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Your holiday promotion ends on January 1st.
Your patient portal password reset link expires in 24 hours.
Your financial account verification link is only valid for 48 hours.
But the links you created for these campaigns and transactions? They keep working long after they should. They sit in old emails, archived messages, and forwarded threads. People click them weeks or months later and land on pages that no longer make sense—or worse, pages that pose security risks when sensitive links stay active indefinitely.
This creates three problems. First, you're sending people to the wrong place, which damages trust and wastes their time. Second, old authentication links, password resets, and time-sensitive financial transactions become security vulnerabilities when they don't expire. Third, your link library fills up with hundreds or thousands of dead URLs that clutter your workspace and make it harder to find what you actually need.
Expiring links solve all three problems. Set an end date when you create the link, and Rebrandly automatically deletes it at that moment. No manual cleanup, no lingering security risks, no stale content, and your workspace stays organized without extra work.
What is an expiring link?
An expiring link is a branded link that deletes itself on a specific date and time. Until that moment, the link works exactly like any other Rebrandly link—it redirects to your destination and tracks clicks. After the expiration time hits, the link is gone and returns a 404 error.
You set the expiration date either when you first create the link or by editing it later. This matters for channels where links have a long shelf life. An SMS campaign might generate clicks for days or weeks after you send it. An old email could resurface months later. Expiring links prevent those delayed clicks from landing on outdated content.
The alternative is tracking every campaign link manually and deleting them one by one when they're no longer relevant. That works fine for small campaigns, but once you're creating dozens or hundreds of links per week, manual cleanup becomes impractical.
When to use expiring links
Use expiring links whenever your campaign has a firm end date. Here are the most common scenarios:
- ‍Security-sensitive transactions. Password reset links, account verification emails, and financial transaction confirmations should expire quickly. Healthcare portals sending patient access links or insurance companies sending claims documentation need links that automatically delete after 24-48 hours to prevent unauthorized access if emails are forwarded or compromised.‍
- Time-sensitive promotions. Flash sales, limited-time coupons, and seasonal offers all have clear expiration dates. Set your expiring links to match the exact moment your promotion ends, and no one will click through to an offer that's no longer valid.‍
- Event registration. Conference signups, webinar registrations, and product demos usually close at a specific time. If the link keeps working after registration closes, people waste time trying to sign up for something that's full or already happened.‍
- Temporary content. Beta invitations, early-access previews, and limited-run landing pages don't need to live forever. Expiring the links prevents old content from resurfacing later or cluttering your workspace.‍
- High-volume campaigns. If you're running SMS campaigns or generating hundreds of links per month, tracking which ones should stay active becomes impossible. Expiration rules clean up automatically so you don't have to remember which links go with which campaign.
How to set up expiring links
You can set expiration dates when you first create a link or add them later by editing an existing link. For campaigns that generate hundreds or thousands of links at once, you can set expiration dates through the API.
Individual links
When you create a new link in the dashboard, you'll see an option to set the expiration date and time. Pick when your campaign ends and save the link.
If you need to change the expiration date later—maybe your sale ends early or your event sells out—just edit the link and update the timing in the advanced settings.
One thing to watch: SMS clicks often come in hours or even days after you send the message because of carrier delays. If you set your link to expire at exactly midnight when your sale ends, you might block legitimate clicks that are just slow to arrive. Adding a small buffer (a few hours or overnight) prevents this without leaving the link active for weeks.
Bulk expiration via API
The Rebrandly API lets you include an expiration timestamp when you create links programmatically. This works for bulk SMS promotions, automated customer journeys, high-volume ecommerce announcements, personalized campaigns, or any workflow where you're generating hundreds of links at once.
Instead of setting expiration dates manually in the dashboard, you build them into your automation. Every link in the campaign inherits the same lifecycle, and your workspace stays clean without any manual work.
See the technical documentation for creating links with expiration via the API.
What happens after links expire?
When an expiring link reaches its set date, Rebrandly deletes it and anyone who clicks sees a 404 error. That's the default behavior, and it works fine for most campaigns—it's a clear signal that the content is gone.
But paid plans let you create a custom 404 page instead. You can show a branded message explaining that the promotion ended, redirect people to your homepage, highlight current offers, or suggest related content. A custom 404 turns a dead end into something useful.
Learn more about setting up a custom 404 page in our Knowledge Base.
When to edit the destination instead of expiring the link
Sometimes you don't want the link to disappear—you just want it to go somewhere different after the campaign ends. Maybe your flash sale is over but you want to redirect people to your regular product page. Or your webinar registration closed but you want to send people to the recording.
In those cases, edit the destination URL instead of setting an expiration date. The link stays active, your analytics history stays intact, and you control exactly where people land. This works better when the branded link itself has value beyond the specific campaign.
Things to consider before setting expiration
Before you launch, decide what should happen when the campaign ends. Automatic deletion works for genuinely time-limited content like coupon codes or event registrations. But if you're promoting something that will continue in a different form, editing the destination preserves your analytics history and keeps the link working.
Watch your timezones too. Expiration dates use your workspace's timezone settings. If you set expiring links to delete at midnight PST, European users will see broken links in the middle of their morning. Pick an expiration time that works for your audience's location.
Best practices for using expiring links
Set up your custom 404 page before you need it. If you're running a high-traffic campaign, prepare your branded fallback page in advance. Paid ad campaigns especially can generate clicks for days after they officially end. Having a useful destination ready prevents people from hitting a dead end.
Use tags to track expiration dates. When you're managing dozens of campaigns, tags like "Q1-Promo," "Webinar-March," or "Ends-05-12" make it easy to see at a glance which links are temporary. This helps your team stay coordinated without needing to open every link to check its settings.
Standardize expiration times within a campaign. If you're creating multiple expiring links for the same promotion, make them all expire at the same time. This prevents situations where half your links still work and half don't, which confuses your reporting and creates weird user experiences.
Test your 404 page before launch. Create a test link, set it to expire immediately, then click it to see what happens. Make sure your messaging is correct, your branding looks right, and any links or buttons on the page actually work.
Combine expiring links with UTM tracking. Add UTM parameters to your expiring links so you can measure campaign performance right up until they expire. This gives you complete visibility into which time-limited promotions drive the best results.
Start using expiring links today
Every campaign ends, but without expiring links, the URLs you created keep working forever. That means people keep clicking through to outdated offers, closed registrations, and irrelevant content—sometimes months after your campaign wrapped up.
Expiring links fix this automatically. Set an end date when you create the link, and it deletes itself when the campaign is over. Your workspace stays clean, people don't land on stale content, and you don't spend time tracking down old links to manually remove them.
Want to learn more about link management best practices? Explore our complete guide to building a scalable link infrastructure for your marketing campaigns.
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