More than a link list, less work than a website

Between a link list and a website

Most small businesses end up with one of two things in their Instagram bio: a link list on someone else's address that looks like every other one, or a website that took weeks, costs more every month and is out of date by spring.

makerhandle sits in between. You fill in your name, a short description, your location and your links, pick one of nine templates, and the page looks right on a phone, which is where your customers are. On Pro it lives on your own domain, like links.yourshop.com or yourshop.com itself, with SSL handled for you. See custom domain.

What your page would show

Example: a neighborhood bakery. Its logo, "Sourdough and pastries in Leith" and the location under the name. Then the buttons:

• Order for pickup, highlighted in the bakery's accent color, linking to its ordering page
• Today's menu, a link to the menu PDF or page
• Wedding cakes, linking to the booking form
• Christmas pre-orders, a link scheduled to appear on December 1 and disappear on the 22nd

Under them, the hours and address block: "Open now · closes 4pm", the week's hours with today in bold, "Closed Dec 25 and 26", the address with an Open in Maps button and a Call button that dials in one tap. Then a product grid with the bakery's bestsellers (photos and prices read from its Shopify store, each opening the product there), and a subscribe box for the weekly specials email. A hair salon would swap in "Book an appointment"; a freelance photographer, "See my work" and "Check my dates".

Opening hours, address and an Open now badge

Turn on Business info in the editor and your page gets a block with your address, phone and email, and your weekly opening hours. Each day can have more than one set of hours, for a lunch and a dinner service, and hours can run past midnight, like 18:00 to 02:00 for a bar. Add holidays and special dates (closed on December 25, short hours on New Year's Eve) and they replace the usual hours on those days, then drop off the page once they are past.

At the top of the block, a badge says Open now · closes 6pm or Closed · opens 9am Mon, worked out for the moment someone looks, in your time zone, and kept current while the page stays open. Open in Maps opens Apple Maps on an iPhone or Mac and Google Maps everywhere else. There is no map embed unless you switch on the small map, so the page stays fast and visitors are not tracked by a map provider.

The block also tells search engines what your business is, with LocalBusiness structured data: your address, phone and opening hours, holidays included. See opening hours.

Messages, emails and buttons that work

On Pro, a contact form sends messages to your inbox without putting your email address on the page. Every plan can show a public email, a phone button (a tel: link) and an email button.

The subscribe box collects customers' emails with double opt-in and exports them as CSV for the email tool you already use: 100 subscribers free, unlimited on Pro. See email subscribers.

See what customers tap

Analytics show how many people visit, where they come from (Instagram, Google, Facebook, TikTok), their country and city, and which button they tap. If "Order for pickup" gets three times the taps of "Today's menu", you know what to put first. No cookies and no stored IP addresses, so there is no consent banner to add. See analytics.

Sell online? The product grid shows what you sell with photos and prices, read from Shopify, Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy or Stripe payment links, or added by hand for anything else, and each card opens the product on your own store. Free shows 4 products, Pro shows 12. On Shopify you can also show the last 30 days of sales from a read-only app, or keep that private, which most businesses do. See Shopify stores.

Fed up with Linktree?

Linktree's own help center says it does not support custom domains, so a Linktree always starts with linktr.ee. Hiding the Linktree logo takes its Pro or Premium plan, priced by region on its pricing page. makerhandle Pro is $20 a year everywhere and includes your own domain and no badge. To be fair to Linktree: its free plan has unlimited links, and ours has 50 on every plan.

For a business that means your bio, your printed menus and your shop window sticker all point at your own address. If you ever switch tools, you change one DNS record instead of reprinting. Paste your current page on the import page and your links come over in one step.

Opening hours, a product grid, a QR code for your page (scans show as "QR code" in your stats) and booking are all built in. What makerhandle does not do: a cart or checkout on the page (the product grid links to your store instead), or take appointments itself (Book a time shows your Booksy, Calendly or Square booking page, which keeps your calendar, reminders and deposits).