Bento.me Shut Down. Here's What We Built Instead.

Bento.me shut down on February 13, 2026 after Linktree — who acquired it in 2023 — killed the product and redirected all pages to Linktree. If you're a displaced Bento user looking for a beautiful bio link page that prioritises design over feature bloat, Biotree is built on the same belief that got you using Bento in the first place: your link-in-bio page should actually look good. We're not a Bento clone, but we share the same DNA.

What Happened to Bento

On February 13, 2026, Bento.me went dark. Every Bento page — every grid layout a designer spent hours tweaking, every portfolio a photographer carefully curated — now redirects to Linktree. All user data has been deleted. The product is gone.

If you're angry about this, you should be. Bento users chose Bento specifically because they didn't want Linktree. They wanted something more expressive, more visual, more considered. Linktree acquired Bento in June 2023, kept it running long enough to absorb the brand value, and then shut it down. The migration path? A discount on Linktree Pro. The thing you actively avoided.

This isn't the first time. Linktree did the exact same thing with Koji, another creative link-in-bio tool they acquired and killed in early 2024. It's a pattern: buy the competitor, shut it down, funnel the users back to the mothership. If you're a Bento user feeling displaced right now, you're not being dramatic. You lost something real.

What Made Bento Special

Bento wasn't just a link-in-bio tool. It was a design statement. The grid layouts, the widget blocks, the ability to arrange your page like a mood board — it attracted people who cared about craft. Designers, photographers, illustrators, creative directors. People who would never put their name above a stack of grey pill-shaped buttons on a white background.

Bento proved something important: bio link pages don't have to be boring. They don't have to look like a stripped-down settings menu. They can be expressive. They can reflect the person behind them. That idea mattered, and the fact that Bento is gone doesn't make it less true.

Give credit where it's due — Bento was genuinely good at what it did. The visual editor was intuitive. The pages were beautiful. It carved out a niche that nobody else was serving. That's exactly why Linktree bought it, and exactly why killing it stings.

The Problem With the "Alternatives" Lists

Within hours of the shutdown, the "Bento alternatives" articles started appearing. Most of them are listing the same tools: Taplink, own.page, Tini.bio, dinq.me — and, inevitably, Linktree itself. Some of these are fine products. But most of them miss the point of why people used Bento.

The pain isn't "I need grid layouts." The pain is "I want my bio link page to look good, and every alternative looks the same." Most bio link tools are minor variations on the same theme: rounded buttons, flat colours, maybe a gradient if you're lucky. They're functional. They're also forgettable.

Then there are the tools trying to be full page builders — complex drag-and-drop editors that give you infinite flexibility and zero taste. You can spend an hour arranging blocks and end up with something that looks worse than what you started with. Bento users didn't love Bento because it gave them unlimited options. They loved it because the options it gave them were already good.

What We Built — And What We Didn't

Let's be honest upfront: Biotree is not a Bento clone. We don't do grid layouts. We don't do widget blocks. We don't have a visual drag-and-drop editor. If that's specifically what you need, we're not the right tool and we won't pretend otherwise.

What we share with Bento is a conviction. Your bio link page should be beautiful. Not "customisable." Not "flexible." Beautiful. Out of the box. Without you needing a design degree to make it work.

Our approach is different from Bento's but the goal is the same. Instead of grid layouts, we use full-bleed art backgrounds — 100 curated images across six collections: nature, abstract, minimal, urban, organic, and gradients. Real photography and artwork, not Instagram filters or AI-generated noise. Each background pairs with adaptive contrast that automatically adjusts text colour and overlay intensity so everything is readable, no matter the image.

Add six polished styles — classic, minimal, bold, soft, modern, warm — and glassmorphism buttons that feel considered rather than default, and you get a page that looks intentional. The kind of page where someone taps your link in bio and thinks "this person has taste" rather than "this person has a Linktree."

Pages load in under half a second. No bloat, no 47 integrations, no feature creep. We don't do everything. We do one thing — beautiful bio link pages that load instantly — and we do it well.

What You Get

Free (forever, no catch):

• 100 curated art backgrounds
• 6 polished styles
• 5 links
• Profile photo and bio
• Basic analytics (views and clicks)
• Sub-second page loads

Pro ($5/month):

• Clean subdomain — you.biotree.bio
• Unlimited links
• Featured links to highlight important CTAs
• Link icons and subtitles
• Remove Biotree branding
• Priority support

That's it. No convoluted tier matrix. No "Business Plan" with features you'll never use. Free is genuinely useful. Pro is five dollars.

The Founding 50 Offer

If you just lost your Bento page, we want to give you a home.

The first 50 people to create a Biotree page and share it on any social platform get Pro for life. Free. Forever. No trial period, no credit card, no strings. Why? Because every Biotree page is a walking ad — your followers see it when they tap your link in bio. One share from you means organic distribution for us. That's a fair trade, and we'd rather earn your attention than buy it.

Create your page at biotree.bio, share it anywhere (Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok, LinkedIn, a Discord server — we don't care where), and DM us the link. That's it.

Why This Matters

The Bento shutdown is a reminder of what happens when small, beloved tools get swallowed by platforms that don't share their values. Koji got killed. Bento got killed. The pattern is predictable: acquire, absorb, shut down, redirect.

Biotree is independent. We're not backed by venture capital looking for an exit. We're not building to be acquired. We're building a tool we'd actually want to use — one that treats design as a first principle, not a premium upsell.

We're not trying to be everything. We're trying to be one thing, done well. A bio link page that's fast, beautiful, and yours.

If that sounds like what you've been looking for since Thursday, come build your page. It takes 30 seconds.

biotree.bio