At my day job at a non-for-profit, I direct the digital services and platforms (among other things). One thing that I've seen in my org. is the widespread use of the Bitly URL shortener (free plan/tier) for the sharing of our many online and offline campaigns. The myriad departments in the org. for the most part operate quite autonomously, though I can influence the use of digital platforms (at least the majority of the time). I'd like to get away from using Bitly. Would anyone kindly recommend alternatives to Bitly? Self-host and open source options would be preferred, but not required if the price is right (read: low enough for a non-profit).

I've used YOURLs many years ago, and it worked great; did everything that I needed and was straight-forward to install and use. (The only cost was a cheap $5/month Digital Ocean droplet, that I happened to run other things on too.) However, I have also heard of - but never used - the following other options:

• Kutt
• Polr

So...Are any of the above worth considering (or avoiding)? Are there any other, perhaps better alternatives not listed here? I'd appreciate any suggestions and recommendations! Thanks in advanced!

~talk seems to fit this criteria, but as I browse Tildes to my dismay the majority of content is re-posts of links from external sources. Obviously, there are also quite a few posts which are more than simply URL pastes, and even in the comments of a URL post, there can be healthy discourse happening.

But I am interested to discover whether anyone here knows of any other platforms that are entirely dedicated to written discussion and communication, where external links do not play a big part in that ecosystem of discourse.