Relink vs Redirect Hero: Comparing Shopify Broken Link Tools

Key Takeaways

• Redirect Hero is a 404 redirect manager — it catches errors after someone hits a broken link and lets you redirect them
• Relink is a broken link scanner — it finds broken links inside your store’s content before anyone encounters them
• These tools solve adjacent problems; knowing which problem you have determines which tool you need
• If your main concern is managing inbound 404s cheaply and efficiently, Redirect Hero is excellent value; if you want to find and fix the source of broken links, Relink is the better fit

Redirect Hero has 138 five-star reviews and starts at $2.90/month. For what it does, it’s extremely well-regarded and hard to argue with on value.

What it does is specific: it tracks inbound 404 errors — URLs on your store that visitors requested but couldn’t find — and makes it easy to set up redirects for them. It’s a redirect management tool with 404 monitoring built in.

Relink does something different: it reads your store’s content directly and finds the broken links inside your product descriptions, blog posts, and pages. It finds the problem at the source before a visitor ever hits it.

Understanding this distinction is the whole comparison.

The Core Difference: Detection Method

Redirect Hero: Monitor First, Fix Second

Redirect Hero works by watching your store’s traffic. When a visitor requests a URL that returns 404, Redirect Hero logs it. You see a dashboard of 404 URLs — typically old product URLs, changed handles, or mistyped links in marketing emails.

From there, you set up redirects: tell Redirect Hero “send anyone who requests /products/old-handle to /products/new-handle.” It handles that redirect for every future visitor.

This is a reactive model. You find out about broken links after your visitors (and search engines) already hit them.

Relink: Find First, Then Fix

Relink connects to Shopify’s Admin API and reads your product descriptions, blog posts, and custom pages directly. For every URL found inside your content, it checks whether that URL is live or broken — before any visitor clicks it.

If your product description links to a collection you later renamed, Relink finds that on the next scan. If your blog post links to a product you deleted, Relink surfaces it. Neither of these would appear in Redirect Hero’s dashboard until a visitor happened to click those specific links — which might be never, if the links are buried in content that’s rarely scrolled past.

What Each Tool Finds

The links Redirect Hero misses are the ones no visitor has ever clicked. On a large store with hundreds of products, many links in descriptions will go unchecked for months. Relink’s scan covers all of them, regardless of traffic.

Redirect Capabilities

Both tools handle redirects, but differently.

Redirect Hero is built around redirect management. It supports:

• Manual 301 redirects
• Automatic redirect rules for patterns (e.g., redirect any 404 URL containing /sale/ to your sales collection)
• Bulk redirect creation

Pattern redirects are a standout feature — if you’ve restructured a whole section of your store and want a rule that covers all the old URLs without setting up each one individually, Redirect Hero handles this elegantly.

Relink focuses on fixing broken links at the source. In addition to setting up redirects, it can:

• Update the source link in content directly (removing the redirect hop entirely)
• Apply fixes in bulk across products, pages, and blog posts
• Apply fixes automatically in Auto mode (Pro/Business plans)

The distinction: Redirect Hero is optimized for managing where traffic goes after a 404. Relink is optimized for eliminating the broken link from your content.

AI Fix Suggestions

Redirect Hero does not offer AI-powered suggestions. It shows you the 404 URL and lets you type in where to redirect it.

Relink uses AI to suggest the most appropriate fix for each broken link based on the context — the page it appears on, the anchor text, and your store’s current URL structure. This matters most when the right fix isn’t obvious from the URL alone.

Pricing

Redirect Hero is meaningfully cheaper. If budget is the primary constraint and you primarily need 404 redirect management, that matters.

Who Should Use Redirect Hero

• Your main problem is managing 404 errors from old URLs, expired campaigns, or changed handles
• You need pattern-based redirects for large URL restructures
• Budget is a primary concern
• You don’t have many links inside product descriptions or blog posts to worry about

Redirect Hero is well-suited for merchants who have already done a migration, rebranding, or URL structure change and need to manage the 404 aftermath efficiently.

Who Should Use Relink

• You want to find broken links before visitors or search engines encounter them
• Your store has active content — blog posts, product descriptions, or pages with links inside them
• You want AI-powered fix suggestions and bulk fix application
• You want proactive scanning, not just reactive 404 tracking

Using Both

Because the tools do different things, there’s a legitimate case for using both:

• Relink to proactively find and fix broken links in your content
• Redirect Hero if you need advanced pattern matching for redirect management

In practice, most merchants don’t need both. If you’re managing a store with moderate content, Relink covers both the proactive scanning and the basic 404 redirect management you need. If you’re dealing with a large URL migration with complex redirect rules, Redirect Hero’s pattern matching may be worth having in addition.

Relink finds broken links inside your Shopify store’s content before visitors encounter them — and uses AI to suggest the right fix for each one. Install free on Shopify.