A music smart link is one landing page that detects a listener's device and sends them to your song on the store or streaming service they already use. A pre-save link is the same page before release day: the fan opts in once, and the track is saved to their library, or they get an email, the moment it goes live.
This page is for independent artists, and the managers who run two or three acts, deciding where the release-day link should live. If you run a label with twenty rosters and a data team, Linkfire's Teams and Enterprise plans are built for you and nothing here will change that.
Prices checked on 4 October 2026 on each company's own pricing page. Where a pricing page does not say something, the table says "not listed" rather than guessing. We build Stage, so read the Stage column with that in mind; the limits are listed in the same table as the strengths.
The comparison table
| Feature | Linkfire | Feature.fm | Stage |
|---|
| Price per month | Pro $27 ($21 billed yearly), one artist; Teams $55 ($45 yearly), up to five artist workspaces; Premium and Enterprise custom | Basic Artist $8; Artist $19; Pro Artist $39 | Pro $9.99, or $99.99 a year (about $8.33 a month); Manager $39.99 |
| Free tier | No free plan: a 7-day or 14-day free trial, no credit card | Free: 7-day insight data, 1 pre-save service | Free with no time limit: unlimited Smart Links, email capture, every EPK template, Playlist Fit, 15 HANI credits a month |
| Pre-save | Yes (pre-release links) | Yes, including Future Save; 1 service on Free, 3 on Basic Artist, all on Artist and Pro Artist; Spotify multi-follow on Artist (1) and Pro Artist (3) | Yes, "remind me" pre-save: the fan leaves an email, the link flips to live buttons on release day |
| Smart links | Yes: release, pre-release, bio, reward (contests, coupon codes), podcast, ticket, playlist and content links | Yes: release links, bio links, contest and unlock pages, tour and podcast links, short links | Yes: 145 templates (29 classic, 116 motion; 4 motion templates free); Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, TIDAL, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Beatport, iTunes, Traxsource |
| Unlock or reward gate | Reward links for contests and coupon codes | Contest and unlock pages | Pro only: an email gate, a follow gate (honor system; Stage cannot verify a follow) or both, unlocking a download or other reward link |
| Fan email capture | "Email collection" on every plan; Mailchimp sync since April 2026, Klaviyo "coming soon" | 50 emails per link on Basic Artist, 200 on Artist, unlimited on Pro Artist; export and Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign sync on Artist and Pro Artist | On every link, every plan; sends of 250 (Free), 5,000 (Pro) and 25,000 (Manager) a month |
| EPK | No | No | Yes: 15 classic, 21 genre and 80 motion templates, all free to publish (free EPK template); PDF and HTML export on Pro |
| AI assistant | No | No | HANI, built on Anthropic's Claude: 15 credits a month free, 30 a day on Pro, 75 a day on Manager |
| Analytics | Every plan: dashboard metrics, per-link performance, streaming insights; retention window not listed | Insight data kept 7, 28, 90 days or lifetime by plan; Spotify Pixel and Conversions API (May 2026); TikTok Events API (March 2026) | Views, clicks, funnel, countries down to city, traffic source including QR, device, browser, OS, best time to share; full set on Pro |
| Remove branding | Yes ("You can remove the Linkfire logo") | "Powered by Feature.fm" branding is listed on the landing page; no artist plan lists removing it | Pro and Manager, per link |
| Domain | lnk.to and subdomains on every plan; your own domain not listed | 1 custom domain and 1 custom sub-domain on Artist and Pro Artist | No custom domain yet; links live on stage.groovegainer.com |
| Refund or trial | Free trial; refund terms not listed on the pricing page | 7-day trial on Artist and Pro Artist | 14-day money-back on the first payment |
| Who it suits | Labels and teams running several artist workspaces | Artists who want deep pre-save mechanics and ad pixels on their links | Artists and small managers who want links, EPK, fan email and an AI manager in one $9.99 plan |
Linkfire
Linkfire is the incumbent. It launched on Product Hunt in January 2014, its homepage claims "over 50k artists", and it is the smart link most label staff already know how to use. Its Teams plan at $55 a month covers up to five artist workspaces, which is the cheapest way in this set to run a small roster from one login.
Two things changed in 2025 and 2026 that matter for an independent artist reading the pricing page now.
The first is price. Linkfire's own blog post "What are the best smartlinks for music in 2025" still says its plans "range from $10/month to $100/month", and Capterra still lists it at $10 per user per month. The current pricing page shows Pro at $27 a month and Teams at $55, and there is no free plan, only a 7-day or 14-day trial. We could not find the date of the change, so we will not guess one, but the floor for a single artist has clearly moved up.
The second is the company itself. In April 2026 Linkfire restructured the product around "Artist Workspaces", migrating 4,500+ workspaces and 40,000+ links, and added a Mailchimp sync with Klaviyo planned. Its blog went from 44 posts in 2023 to 14 in 2025 and one so far in 2026. None of this says the product will disappear. It does show a product organised around teams and labels rather than solo artists.
What Linkfire still does better than anyone here: multi-artist workspaces, a long track record with distributors and labels, and analytics that a label data team will accept without argument. Every plan includes the full feature set ("only workspaces and user seats scale"), including logo removal and the lnk.to domain with subdomains.
What it does not do: there is no EPK, no AI assistant, and the entry price is roughly three times Stage Pro and more than three times Feature.fm's Basic Artist tier.
Feature.fm
Feature.fm calls itself "The #1 music marketing platform for independent artists" in its homepage title, and on pre-save mechanics specifically that is a defensible claim. It offered a free pre-save tool in 2018 (TechCrunch covered it), added Future Saves in February 2025, fan segmentation in May 2026, a Spotify Pixel with Conversions API on 27 May 2026 and a TikTok Events API in March 2026. If your release plan is built around paid traffic to a pre-save page, Feature.fm has more pixel and event plumbing than either of the other two.
Its pricing has not moved since the figures a third party published in February 2023: Artist $19, Pro Artist $39. A Basic Artist tier sits at $8, and the Free tier is real but narrow: insight data is kept for 7 days and you get one pre-save service.
The caps are where artists feel it. Email capture is limited per link: 50 addresses on Basic Artist, 200 on Artist, unlimited only on Pro Artist at $39. A pre-save that pulls in 300 fans on the $19 plan stops collecting at 200. Insight data expires after 28 days on Basic Artist and 90 days on Artist, so a six-month view of a campaign needs the Pro Artist tier.
Feature.fm's 2026 news has been upmarket: an "Expands Enterprise Footprint" announcement in March, "The Control Room" in February, a SonoSuite distribution partnership in June. The artist plans still exist, but the company's attention is visibly on business customers.
In its favour on the higher tiers: Artist and Pro Artist include one custom domain and one custom sub-domain, email export, and syncing to Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign (a Klaviyo sync followed in November 2025). Pro Artist keeps insight data for life.
What Feature.fm does not do: no EPK, no AI assistant, and its pricing page lists no tool for sending email to fans; the list is exported or synced to a separate email service. The landing pages carry "Powered by Feature.fm" branding, and no artist plan lists removing it.
Stage
We built Stage because the artists we work with were paying for a smart link tool, a press kit tool and a mailing list tool separately, and none of the three talked to each other. Stage is one account where the Smart Link, the EPK, the fan list and an AI manager share the same data.
Prices: Free is $0 with no time limit. Pro is $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year (about $8.33 a month). Manager is $39.99 a month. The first Pro payment carries a 14-day money-back guarantee.
What Free includes: unlimited Smart Links with fan email capture on every one, 4 motion templates plus every classic template, the full EPK builder with every template published as a hosted link, Playlist Fit (which scores a track against any Spotify playlist on BPM, energy, danceability, valence, acousticness and genre), 250 email sends a month to the fans you have captured, and 15 HANI credits a month.
What Pro adds: the full motion library (145 Smart Link templates in total), removal of the "Stage by Groove Gainer" brandmark per link, the complete analytics set (channels, countries to city level, devices, best time to share, release windows, QR-code source), EPK export to PDF and HTML, the reward gate, 5,000 email sends a month with CSV import, and 30 HANI credits a day.
Manager raises email to 25,000 sends a month and HANI to 75 credits a day. Multi-artist roster and team seats are listed as in development, not shipped, so a manager running three acts today needs three accounts.
Pre-save on Stage is deliberately plain. We call it "remind me": the fan leaves an email, and on release day the page flips from countdown to live buttons and the fan gets the email. It does not write to the fan's Spotify library through OAuth. The trade is that you own the email address, which is the asset that survives the release. For how pre-save works on each kind of tool, see the pre-save guide and the music smart links guide.
HANI is the AI manager. It runs on Anthropic's Claude through the commercial API, your data is not used for training, and it answers questions about your own streaming numbers, your links and your release plan. A standard question costs 1 credit, a specialist or web-search question costs 3.
What Stage does not do: no custom domain yet (the UI exists but is hidden until the backend ships), no ad product, and free links carry our brandmark. The reward gate (a fan leaves an email, taps a follow button, or both, to unlock a download or another reward link) is Pro only, and its follow option runs on the honor system: Stage cannot check that the fan actually followed. Analytics on Free are the basics; the full set is Pro. Stage is also the youngest product of the three, and we would rather you knew that than found out.
Which one should you pick
You run a label or manage five or more artists. Linkfire Teams at $55 a month. One login, five workspaces, analytics your distributor will recognise. Nothing else here is built for that.
You run paid ads to pre-save pages and live in your pixel data. Feature.fm Artist or Pro Artist. The Spotify Pixel with Conversions API and the TikTok Events API are the reason. Budget for the $39 tier if you expect more than 200 emails per link.
You release a few times a year and want to own the fan list without paying three subscriptions. Stage Pro at $9.99, or Stage Free if the brandmark does not bother you. You get the link, the press kit, the email tool and HANI in one place. Email tactics for that list are in email marketing for musicians.
You have no budget at all. Stage Free has no time limit and includes pre-save and email capture. Feature.fm Free gives one pre-save service and 7 days of data. Linkfire has no free plan, only a trial.
You need a custom domain on the link. Not Stage, not today. Feature.fm includes one custom domain on Artist ($19) and Pro Artist ($39). Linkfire's pricing page lists its own lnk.to domain and subdomains on every plan but does not list your own domain; ask its sales team before you buy.
You need a press kit as well as a link. Only Stage has one in the box. The alternative is a separate EPK tool such as Bandzoogle's $6.95 a month EPK plan on top of whichever link tool you choose. See the free EPK template and EPK examples that get booked.
FAQ
How much does Linkfire cost per month?
Linkfire Pro is $27 a month, or $21 a month billed yearly. Teams is $55 a month ($45 yearly) and covers up to five artist workspaces. Premium and Enterprise are priced on request. Older figures of $10 a month that still appear on Capterra and in Linkfire's own 2025 blog post no longer match the pricing page.
How much does Feature.fm cost?
Free at $0 (7-day insight data, one pre-save service), Basic Artist $8 a month, Artist $19 a month, Pro Artist $39 a month. Paid plans have a 7-day trial. Email capture is capped per link at 50, 200 and unlimited respectively.
Is pre-save on Spotify free?
Spotify does not charge for pre-saves; the cost is in the tool that builds the page. Feature.fm's Free plan includes one pre-save service. Stage's Free plan includes "remind me" pre-save with no time limit. Linkfire has no free plan; pre-release links are in every paid plan and in its free trial.
Is Feature.fm trustworthy? Is Linkfire safe to use?
Both are established companies with roughly a decade of operation: Linkfire was listed on Product Hunt in January 2014 and publishes an annual report; Feature.fm was listed on Product Hunt in 2015 and its free pre-save tool was covered by TechCrunch in 2018. We found no safety concerns about either in our research. Trustpilot is thin for both: on 4 October 2026 Linkfire's profile had no reviews and Feature.fm's had 21, too few to judge a company by. Try the free plan or trial before paying for a year up front.
Does Stage offer a custom domain?
Not yet. Smart Links live on stage.groovegainer.com. If a custom domain is a requirement, Stage is not the right pick today. The feature is on the roadmap; we will update this page when it ships.
Try it
Stage Free is free with no time limit: build a Smart Link with pre-save and email capture at stage.groovegainer.com. If you need the full analytics or want the brandmark off, Pro is $9.99 a month with a 14-day money-back guarantee on the first payment. Full plan details are on the pricing page, what each limit means is in the Help Center, and recent changes are in the changelog. More comparisons: Feature.fm alternatives, Linkfire alternatives and Stage vs Hypeddit.
Corrections: info@groovegainer.com.
