iStock Review: Is It Worth It?
iStock Review
In this iStock review, we will be examining whether or not the iStock Subscription Plans and Credit Packs are worth your money.
iStock is a stock media platform offering various subscription plans and credit packs.
Background And History
Founded in 2000, iStock by Getty Images has grown from a 6-person start-up to become a global player in the stock media industry with hundreds of employees and over 160,000 global contributors.
It remains an industry leader and key destination for creative business professionals who want to make a big impact without breaking the bank.
iStock is part of the Getty Images family of companies.
License
,iStock offers two types of licenses: standard and extended. Every file downloaded from iStock comes with a standard license. An extended license gives you additional rights in exchange for an additional license fee. Unless you purchase an extended license, your use of content is subject to the standard license terms.
You can license files from iStock with credits or a subscription. iStock offers you the ability to purchase credits in preset packs to be used to download photo, illustration, vector, video and Music (as defined below) files. The more credits you purchase, the more you save. iStock also offers monthly or annual subscriptions, which allow you to download a certain number of photos, illustrations, vectors, videos or Music per month and save even more.
Plugins
Adobe® Creative Cloud® plugin
Find the perfect iStock image faster without ever leaving Photoshop®, Illustrator®, and InDesign®. Use iStock's industry-leading search and organizational tools to download comps of any iStock image. Ready to go from comp to final? Simply download your image with your credits or subscription.
iStock + Dropbox
Organization just got easier. Link your Dropbox account on iStock to access, share and collaborate with your content across all your devices. Enjoy a swift, seamless workflow that lets you spend less time managing your content and more time creating outstanding work.
Subscription Plans
iStock offers eight different plans.
The Essential Images Only Subscriptions give you the industry standard photos, vectors, and illustrations in the iStock Essentials collection.
The (Signature) Access All Images Subscriptions include every image in the iStock Essentials collection as well as any of the handpicked premium Signature collection images.
Video clips are not currently available with any subscription.
iStock Pros & Cons
iStock: Pros
- Lifetime use
- Credits don't expire
- Many different plans
- Well established
- Huge library
iStock: Cons
- Subscriptions don't include videos
- Low commissions for contributors
- Too political
iStock Review: Verdict
iStock is a very good and well-established platform for stock media.
iStock offers many subscription plans and credit packs and you're bound to find one that fits your needs, if you want to get a subscription plan, we believe that you should get an iStock Signature Subscription Plan as they offer the best value for the cost.
iStock allows you to narrow down your search results when looking for a specific image. You can further narrow your search down by using many categories. After narrowing your search down to a smaller group you can filter your images even more so by best match, age, downloads, contributor, rating, size, and title.
The customer support isn't great and this is an area which iStock should look to improve.
The fact that iStock has been one of the pioneers of stock photography, makes them very reliable, they have a very solid base of contributors and clients and it's definitely an option you should consider, this being said, we suggest you also look at Storyblocks as this may be an option that better suits most people's needs.
Considering other alternatives in the market, we believe there are better options available, you may want to consider Envato, Storyblocks, and Shutterstock instead.
If you'd like to read our Storyblocks Review or find the best iStock Discount, simply follow one of the links below!
