Short link service with click analytics

A URL shortener seems like a simple product, but creating one with advanced analytics, custom domain support, and a reliable REST API is a real engineering challenge. We need a self-hosted tool that gives our marketing team full control over link management: from creating branded short URLs on a custom domain to detailed click analytics by geography, device type, browser, and traffic source. The goal is to completely replace dependence on third-party services with our own system that can be expanded and adapted to our needs.

The key challenge is performance and reliability: redirects must take less than 50 ms, analytics are processed asynchronously to avoid adding latency to the redirect, the system must withstand traffic spikes during campaign launches. We need UTM tag passing for integration with our analytics stack, link expiration and click limits for temporary campaigns, REST API for programmatic link creation from marketing automation tools. A working demo is expected by day 10.

Features:
— Branded short links with custom domain and SSL
— QR code generation with download
— Analytics: geo, device, browser, source, UTM tags
— Expiration and click limits
— REST API for programmatic link management
— Dashboard with report export (CSV/PDF)

Stack: PHP 8 or Node.js, MySQL/PostgreSQL, React or Vue.js, Chart.js for visualization.