Custom URL Slugs for Shared Links

Your Shared Links Now Look Like They Should

Every PaperLink shared link used to look like this: app.paperlink.online/en/view/cm4x7abc123. Functional, but forgettable. Paste that into an email to a client, and it looks like a system error - not a professional document.

Custom URL slugs change that. Now you choose what goes at the end of the link. A proposal becomes /my-proposal. A contract becomes /contract-2025. A data room folder becomes /due-diligence.

Short, readable, and instantly recognizable.

How It Works

When you create or edit a shared link - for a file or a folder - you'll see a new Custom URL field in link settings. Type a slug, and PaperLink checks availability in real-time. Green checkmark means it's yours.

The slug follows simple rules: lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens. Between 3 and 50 characters. No special characters, no spaces (they auto-convert to hyphens), no uppercase (auto-converted to lowercase).

A live URL preview updates as you type, so you see the final link before saving.

On the Default Domain

Your link gets a clean, team-scoped URL:

app.paperlink.online/s/k7x2mp3n/my-proposal

The 8-character code (k7x2mp3n) is your team's unique identifier - auto-generated, permanent, and invisible to your recipients. It keeps slugs isolated between teams. Two different teams can both use my-proposal without conflict.

On Your Custom Domain

If you've connected a custom domain, slugs sit at the root:

docs.acme.com/contract-2025

No prefixes, no team codes. Your domain, your namespace. This is the cleanest possible URL for a shared document.

Bulk Links with Custom Slugs

Sharing the same document with multiple recipients? Custom slugs work with bulk named links too.

Enter a base slug - say, proposal - and PaperLink appends a numeric suffix for each recipient:

Recipient	URL
Alice	/s/k7x2mp3n/proposal-1
Bob	/s/k7x2mp3n/proposal-2
Carol	/s/k7x2mp3n/proposal-3

If proposal-3 is already taken, the system skips to the next available number. No manual work, no collisions.

Editing and Removing Slugs

You can change a slug at any time. The system warns you clearly: the old URL stops working immediately. No redirect from old to new - anyone with the old link sees a "not found" page.

You can also remove a custom slug entirely, reverting to the auto-generated URL. The freed slug becomes available for reuse right away.

Why We Built This

Three signals pushed this feature up the roadmap:

Client-facing trust. Users sending proposals and contracts reported that auto-generated URLs made recipients hesitant to click. A readable URL like /proposal-acme-q1 sets expectations before the click.

Internal organization. Teams sharing dozens of links couldn't tell them apart in their dashboards. Custom slugs double as a naming convention - the URL itself describes the content.

Custom domain completion. We launched custom domains last quarter. But a URL like docs.acme.com/cm4x7abc123 still looked unfinished. Root-level slugs complete the picture: docs.acme.com/investor-deck is a URL you'd put on a business card.

Security and Privacy

Slug availability checks are scoped to your team (default domain) or your domain (custom domains). You cannot discover another team's slugs by probing - the system only tells you whether a slug is available within your own namespace.

Rate limiting prevents enumeration attacks: a maximum of 20 availability checks per minute, per user. All slug operations enforce team permissions server-side, not just in the UI.

What's Next

Custom slugs pair with every other sharing control - password protection, email verification, download permissions, and expiration dates. A professional URL with professional security behind it.

Have ideas for how custom slugs could work better for you? Let us know through the app.