If you’re thinking about signing up for a Shutterstock account, you might be wondering whether its images are ALL royalty-free. Here’s everything you need to know…
If you go onto any YouTube channel – or blog – chances are you’ve seen stock photos or videos in action. If you lack the budget to take professional-looking videos and/or photos, stock images are a godsend.
You can use stock video to bulk out your video content, stock images inside blog posts, and email marketing. You no longer have to worry about sourcing your own images, so you can just get on with your main job: producing content.
One of the most popular stock photo and video sources on the web is Shutterstock. How it works is simple: you sign-up for an account and you can then peruse and use any of the photos or videos in its extensive library – and there is A LOT of stuff in its library.
Shutterstock Images Are Royalty-Free
Once you have a Shutterstock account, you can download, edit, and augment its images and videos as much as you like. All of Shutterstock’s images and videos are royalty-free which means you can use them for commercial campaigns, on your blog, and even inside YouTube videos.
With other photo and video repositories online, there may be stipulations about how you use images and video. For instance, some images might not be eligible for commercial use, others could have a “time frame” for how long they can be used – it’s all very confusing.
These “types” of copyrighted images are referred to as “rights-managed licensed” content. You have to pay to use them, of course, but even when you’ve paid, you’re still not free to do with them as you wish – there are caveats and rules you have to adhere to.
And, let’s be frank, NOBODY wants to deal with that. This is why content creators should ALWAYS go with a royalty-free image and video services like Shutterstock. It’ll just make your life a hell of a lot easier in the short, medium, and long term.
This is what makes Shutterstock so very, very useful to online content creators: all of its content is royalty-free, so you can basically do whatever you like with it, removing any and all doubts about what you can and cannot do with images and videos sourced from the platform.
Is Shutterstock Free?
Shutterstock does offer a free version of its platform which is fine for basic stuff. But there are some limitations associated with its free account membership that you definitely need to know about. Here’s a quick breakdown:
- You’re limited to a small amount of content
- The licensing agreement isn’t as robust
- Images may change status, so they could require a different licensing agreement at a later date, which could leave you exposed
Types of Shutterstock Accounts
Shutterstock has a range of accounts and each comes with slightly more robust licensing in place. As of right now, there are several different account types available via Shutterstock:
- Standard License – Unlimited digital use up to 500,000 uses (posters, books, magazines, and out-of-home advertising).
- Enhanced License – Same as Standard License but can also be used in web or print templates, merchandise, and decoration in a commercial space
- Premier License
- Enterprise License
If you’re using a lot of stock images and video, you’ll want to go with Shutterstock’s Enhanced License. Or, if you’re doing A LOT of content, its Enterprise or Premier License might be more appropriate – these give you full access to its 70 billion stock images and video and offer the most robust royalty-free licenses.
I’ve included a quick comparison of how Shutterstock’s Enterprise and Premier License compare below:
Premier License
- Sensitive use rights
- Unlimited indemnification
- Third-party rights transferability
- Use in merchandise and templates
- High-resolution unwatermarked comps
Enterprise Platform
- Unlimited seat access
- Batch downloading
- Sensitive rights use
- Subaccounts with managed permissions
- Increased legal protection
- API access
- Unlimited unwatermarked comps available with certain license options
- Ability to add custom metadata upon download
- Region and language-specific account managers
