Question 1

What does Lua actually do?

Accepted Answer

It turns a long URL into a short one on a domain you control, then records what happens when someone opens it: which country, which device, which browser, which referrer, and any UTM parameters on the link. The short link is the mechanism. The record is the product.

Question 2

Do I need a domain of my own?

Accepted Answer

No. Links work on the shared domain from the moment you sign up. A domain of your own is worth adding when you start publishing links somewhere permanent, because a branded link gets clicked more often and keeps working if you ever change providers.

Question 3

How long does a custom domain take to set up?

Accepted Answer

Point a CNAME at Lua and wait for the certificate, which is usually minutes. A subdomain of a domain you already own, like go.example.com, works perfectly and costs nothing extra.

Question 4

Can I choose the back-half myself?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores. Case matters, so /Spring and /spring are two different links. A handful of words are reserved on the main domain because a real page already answers there; on your own domain nothing is reserved.

Question 5

Can a link expire, or ask for a password?

Accepted Answer

Both, on every plan including the free one. A link can retire on a date and send people to a fallback URL after it, and it can sit behind a password. A link can also send iOS and Android to different destinations.

Question 6

Does every link get a QR code?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and scans are counted separately from clicks, so print and screen never end up in the same number.

Question 7

What happens to my links if I stop paying?

Accepted Answer

They keep resolving while the account is open. Closing the account stops them, which is why a domain of your own matters for anything printed: the mapping is yours, and you can point it elsewhere.

Question 8

Is the analytics data limited on cheaper plans?

Accepted Answer

No. Every field and every date range is on every plan, the free one included. Plans differ on five numbers only: links, click events a month, custom domains, tags and team members.

Question 9

How far back can I look?

Accepted Answer

As far back as the link goes. Click history is kept rather than rolled off after a window, so a campaign from last year is still readable.

Question 10

How accurate is the location?

Accepted Answer

Country is dependable, because address blocks are allocated by country. Region is usually right. City is a guess that tends to report where the network terminates rather than where the person is, which shows up most on mobile traffic. Read country as fact and city as a hint.

Question 11

Why do so many clicks say "Direct"?

Accepted Answer

Because browsers increasingly send no referrer. A link opened inside an app, typed, pasted, or scanned from a QR code has no referring page at all, and most sites now send only their domain rather than the page. Direct is the absence of a source, not a source. Tag links with UTM parameters when the answer matters: those travel in the URL, where nothing strips them.

Question 12

Does Lua track people across links?

Accepted Answer

No. No cookie is set at the redirect, so the same person opening two of your links is two unrelated rows. Visitor counts are an estimate built from what the request carried.

Question 13

What is actually in the free plan?

Accepted Answer

Five links, 100 click events a month, one tag and one team member, on the shared domain. Every feature and every analytics field is the same as the paid plans.

Question 14

Is yearly cheaper?

Accepted Answer

Yes, two months free. The pricing page shows both, always as a monthly figure so the two are comparable.

Question 15

What happens when I hit a limit?

Accepted Answer

New work of that kind stops. Nothing you already have is deleted, and existing links keep resolving.

Question 16

Can I run Lua on my own server?

Accepted Answer

Yes. It is open source, and self-hosting is the only way to guarantee the click record never reaches anyone else's infrastructure. It runs on PostgreSQL or MySQL.

Question 17

Is there an API?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it reaches every action the screens do, because both call the same code. There is also an MCP server, so an assistant can create a link, tag it and read its analytics without a scraping layer in between.

Question 18

What does Lua store about the people who click?

Accepted Answer

The click event holds the derived location, the device, browser, OS and language, the referrer, any UTM parameters, and the IP address the location was derived from. The IP is never shown in the analytics screens and is deleted with the link. Self-hosted, it never leaves your own server.

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