with the domain and a single-line title beneath it.
Spring collection — 30% off this week
clik.is
Full-width image over a solid title block, where a longer headline still fits.
One link, one set of tags — og:title, og:description and og:image — and three different ways of drawing them. The layouts here are illustrative: each platform decides for itself how much of the card it uses.
When the card matters more than the page
Mostly when the link is pasted somewhere people decide from the card alone.
Links you share on WhatsApp and iMessage
Chat apps build the whole impression of a link from its card. A title written for the conversation, rather than whatever the page’s <title> tag happens to say, is the difference between a tap and a scroll past.
Affiliate and partner links
You are sending people to somebody else’s product page and you have no access to its markup. Setting the card on the short link is the only lever you have over how that page looks when it is shared.
PDFs, app stores and pages with no tags at all
Plenty of destinations publish no Open Graph markup — a PDF, a store listing, an old intranet page. Those links share as a bare URL unless something in front of them supplies the card.
Press coverage where the headline is not your angle
A publisher’s headline is written for the publisher. When you circulate the article internally or on LinkedIn, the card can lead with the sentence that actually matters to your audience.
One destination, different framing per channel
Make a second short link to the same page with its own title, description and image, and the LinkedIn version of a campaign can read differently from the WhatsApp version without duplicating a landing page.
Fixing a card that came out wrong
A stale image, a truncated title, a description pulled from a cookie banner. Because the override lives on the link, the fix is a field in ClikSo instead of a deploy on the destination site.
Custom link previews across link shorteners
The first row is the one that surprises people: the largest shortener in the category does not offer this at all.
| Capability | ClikSo | Bitly | Dub.co | Rebrandly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Set a custom title, description and image per link | ||||
| Cheapest plan that includes it, billed monthly | $6.99/mo | Not available | $30/mo | $32/mo |
| Included on a plan at $6.99 a month or less | ||||
| Works without touching the destination site’s code |
Competitor details taken from each provider's own published pricing and documentation, last verified 16 September 2026.
Good to know
- A link with a custom preview is not a clean 302. Because a redirect header carries no meta tags for a scraper to read, the ClikSo redirector answers these links with a 200 HTML page holding your Open Graph tags and a JavaScript redirect. Visitors still reach the destination, but through a page load rather than a redirect.
- Custom title, description and image start on Starter. The live preview check — fetching the destination and showing you the card it produces — is on every plan including Free, so the diagnosis is free even when the fix is not.
- Messaging platforms cache the card they fetched. Once WhatsApp, LinkedIn or Facebook has scraped a URL it may keep showing that version for a while, so set the preview before the link is shared rather than after somebody reports it looks wrong.
- Uploads are capped at 5 MB and the file type is verified from the file’s own bytes, not its extension or its name.
- The preview check is rate-limited to 30 requests a minute per workspace, and it will not fetch private or internal addresses — it is deliberately restricted to destinations that are reachable from the public internet.
Custom link previews by plan
Custom previews start on Starter; the preview checker is free on every plan. Links carrying custom tags use the same HTML response as tracking pixels, so the two work together on one link.
FreeLive preview check only — custom title, description and image are not included
StarterIncluded — $4.99/mo billed yearly, $6.99 monthly
ProIncluded
BusinessIncluded
EnterpriseIncluded
Frequently asked questions
A custom link preview is the title, description and thumbnail that appear when a link is pasted into WhatsApp, iMessage, X, LinkedIn or Slack, set by you rather than read from the destination page. In ClikSo it is three fields on the short link — OG Title, OG Description and OG Image URL — and it applies wherever that link is shared.
Yes, and that is the whole point of doing it on a short link. The Open Graph tags are served by the redirector in front of the destination, so you never need access to the destination’s HTML, its CMS or its deploy pipeline. It works on sites you do not own at all.
Share a ClikSo short link instead of the raw URL, and set that link’s OG Title, OG Description and OG Image. WhatsApp reads the Open Graph tags it finds when it fetches the link, which is what ClikSo serves. Set the preview before you send the link the first time, because chat apps cache the card they fetched.
og:image is one of the Open Graph meta tags a page puts in its HTML head to say which picture should represent it when it is shared. Alongside og:title and og:description it is what nearly every messaging app and social network reads to build a link card. A page with no og:image usually shares as a plain blue link.
1200 × 630 pixels is the size ClikSo recommends in the dashboard and the one WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Facebook and X all render well. Uploads can be JPEG, PNG, WebP or GIF up to 5 MB. Smaller images often get cropped to a square thumbnail instead of a wide card.
Usually one of three things: the destination publishes no Open Graph tags, the image it points at is not publicly reachable, or the platform cached an earlier fetch of the same URL. ClikSo’s preview check shows you exactly what a crawler gets back from the destination, which is the fastest way to tell those three apart.
Yes, and this is worth knowing. A plain ClikSo link answers with a 302 and no body. A link carrying custom Open Graph tags instead returns a 200 HTML page holding those tags plus a JavaScript redirect, because a 302 carries nothing for a scraper to read. Visitors still end up at the destination, but through a page load rather than a redirect header.
No. Bitly does not offer per-link Open Graph overrides on any plan — the link-preview controls it does have belong to Bitly Pages, which is a different product. ClikSo includes them from $6.99 a month, or $4.99 billed yearly, and the preview checker itself is free.
Custom title, description and image start on the Starter plan, which is $4.99 a month billed yearly or $6.99 monthly. The live preview check — fetching the destination and showing you the card it would produce — runs on every plan including Free, so you can see the problem before you pay to fix it.
Related features
Or see everything in the full feature list.
Custom domains
Put your own brand on every short link. One custom domain is included free, with SSL issued automatically.
On every plan, including FreeTracking pixels
Fire Meta, TikTok, GA4 and Google Tag Manager from the link itself — build audiences from clicks that never reach your site.
Starter and aboveDynamic QR codes
Branded QR codes you can re-point after printing — your colours, your logo, up to 4K in PNG, SVG or PDF.
On every plan, including FreeLast reviewed 16 September 2026 against the live product. Competitor details come from each provider's own published pricing. See the full feature list or ClikSo vs Bitly.
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