Credit where it is due. Taplink's BASIC plan says permanently free on their own pricing page, with unlimited links, text blocks, ready made themes and page view statistics. Plenty of people never need more than that.
Two things push people to look elsewhere. The custom domain is on BUSINESS, their top tier, along with forms, payments and removing the Taplink logo. And whatever you build stays inside Taplink: there is no version of your page that you can take with you.
Where Taplink users go
1. Hostus, if you want a page instead of blocks
The trade is worth stating plainly: you lose the block editor and you gain a real page. Describe it, an assistant writes one HTML file, you drop it in, you get a link. The contact form works on the free plan with no setup, which on Taplink is a BUSINESS feature, and the file is yours to download and move.
2. Carrd, if the visual editor is the reason you are here
Closest thing to Taplink's experience with better economics at the top: US$ 19 a year for a custom domain and US$ 49 a year for the plan that lets you download the site.
3. Linktree, if you want the biggest ecosystem
More integrations, more templates, faster setup. No custom domain at any price, and 12% on a sale on free.
4. Staying on Taplink
If you are on BASIC, using it for links, and never needed a form or your own domain, there is no reason to move. This page is not going to pretend otherwise.
Side by side
| Tool | Free plan | Custom domain | Your page as a file |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hostus | 20 docs, 2 MB, no clock | Yes, on the paid plan | Yes, it is an HTML file you download |
| Taplink | BASIC, permanently free | BUSINESS, their top plan | No |
| Carrd | 3 sites | US$ 19 a year | Yes, Download Sites on Pro Plus, US$ 49 a year |
| Linktree | Unlimited links, 12% on a sale | No, on any plan | No export of links or page |
| Lnk.Bio | Unlimited links | Paid add-on | Spreadsheet export of stats |
Taplink prices by region and resolved to local currency when we read it, so no dollar figure is quoted here. What is quoted is what their pricing page lists inside each plan.
What a page made this way looks like
- A wedding photographer, with a contact form that works and sections that report back.
- A coffee roaster, where the page is the shelf list, not a row of buttons.
- A restaurant, one service a night, in the order a guest asks about it.
- A tattoo studio, a flash sheet and a waiting list.
Each is one file of about 12 KB, made from that prompt, sitting on the free plan.
The prompt
Make me a link in bio page for [what you do], as one HTML file.
Mobile first, max 430px, my own look and not a template: [two words of style].
Sections with real content, not a stack of buttons: what I do,
the thing people want (menu, prices, dates, work), and five links.
A contact form with method="post" and named fields. No action URL,
no key: Hostus stores the replies.
An id on every section, so I can see which one people read.
Then publish it to Hostus and give me the link.Good to know before you switch
Hostus is not a builder with draggable rows. You describe the page to Claude or ChatGPT, you get one HTML file, you drop it in and you get a link. Reordering links later means editing the page in the inline editor or asking the assistant again. If changing a link in ten seconds from a bus is the job, a builder does that better and we would rather say so here than have you find out on a Tuesday.
The free plan is 20 documents and 2 MB of HTML, which is a lot of pages of this size, plus 100 form replies a month. No card, no trial clock. Paid is US$ 9.99 a month or US$ 49.99 a year, and that is where the custom domain lives.