When you sign up for a Shutterstock free trial, there's absolutely no commitment. If you decide to cancel your free trial within 30 days, you pay nothing—and you keep your free images, footage, or music. No risk, no hassle. It's that easy.
With the exception of the weekly free photo and free vector, all content available at Shutterstock is royalty-free but has an associated cost. Traditionally, a royalty is a fee paid to the author or creator of a work each time a copy of that work is used or sold.
With the Shutterstock Image licenses, there is no set time frame for using the images after a download. With a Standard Image License, you can store those images for your own use. The Enhanced Image License is necessary if you want to use them as elements of digital templates for sale/distribution.
If you find that this subscription is not the right fit for you, just go to the Plans page in your account and click "Cancel plan early" before the free trial period ends. If you do not cancel within the first free month, your free trial will convert into an annual commitment plan with monthly billing.
The Shutterstock Standard and Enhanced image licenses for individuals and teams grant worldwide and perpetual use of the images you license. This means, once downloaded, the images are yours to use continuously, regardless of whether you have an active plan with Shutterstock or not.
Stock photos are photographs that are already taken, edited, and ready to be used. But are stock images free to use? A big and resounding NO. The photographer or author of a stock photo makes it available for licensing, meaning you can pay a fee to get the right to use the stock image in your designs legally.
Get your free trial in 3 easy steps:
If you do not cancel within the free trial period, your annual commitment will begin and you will be charged the monthly subscription fee ($29) each month of the annual term.
Shutterstock: The Cons
The biggest con to using Shutterstock is the cost. It is expensive for most users who are looking for images to upload to their personal blogs or small scale YouTube Channels.
Shutterstock is a relatively inexpensive stock photo agency, with royalty-free content starting at $0.22/image. But Shutterstock can also be expensive, meaning high prices per image, for extended licenses, image packages, stock footage, or buying each photo individually.
How much does a Shutterstock photo cost? Depending on what buying method you use. A Shutterstock photo can cost between $0.26 and $9.80 with a Standard license. For an Extended license, the price ranges between $67.96 and $99.50 per image.
You can only purchase one Shutterstock image / video at a time.
Can I use Shutterstock images after the free trial? Yes, you can use all Shutterstock images after the free trial, even if you cancel. The images you download during the free trial are licensed with the Standard license that allows perpetual and worldwide use of the images.
Can I use Shutterstock images commercially? Yes, you can. All images on Shutterstock (except for those marked as “editorial use only”) can be used for commercial purposes.
The pricing for Shutterstock starts at $29.0 per month. Shutterstock has 3 different plans: Shutterstock at $29.00 per month. On-demand packs at $49.00.
We have compiled a list of solutions that reviewers voted as the best overall alternatives and competitors to Shutterstock, including Storyblocks, iStock, 123RF, and PixaBay.
There are no limits on the number of times you can use the image on your merchandise.
The most common reason you may be surprised by a charge from STK*Shutterstock is our auto renew feature. All of our customer plans have a default auto-renew setting built in. This is to make sure that our customers never find themselves unable to download the music tracks, images or video clips that they need.
Shutterstock Photos Are Royalty-Free
This means that you are granted copyright to the intellectual property and have the license to use what you buy in multiple ways on multiple applications.
Experience the creative freedom and peace of mind offered by a Shutterstock free trial. You have nothing to lose . . . and 10 free images, or one video, or two music tracks to gain.
You can open Shutterstock picture in Photoshop, and then use its autofill feature to edit the image file and remove its watermark. Just select the Shutterstock logo and then right click on it, choose autofill option to remove watermark. Photoshop can't remove watermark from a Shutterstock video.
Simply log in to your Shutterstock account, access your Plans page, and change the auto renewal option to “Off”.
Many of these photographs are free from copyright restrictions or licensed under creative commons public domain dedication. This means you can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. However, some photos may require attribution.