One of the biggest revolutions in the entertainment industry is the introduction of stock content. Having access to brilliant looking stock content of virtually anything that you can think of is quite amazing. The marketing and media industry has benefitted a lot from this giant resource and a lot of great businesses have come out providing this service. Among these is the world-renowned service Shutterstock as well. Name anything that you want a stock photo for and there is a chance that you will find the perfect picture for it on Shutterstock.
However, our Shutterstock review intends to go beyond the exterior and dive into the service to see what it is like when you are paying for it. Is it worth the hype? Does it provide you with real value for your money? If you are interested in finding answers to these questions, then keep reading to find out if Shutterstock is worth your money!
What is Shutterstock?
Shutterstock is currently the most popular website on the internet for finding stock photos. It ranks on top in countless guides on stock photos and there is a good reason for that. In operation for over a decade now, the website is home to one of the largest collections of stock photos in countless niches. While countless people rely on Shutterstock daily to meet their stock image needs, the website also has a huge strength in terms of corporate clients to whom it provides large collections of stock photos.
This particular approach is so popular that their initial subscription model provided all users with the option to buy stock photos in bulks. However, they soon realized that this is not something that would suit all users, especially if you are someone who needs only one or two photos for single-use. This is when they created single photo buying options as well and the platform became what is right now.
Key Points
Here are a few things we found in our Shutterstock review 2020 that a lot of people do not know. Some of these might even surprise you.
- Shutterstock is currently home to more than 220 million photos with an astounding growth speed. It is by far the largest singular collection of stock photos available online to the common public. The collection is growing quite rapidly and constantly with an amazing 1 million new images added every single day.
- Our Shutterstock com review also found that the platform is home to over 11 million high definition videos as well! These include both Full HD, UHD, and 4k size videos.
- Images on Shutterstock come in still photos, vector images, icons, and illustrations.
- Shutterstock is also home to a vast collection of stock music files.
- Shutterstock was a project initiated by a photographer wanting to create a space to share stock photos for other people to use.
- Shutterstock was the first-ever stock photo company to go live on the New York Stock Exchange.
- Shutterstock has multiple language options to cater to an international audience including English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, Russian, and Japanese
- Shutterstock Showcase is a highly innovative tool introduced recently to help users find and edit the photos they want to use for their specific needs.
Subscription Plans
Currently, Shutterstock provides users with two different subscription options. Only one of them is an actual monthly subscription whereas the other one is a commitment-free specialized option.
In the monthly subscription, you have to pay $49 and you can get access to 10 images per month. You can also change it to a higher image count which costs more. There is a 50-image option that costs $125, a 350-image option that costs $199, and a 750-image option that costs $249. You also have the option to choose between monthly and annual payments with the annual option bringing down costs even more.
The second option is the on-demand packs that include images you specify to the platform. This is a one-time transaction and you can do it as many times as you want without any time limitations. You are purchasing single-use packages that you can get for any project that you desire. There are two options to choose from, one being a 10-image package costing $49 and the second being 25 images costing $229. They are significantly higher in price as compared to the monthly subscription, but you get the images you want instead of search for them for hours. This one also provides an Enhanced License option which we will talk about in the next section. The costs for those are $199 for two images, $449 for five images, and $1,699 for 25 images.
Standard License vs Enhanced License
These terms are fairly easy to understand but for some Shutterstock reviews that did not seem to be true. In a standard license, you can use the image once in any project of your choice without the ability to use it again for other projects. A one-time payment would be required to use the image again legally. This is great for casual users who do not intend to use the image in multiple instances and are working on a small scale.
The enhanced license takes it to the next level by providing a plethora of other options as well. The very first option in this case is the ability to reuse the image as many times as you want. This can be extremely helpful if for example you are publishing a book and you need an image for printing on the cover of the book. You can use it similarly in countless other ways as well for all kinds of products. In addition to that, the enhanced license also lets you use images in videos, and it does not matter if you are an individual or a large production house. The Enhanced license also provides indemnification up to $250,000 which is only $10,000 for the Standard license.
Exclusive Rights
One of the best features that Shutterstock provides is the ability to get exclusive rights to any image of your choice. Found an image on the Shutterstock library that you want to have exclusive rights to? All you have to do is contact them and ask, and they will take care of everything for you. This is an especially useful feature for commercial setups with a lot of competition. Finding an image that represents you well can be quite easy on a platform like Shutterstock and you do not want anyone to copy you. This is where the exclusive rights option can be very handy!
Conclusion
Like any service, the best judge of something is the person paying to use that service. We would advise you to take the same path for Shutterstock as well and look for reviews from users online. A lot of things may look perfect but sometimes, a small but specific thing that may be important to you could cause a change of mind. Look at what other people are saying before you dive in. Overall, we found Shutterstock to be an incredibly useful platform for stock media and it is certainly worth giving a shot, regardless of how big or small your project is.
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