Most of the people reading this are not creators. You run a barbershop, a nail salon, a two-table café, a food truck, a one-chair studio. Somebody told you to put a link in your Instagram bio, Linktree is the name that came up, so you made one.
That page is now the first thing a stranger sees after they decide you look interesting. Right now it is probably a stack of five buttons — Book, Menu, Reviews, Directions, Website — on a background you picked in ninety seconds two years ago. Here is the uncomfortable part: for a local shop, that stack is answering a question nobody asked.
What the customer is actually doing at your bio link
A creator's link list is a switchboard: new video, tour dates, merch. The visitor arrives with a destination in mind, and the list helps them pick it. That is what a list is for, and Linktree does it well.
A shop's visitor arrives with a different question. They saw a photo of a haircut or a plate of food, they are on the sidewalk or in bed at 11pm, and they want three things in this order: how much is it, are you open right now, and where are you, and can I call. On a link list each of those is a tap out and a tap back, and every hop is a place where a customer who was 80% decided can stop being decided.
That is the entire argument. It is not about design taste. It is about how many taps sit between "this place looks good" and "I'll go Saturday at 2."
The 2026 money, read from Linktree's own pricing page
Linktree's pricing page, read on 11 November 2026: Free, then Starter, Pro and Premium. Billed annually the three paid tiers are $7, $14 and $30 a month; billed monthly they are $9, $17 and $35. Those are the post-rise numbers — Linktree moved Starter from $6 to $7 and Pro from $12 to $14 in late October 2026, so any article quoting $6 and $12 a month is already out of date, and the yearly bill for the same three plans is $84, $168 and $360. Three years at each tier, at the annual rate:
| Plan | 3 years | What the extra money buys |
|---|---|---|
| Linktree Free | $0 | Unlimited links, basic appearance, basic analytics |
| Starter | $252 | More appearance controls, link scheduling, more icons |
| Pro | $504 | Advanced analytics, priority links, monetisation, SEO controls |
| Premium | $1,080 | Full analytics, commerce, integrations, removable branding |
Read that third column again. Branding removal. Link scheduling. Icon packs. Analytics.
Not one of those tiers — free or paid — puts your price list, your opening hours with an "open now" state, or your address with a directions line on the page. You can add a link to a page that has them. The customer then leaves your page to read them, which is the tap the whole thing was supposed to save.
So the $9 a month is not buying the one thing the bio link exists to deliver. It is buying the ability to look less like Linktree while still making people tap twice.
What I would put in the bio instead
A page that carries the answers: a price list typed once and printed as a clean list, opening hours that turn into an "open now" badge, the address with the one-line directions you actually give on the phone ("parking in the back, entrance on 6th"), two or three review quotes you chose, and a call button pinned to the bottom of the screen on every scroll.
That is four blocks of content. It does not need a subscription, a theme, or a designer. You pick your business type, type your name, your phone, your hours and your three most-asked prices, and it publishes at a link like /s/your-shop with an edit key you keep.
I build one of these — MapToSite. The page is free, with no card and no account. The version with your own domain is $13.99 a month at its launch price ($20.99 is the regular price), and there is a $6.99 tier. Over three years the $13.99 plan is $503.64 — the same money as Linktree Pro's $504, for a page that answers the three questions instead of linking to where the answers might be. The full side-by-side table is in Linktree vs MapToSite, and a live example page is at Miller & Sons Barbershop.
Full disclosure out of the way. Now the part that should matter more to you than my product.
What a page like this does not do — and where a link list wins
This is where most comparison posts start lying, so: no commerce. You cannot sell merch, courses or gift cards from it. No tips, no memberships, no link scheduling, no app, and no booking engine — a reservation request arrives as a message in a dashboard inbox, not as a booked table. It is one page, not a multi-page site.
A link list wins for creators with many destinations, for anyone selling digital products, and for teams running several profiles. Some shops should run both: the MapToSite page as the first button, the Linktree underneath it for the rest.
Three questions before you pay any of these vendors
Whatever you decide, ask these before you enter a card. They are worth more than any comparison table.
- "If I stop paying, does my page stay up?" With a subscription the answer is usually that the page stops being yours. That is the real cost of $9 a month: not $108 a year, but the fact that year four is not optional.
- "If I change my POS or my booking tool, does my page break?" A page welded to a platform is a page you cannot move, and restaurant owners find this out after they have paid for a year of it.
- "Is the price and the hours on the page, or behind a link?" Open your own bio link on a phone, in one hand, the way a customer does, and count the taps to "how much." If it is more than zero, that is what you are paying for.
The 30-second version
If a stranger's first look at your shop is a bio link, that page is your storefront window. A stack of buttons is a window with the blinds down and a sign that says "ask inside." For a local shop, the price, the hours and the address belong in the window.
See it in 30 seconds, without an account
Type your business type, name, phone, hours and your three most-asked prices. The page is published at /s/your-shop with an edit key you keep. No card, no sign-up, and the free plan stays free.
Already paying for a bio link and want the answers on the page tonight? The paid tiers are one click from here — the same Polar checkout the pricing section uses, monthly, cancel any time:
Card details are entered on Polar's checkout page, never here. Polar emails a license key; paste it on your dashboard and the plan is applied to your page.
If you keep the Linktree, keep it. Just put the price and the hours where the customer can see them without tapping anything.
Sources, all read on 11 November 2026: Linktree plans and tier features — linktr.ee/s/pricing and linktr.ee/s/features. MapToSite plans — this site's pricing section, billed monthly by our reseller on their checkout page, never on this site. Three-year totals are 36 months at each plan's annual rate. This page is an opinion piece about what a shop's bio link should carry; the numbers are the vendors' own.