The Problem
Link shorteners are either slow (traditional servers) or expensive (enterprise solutions). For marketing teams and developers, every millisecond of redirect latency costs engagement.
FlowLink solves this with edge computing: your links resolve from the Cloudflare data center closest to your user, typically in 10-50ms.
Architecture
The core innovation is the separation of concerns:
- Rails app handles link management, user auth, billing, and analytics aggregation
- Cloudflare Workers handle the actual redirects at the edge
- Cloudflare KV stores the link mappings globally
When a user creates a link in Rails, we push to KV. When someone clicks a link, the Worker looks it up in KV and redirects—never touching the origin server.
Performance Results
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| P50 Latency | 12ms |
| P99 Latency | 48ms |
| Infrastructure Cost | $5/mo (Workers + KV) |
| Uptime | 99.99% |
The consistency is remarkable. Whether your user is in Tokyo or Toronto, they get the same fast experience.
Lessons Learned
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Edge computing is production-ready. Cloudflare Workers are stable, fast, and incredibly cost-effective.
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KV is eventually consistent. Links aren’t immediately available after creation. We show a loading state for 2 seconds.
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Free tiers are powerful. FlowLink ran on Cloudflare’s free tier (100k requests/day) until we hit product-market fit.
What’s Next
- A/B testing at the edge
- Deep link support for mobile apps
- Slack integration for team notifications
- Aggregate analytics dashboard