When your link tree got so deep you stopped opening it
3 min read · Switching & alternatives
Pearltrees stores links in a visual tree, and trees grow: after a year, finding one link means remembering which branch you filed it under. Linksley is a Pearltrees alternative with a deliberately shallow structure - a board, categories inside it, one optional level of subcategories, and nothing deeper. Everything is searchable, and the browser extension can put those boards on your new tab page so the collection is in front of you instead of two clicks in.
The path problem
You saved a pricing teardown about eighteen months ago. You know it exists. Now you are clicking through Research, then Competitors, then a branch you named SaaS, then something called Pricing and packaging, and it is not there, because past-you filed it under a client name instead. Nothing is lost. It is just that retrieval costs you a minute of remembering rather than a second of looking.
That is the failure mode of nested visual collections generally. The map is satisfying to build and expensive to walk. Depth accumulates quietly, one reasonable sub-collection at a time, until the structure stores your links and also stores a puzzle about where the links are.
Shallow on purpose
Linksley caps how deep you can go. A board holds categories, a category can hold one level of subcategories, and then you are at links. You cannot build a seven-level branch, which sounds like a limitation and works like a guardrail. With a ceiling on depth, the only real decision per link is which category it belongs to, and that decision is easy to reproduce months later.
A tree asks you to remember where you put something; a board asks you to remember what it was about.Boards themselves stay coarse: one per project, client, subject, or side interest. Ten well-named boards beat one enormous tree with a hundred branches every time you are in a hurry.
Search, plus a page you already have open
Search runs across your boards, so the recovery path when memory fails is typing two words instead of retracing a route. That is the part a visual structure cannot give you, because a picture is not searchable.
The second retrieval path is the new tab. The Linksley extension can replace your new tab page with your boards, rendered instantly from a local cache and searchable from the same screen. The new tab is the most visited page of a working day, so putting a curated collection there converts it from an archive you visit into a surface you use.
A workbench, not a scrapbook
A board holds more than links. You can drop in a text block for the context a URL cannot carry, a checklist with a recurring cadence for the weekly things, and a read-only calendar pulled from an ICS feed so a shared board shows dates as well as destinations.
Sessions cover the other half of the day. Save every open tab and window as a session, and each saved window reopens as one browser window later. If you turn on the optional automatic snapshots, a crash or a new laptop is a restore rather than an afternoon of reconstruction.
The honest limit, and the exit
If the map is the point - if you use Pearltrees to think spatially, arranging and rearranging a subject the way you would on a corkboard - Linksley will feel plain. It draws no map, and it never will. It is a filing structure with fast retrieval, aimed at people whose collection is a tool rather than a landscape.
There is no direct Pearltrees importer. The practical route is to get your links into a browser bookmarks folder and import that HTML file from Import and export in the sidebar, where folders become categories. Linksley also imports Toby JSON, Raindrop CSV and Pocket CSV, and exports standard bookmarks HTML on every plan, at any time.
Common questions
How is Linksley different from Pearltrees?
Pearltrees is a nested visual tree with no fixed depth. Linksley is a flat structure - board, categories, one level of subcategories, links - with search across everything and an option to render your boards as the browser new tab page.
Can I import my Pearltrees collections into Linksley?
Not directly. Linksley imports browser bookmarks HTML, Toby JSON, Raindrop CSV and Pocket CSV, so the working path is to get the links into a browser bookmarks folder first and import that file. Each folder becomes a category.
Is there a free plan?
Yes. One board, forever, no card. Individual plans are $3 a month when one board is no longer enough.
Does Linksley have a mobile app?
No. The web app opens in a phone browser, but the board experience is desktop-first. Extensions cover Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Opera, with no Safari support.
Three levels, then the link
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