{"id":34304,"date":"2017-06-14T08:22:13","date_gmt":"2017-06-14T08:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.lvh.me\/blog\/2017\/06\/14\/the-importance-of-stock-images-for-your-email-marketing\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T16:42:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T16:42:15","slug":"the-importance-of-stock-images-for-your-email-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailrelay.com\/en\/blog\/2017\/06\/14\/the-importance-of-stock-images-for-your-email-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"The importance of stock image sites for your newsletters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Stock image sites are essential for marketing your brand, business or blog. You want to make a good impression and win your subscribers over visually, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then you need highly original content that makes you stand out from the competition.<\/p>\n\n

Carefully crafted visual content is key to establishing the image of your company or business. Backgrounds, infographics, illustrations, cards, memes\u2026 help brands build a visual identity around themselves, so users can recognize them and tell them apart from the competition.<\/p>\n\n

With that in mind, there are many stock image sites on the market, both free and paid, where you are sure to find the perfect support to strengthen your brand image<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

So if you need professional photos but don’t have the budget to hire a photographer, keep reading, because I’m going to share several important details about the different stock image sites out there.<\/p>\n\n\n

What is a stock image site?<\/h2>\n\n

A stock image site is a website where you can buy and download royalty-free photos, or photos licensed for non-commercial use, to use in your articles, your website design, your social media creatives and, of course, the images in your newsletters<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

As I mentioned, there are two types of stock image sites: free and paid<\/strong>. Paid sites usually work with different pricing plans or subscriptions, which means you can download a certain number of photos depending on the plan you have signed up for. Free sites usually offer unlimited downloads, although the quality of their material is not as high as that of a paid site, which is worth pointing out.<\/p>\n\n

As for photo sizes<\/strong>, they are usually available in several options: small, medium, large, web or vector (in .psd or .ai), so you can work with them according to your needs.<\/p>\n\n

Another important point is the types of material<\/strong> you can download from a stock image site. Besides photos, they usually offer other resources too, such as videos, GIFs, icons or freebies.<\/p>\n\n

What stock image sites are there?<\/h2>\n\n

Below, I’m going to review several stock image sites<\/strong> available online, grouped by the type of content they offer.<\/p>\n\n

Free stock image sites<\/h2>\n\n

First, let’s look at free stock image sites, the ones that don’t charge anything for using and downloading their graphic material.<\/p>\n\n

I’d like to mention three fairly well-known ones: Pixabay<\/strong>, Freepik<\/strong> and Unsplash<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n

Pixabay<\/h3>\n\n

Pixabay offers more than 940,000 high-quality resources grouped into three categories: photos, vectors and illustrations.<\/p>\n\n

All of its resources are copyright-free under the Creative Commons CC0 license, which means you can download, modify, distribute and use them free of charge for any purpose, even commercial, with no attribution required.<\/p>\n\n

\"stock<\/figure>\n\n

Freepik<\/h3>\n\n

Freepik is one of the best-known search engines for vectors, images, PSD files and icons.<\/p>\n\n

On its platform you can find content of different types and formats: backgrounds, logos<\/a>, cards, infographics, banners, patterns, brochures, frames and posters, among others.<\/p>\n\n

Freepik’s resources are known for their creative, colorful design, and their quality always delivers highly visual results.<\/p>\n\n

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that the platform comes in two versions: a free one for certain resources and a paid one, which requires registration, with unlimited access to its designs.<\/p>\n\n

Unsplash<\/h3>\n\n

Founded in 2013, Unsplash has become a community of high-quality photos. Its images are copyright-free under a Creative Commons license and free to download.<\/p>\n\n

Besides its beautiful photos, the platform stands out for its image collections, which group several resources on the same theme.<\/p>\n\n

Pexels<\/h3>\n\n

Pexels offers free photos and videos that you can use for commercial purposes without crediting the author. It’s a good alternative to Unsplash if you’re also looking for video.<\/p>\n\n

Paid<\/h2>\n\n

Now that you know some of the free stock image sites, it’s time to step it up and move on to the paid ones.<\/p>\n\n

Here are some of the best known:<\/p>\n\n

123RF<\/h3>\n\n

123RF has more than 77 million royalty-free images. It also has other sections with its own content, such as videos, icons, banners<\/a>, vectors, infographics<\/a> and audio.<\/p>\n\n

It mainly stands out for the following features:<\/p>\n\n

    \n
  1. It has a search engine<\/strong> that lets you find resources by keyword. It also lets you upload any image from your computer to easily find similar material.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. It also includes its own image editor<\/strong>, so you can edit your images before downloading them.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. The speed and security<\/strong> of its image downloads are a plus for this site.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n

    As for plans and pricing, it offers several options: download packs (5 or 25 images), subscription plans (monthly or yearly) and credit-based image purchases (20, 40, 90, 200, etc.).<\/p>\n\n

    Shutterstock<\/h3>\n\n

    Shutterstock offers more than 125 million resources: images, video clips, audio, icons, vectors and illustrations.<\/p>\n\n

    Its material is organized by theme: abstract, animals, nature, beauty, fashion, business, sports, etc.<\/p>\n\n

    As for pricing, it has three different plans: basic, professional and team.<\/p>\n\n

    Adobe Stock<\/h3>\n\n

    Fotolia used to be Adobe’s stock image site. It closed in 2019 and its images moved to Adobe Stock<\/strong>, which is now Adobe’s paid stock image site.<\/p>\n\n

    It integrates with Photoshop, Illustrator and the rest of Adobe’s software, and works with a monthly subscription or credit packs.<\/p>\n\n

    iStock<\/h3>\n\n

    iStock is Getty Images’ more affordable stock image site. It has a cheaper basic collection and an exclusive one, and works with a subscription or credits.<\/p>\n\n

    Other sites: videos, GIFs and audio<\/h2>\n\n

    Besides the stock image sites I’ve just mentioned, there are others online where you can find different resources, such as videos, GIFs<\/a> and audio.<\/p>\n\n

      \n
    1. Sites for finding videos<\/strong>. Some sites for finding free, royalty-free HD videos are: Mazwai, VideoHive, Coverr, Life of vids, Videvo, Videezy and Distill.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    2. Sites for finding GIFs<\/strong>. The best known of all is Giphy, but there are others too, such as The gif collector, Vaya gif and Tumblr.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    3. Sites for finding audio<\/strong>. Some resource sites for finding high-quality audio are: Jamendo, SoundBible, FlashKit and Free Music Archive.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n

      Image licenses: what you can do with each one<\/h2>\n\n

      Just because an image is on a stock site doesn’t mean you can use it however you like. Each site has its own license, and it’s a good idea to read it before downloading.<\/p>\n\n