It's hard to beat free! Pexels is an excellent tool at an excellent price point for general photo and video needs.
July 13, 2022

It's hard to beat free! Pexels is an excellent tool at an excellent price point for general photo and video needs.

Shelby Bass | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Pexels

In my company, we use Pexels for high-res, low-cost comps (composite images created in Photoshop) that we use in client presentations. Alternative image and video sites like Getty can be prohibitively expensive, especially for composites that require many separate images to be combined into a final composite. Pexel's advantage is that it's free, which means we can use unlimited images to create the best possible representation of an idea.
  • High-resolution images – Pexels is full of images that are high enough in resolution to look beautiful on their own, but also high quality enough to be combined with other images without distracting pixelization
  • Stock videos – other free stock sites are often limited to just images, but Pexels has a wide range of videos available as well, which we use to plus up decks
  • Good search functions – while not as robust as some paid sites, Pexels' search functions make it pretty easy to track down what you need
  • Licensing – it's very straightforward to know what you can and can't do with a Pexels photo, which protects my company and our clients
  • People search function – Some other sites allow you to refine your search results based on if there are people in them, how many people are in the image, and the people's gender, age, etc. A similar search function would be very helpful!
  • Collection search – Browsing image collections is a great way to find more photos in a theme, but as far as I can tell, there's no way to search for collections.
  • Isolated search – It'd be useful to be able to search for isolated objects (where they're on a white or plain background, intended to be used in composites)
  • Free photos
  • High resolution, modern photos
  • Free videos
  • Easy licensing agreement
  • Enormous library with new photos constantly added
  • Very cost-effective, especially compared with competitors whose photos cost hundreds
  • Since photos are free, it's easier to convince a client to use better photography rather than the cheapest stock photos they can find
  • Good quality mockup images make our presentations look more polished, which helps tremendously in client presentations
While I've had to use Getty for more specific image needs, I usually start my image search with Pexels as it's a much more cost-effective option. However, Getty has a much more robust search tool, which I sometimes need in order to track down an image with a specific composition, effect, or person. That said, Pexels is excellent for more general photo and video needs.

Do you think Pexels delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Pexels's feature set?

Yes

Did Pexels live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Pexels go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Pexels again?

Yes

Pexels is great for finding images for comps in the advertising and marketing industries plus images for decks, mockups, and websites. It has an excellent library of high-res images and videos that are relatively easy to search through. Pexels is less suitable for finding very specific images—especially images that contain a person of a particular age or gender—as their search system is not as sophisticated as some more expensive competitors. That said, Pexels provides an enormous amount of free images with very straightforward licensing rules.