You pay hardworking professional photographers a couple cents??
A couple cents for hard work, uploading, a trained eye, a lifetime of education, tens of thousands of dollars in equipment that constantly needs to be updated and maintained, countless hours of editing, uploading, keywords, categorizing, and descriptions. Someone in this equation is very very greedy and taking what little bit of food in the best of times could be bought with the already low prices you paid out only to be slashed by 60% or more.. There is a big movement with all the photographers to contact all the photo buyers to explain our position of how we are being taken advantage of.. I have 15 years experience and over 3000 pictures on Shutterstock, thousand of hours spent getting my pictures on Shutterstock and I would have made more money today picking up a bottle off the road and getting the deposit on it.
This is a company that is taking in free content that they put zero money or effort into creating, editing, keywording, etc. and is now giving themselves a raise to an 85% commission. This leaves a pittance of 15% for the creators. The shutterstock head office is located in lavish, opulent space the Empire State Building, among the most expensive real estate in the planet. The new ceo is pulling in over a million a year in salary and bonuses. What they are doing to the longtime, loyal contributors that have come to rely on the income generated from years of hard work is inexcusable and they should be ashamed of themselves. Please consider Adobe, Alamy or Pond5 for your stock media purchases. They are the more “fair trade” of the options out there and you will be supporting the independent artists that need it, now more than ever. Thank you.
CHARGED me after I cancelled half a month in advance
I make a lot of stickers for scrapbooking so I looked into different sites to see where was the best to get free sticker sheets, I used my 10 free images but I found myself not being too fond of my selection so I cancelled my subscription about two weeks before it ended and got renewed. AUTO RENEW was OFF. Yet a couple days before I ended I was still charged for it. I had to call customer support and they told me it was a charge for the upcoming month, why would they charge me DAYS early if I had already turned off auto renewal??? The rep even agreed that It was good I called when I did but why would they even try to charge you i was so annoyed and it made me not even want to try out this platform in the future.
I use this app every day to peruse ideas when I’m away from my PC. I’ve had this routine for a few years now… Saving a file to a favorites folder sometimes takes several minutes. I’ve curated my favorites down to a dozen folders, yet it still takes forever to pull them up. Very frustrating to sit here watching the app plug away like cold molasses. What’s worse, typically after about ten minutes of using the app, it crashes and I have to start the waiting again. It clearly needs to be updated or streamlined.
For an image download service, Shutterstock is way overpriced. The only reason I tried Shutterstock was because I have to create presentations regularly, and I like to use stock images in my presentations. The images from Shutterstock are average, nothing spectacular. The free images available through MS PowerPoint are of the same quality. Shutterstock is too expensive for what you get. For $50/mo, you get 10 downloads. You can sign up for the annual plan at $30/mo, but trying to cancel is like pulling teeth. You also have to pay the difference between the monthly and annual if you do complete your year commitment. Don’t bother wasting your money!
Okay so I started off really liking this app, photos don’t sell for much but I had sold a few and it’s cool, but I stopped using it for a while and got locked out of my account cause I forgot the email I used… it has taken over 3 weeks of countless emails going back and forth to make any progress in getting back into my account. They would tell me what I’d need to send them, and then say we actually need this, then I’d send them that, and then they go, well we actually need this as well… it’s been absolutely ridiculous… I loved the app but the terrible customer service has ruined it for me
I can’t copy a link of a collection and paste it in my email without going to the web browser
I wish I could copy the link to my collection in the app!!!! Why can’t I do that I don’t see it anywhere!!! So now I have to go to the browser and login again just copy the link? Please add this feature! Please let me know where I can do this so I can change my writing for this app! OK I’m looking around to see that in the description it says you can share your collections I have an iPhone 12+ so maybe this is just a feature that has been disabled in this phone please let me know guys
Kpedney’s inability to understand is should bring sympathy. Shutterstock advertises a FREE app & royalty FREE images. You don’t find out the expense until AFTER you’ve registered and given your personal information to SS to do with as they will. That’s the usual price of anything FREE on the internet. Not necessarily from one that exacts fees. There is nothing FREE on this site/app that I could find. There are plenty of websites that do offer FREE image downloads of varying quality. No one denies Kpedny or others the right to try to recoup the expenses they have in doing photography. The complaint lies in the false representation of “royalty FREE images” that still incur a significant cost. I’m deleting the app, cancelling my account and, if I plan to pay for images, I will buy them from a site that doesn’t misrepresent itself. What’s not to understand? BTW, do you know the music and movie industries also incur costs? I’m sure you don’t expect to download their content for FREE either.
This app used to be nearly flawless, but for the past couple of months a very important feature has been broken for the majority of images. When you tap on a picture to expand the size and have the ability to zoom, the screen turns black. This is happening to about 75%+ of the images. I uninstalled/reinstalled the app, but it still happens. iPhone 12 Pro with the latest version of IOS.
When I first got this subscription I was able to download and edit 10 images per month. I was happy to pay the over the top price of $30 a month for that privilege. This lasted three months, then all of a sudden the subscription has changed...I am only able to download select images and I am unable to edit in this app. In order to get most images I have to pay additional fees...WTH. With the changes that you have made this app is way too expensive and a complete waste.
They promoted PNG file on their site over the app to find out the image has the shutter stock image on top and the checkers in the background after paying $40 for 4 images. Customer service said they’d give me a credit for 5 free pics and they didn’t neither will give you any money back for their lack of efficiency and error on their part. Oh, and if you call them they’ll be closed. If you have a project and are on a budget well, they can’t help you. This comment will stay this way to warn people of what they are getting selling products with their images on top and png checkers in the back promoting its a png when IT IS NOT. Neither they tell you that you need to have adobe photoshop to fix the image. What a joke. I am a business owner and as such I never tear my clients this way, especially if I’m at fault. I’ll make sure all my marketers know and are aware of such scam.
You thought getting paid 25 cents was bad. Just wait. SS just warned us in 6 days we’ll be getting compensated even less. Stating “Shutterstock aims to provide customers with competitive plans and pricing, while fairly compensating our contributors for the time and talent invested in the production of their work.” So now, making less than 25 cents and image is fair? For the sometimes hours of work I put into projects. This is absurd! Horrible excuse to insanely profit off of the ones make them all the money.
Decent platform with decent images but I am done being burnt with their auto renew features. If you purchase a subscription for ANYTHING you have to go in and turn off the auto renew feature or you’ll be continually billed month after month. To me when I purchase a 30 day subscription, I only want it for 30 days. Therefore this doesn’t work for me and I now use a competitors digital assets instead. Customer service is mediocre.
Just realized I cannot open shutterstock with safari on my iPad. It says I need to upgrade my browser. Then I upgraded my OS to the newest version, including the browser, but it’s giving me the same message. I contacted service chat and they only told me to try chrome or the app. Every other stock website works well with safari, but shutterstock disables access to their website in order to force customers to install their app. Very dirty
I currently need to log in thru a web browser to view how many downloads I have left for the month. Doesn’t look like the app shows that info. Also would be cool if there was Dropbox integration. Otherwise it works well!
Apparently if you cancel through the app it does nothing. I canceled and deleted the app the same week I tried it. I just got notified that it was never canceled and they’ve been charging me $30 a month for the last 5 months. I reached out to see why it wasn’t cancelled and to get it corrected and now they are telling me it’s going to cost $80 to cancel. Seriously?!? I used it one day for one image!!! For a home project! Don’t do it!
This app has been a catalyst for my inspiration in creating art! It’s great that I can store in categories of my own choosing and that it’s free to collect ideas. I love it.
I can’t even look at my saved collections on this App. I’ve even deleted the entire app & reinstalled, hoping it was an update glitch, as that’s when this problem first started- 3-4 months or so ago when the last update loaded. Everything is sooo bogged down, it’s easier just to go thru Chrome on my iPhone. Not worth the App space it takes up on my phone at this point. Huge waste.
I’ve been selling on stock sites for quite awhile now, and shutterstock has to be at the bottom for me. They pay the least (quite literally pennies) and have the most stringent uploading regulations, and when rejected aren’t explained well enough at times…I highly suggest going to Twenty20 (ten times more enjoyable, and pays significantly more)
I saw the promotion thing that popped up months ago and It didn’t say it was a annual contract and because of that I would be stuck paying it for the year because you can’t cancel unless you go on the website and and pay to cancel and be charged for each month left in the plan
Signed up for a free trial and forgot to unsubscribe. Had to pay $30. Went into my account and selected to not renew my subscription, but they still charged me $30 the next month. I then found out the subscription is yearly even though you Chet charged monthly, and I had to pay an extra $20 to cancel what I intended to be a free trial. $80 for one image.
On May 26th Shutterstock suddenly gave its contributors a 6 day notice that they would cut their earning by 60%. They sent an unclear, haphazard communication (with one correction mail hours later) on how they would screw over the very people who make the content you love. Buyers : Please take your business to Adobestock, their fair payouts mean you'll always have beautiful up to date images
Nope. There are far too many alternatives out there to even consider ShutterStock. They charge customers a fortune & pay the actual creators 15¢ on the dollar. The subscription service is outrageously overpriced and notoriously difficult to cancel. And then there’s the added bonus of them selling all your information to marketers. Nope!
I created an account on my computer then downloaded the app to use and track on my phone and when I go to log in is says account and passwords don’t match. I changed password and tried again but still same issue! Seems this is only for laptop use!
I got it initially bc I think photographers and artists should be paid for their work and I still do but shutterstock is just ripping people off. It’s by far my most expensive monthly subscription and the one I use the least often. Also, if you try to cancel early they charge you another $180.
I signed up for a free trial and then canceled in the app. Apparently if you cancel in the app, they do not count it and will still charge you monthly. THE $30 IS NOT PER YEAR ITS PER MONTH! They automatically enroll you in a 1 year contract without asking and charge a LARGE FEE to cancel early. They charged me $30 for a month after I canceled and then I was charged $40 TO STOP THEM! DO NOT USE THEM!
Sent a photo in and was rejected for lack of editorial info. Corrected that and resent only to find out it had to much noise. Both could have been mentioned in the original rejection but I guess that would be to much trouble.
As a freelance graphic designer, shutter stock is a must have to my arsenal of tools. Just love the vast selections of design and formats. Couldn’t run a successful business without it!
Don’t waste your time or your money they’re fake they sell you “pictures images” that already on the web I purchased an image that cost $9.99 and Google penalized me for using an image that it’s not belong to me and that’s hurt my ranking on Google so be aware I contact them request for refund they denied the refund
Awful, not only they charge for the image you are required to have a subscription.
I paid 9.99 for an image that was not able to download because I didn’t have a “valid subscription.” This “valid subscription” wasn’t needed to make the purchase.
Just downloaded successfully. Register an account. But you can't log in. You need to re-enter the web page to reset your password. It has been reset. Still don't let you log in. Prompt to reset your password.
I purchased the “Free Trial” package for the purpose of designing a logo for my new website. When I tried to open the template, all that appeared was a blank scree with a red pulsating dot. The operator on the Help Chat suggested that I change browsers. I use Safari. Period. Refund Please.
Shutterstock doesn’t just rip off creators it gets the customers too. Somehow my account always switches back to auto renew when I download. Watch those credit card bills closely. Used to be a good service. Shame.
Latest update you’re not able to save to your collections. Upon clicking the heart icon to save to your collection the app seems to be loading your collections forever. Super frustrating
Do not use this application. There is no support. No answer to my problems after weeks!!!! They just disturb you by sending spam emails to take money from you.
iStock has way better photos for the price. Also if you sign up for the monthly discount and cancel, they will charge you the difference for every month you took the discount. Would strongly NOT recommend.
This latest update doesn’t work well with iOS’s photo privacy setting. I can’t download photos unless I select “Allow Access to All Photos” which is a privilege Shutterstock definitely doesn’t need.
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