iStock, from Getty Images vs. Pixabay

The best examples I have of my experience with iStock, from Getty Images comes from times I am creating prototypes or design concepts to show off a new content type or provide visual examples of how a page could look with the addition of good photography. My only downside is sometimes it can be a struggle to find organic looking stock images which is a key part of the brand identity we have.

Incentivized

This is perfect for any individual or organization that's working on a budget. You'll get stock photos that, while there's a more limited selection than the usual paid sites (Getty, iStock, etc.), are often just as high-quality. For smaller businesses and nonprofits where every dollar counts, I've found myself leaning on Pixabay quite a bit for stock images and, from time to time, will end up buying one of the linked commercial images when Pixabay doesn't have what I need. However, if you have a large budget for stock images, Pixabay will likely not be your best choice, as the paid services offer generous discounts for bulk credit purchases.

Incentivized

• Variety
• Diversity
• Ease of use

Incentivized

• Separate photos, illustrations, and vectors—Many competitors have these images all lumped together with a limited ability to sort through them, while Pixabay has a robust library of all of these, making it easy to find what you're looking for.
• Free, high-quality images and easy-to-understand licensing rules—Often a new client will have bad image usage habits, freely snagging any image off of google. Pixabay is an excellent resource to give clients a huge range of photos without the fear of getting into copyright trouble.
• Sound effects—Free, good-quality sound effects are surprisingly difficult to find amongst competitors, but Pixabay has them in their lineup as well.

• Specificity
• Lots of odd photos
• DEI

Incentivized

• One thing that kind of sticks out is that with so much to choose from, you can feel overwhelmed.
• Some of the photos I sometimes can find separately by googling. In the music business, it seems like many photos rotate on the web so there isn't as much to pick from.
• I didn't see an option for more vertical videos for use in Instagram or TikTok.

Incentivized

The search features are comprehensive and the previews are useful. I really like that they added an option to filter out generative AI content, which can overwhelm a site like this. Sometimes you just want the real thing, especially if you can generate AI images on your own already like I can!

Compared to these others I feel that iStock has better variety and selection, better ease of use/interface/search features, fresher selection, and better pricing options. I don't like that Adobe Stock only has subscription options (last I checked) and I do not use them for that reason. I don't like the interface of Shutterstock as much and it's harder to download a test image to try out.

Incentivized

Pixabay has given me the free vectors I need for my whiteboard animation videos, which aren't available on the other sites, in addition to the video and audio clips. They've been around for a long time and have stayed consistent, valuable, and easy to use throughout the years. They were my first site for free downloads and remain my favorite image download site to this day.

Incentivized

• Provided good stock imagery for really niche content areas, sometimes organic photography can be hard to replicate what stock does well
• Helped to quickly gain access to advertisement ready music tracks when the marketing team have been stuck for audio
• Allowed designers to provide high fidelity examples of brand styling or campaign ideas

Incentivized

• We don't lose any money trying to buy images
• Our videos get more views if we put the good quality images we find in Pixaby
• The posts we make with their images always get a professional aspect, and get more engagement from a diverse social media users.

Incentivized