The Best Stock Photo Websites For Bloggers + Bonus

Blogging isn’t as simple as people think. It requires a lot more work, knowledge, and constant learning. I won’t even bother with the technical details. Your posts include images that aren’t just for show.

What is the best website for stock photography? Which plan should you choose? How do you properly attribute images? What are the rules for using images? These are just a few questions that bloggers and small media companies face.

Bloggers are likely to be like me in always searching for better photos to illustrate their articles. While it is nice to have your photos, what about when you have to write about a new place you’ve never visited and need some images to illustrate the article? This is a problem that we all have to face at some point.

No matter what size media organization, journalist or content creator you are, images are essential to accompany your articles or products.

This problem has plagued me personally many times. I’ve searched for the best stock photo packages or browsed through hundreds of free stock photos to find the perfect photo. This is why I created this post to help you. This will hopefully help you locate the images you need to create your next article faster.

There are many stock photo libraries available. Here is my selection of the best. This list was compiled considering factors like price, terms and number of images in their databases. Let me know if there is something you like.

The Best PhotoDune Alternative: 99club by Stock Photo Secrets

Because this is what inspired me to write this article, I started with the best PhotoDune alternative. For the past few years, I used PhotoDune. Although their database was not very extensive, the prices were reasonable. PhotoDune was able to allow you to buy different sizes of photos at different price points, rather than asking for the same price regardless of photo resolution. You would typically pay about 2 USD for a photo that is 900px wide. This was satisfying to me. They offered only one size option (maximum resolution) until November, when they decided to discontinue offering them. This is approximately 5 – 7 US dollars per image. This is a preparation for Author Driven Pricing, which will allow contributors to have greater control over their pricing options. This is why I decided to stop using PhotoDune for now and look for a better alternative.

Meet 99club Subscription Deal, Stock Photo secrets‘ most attractive deal currently and the best alternative for PhotoDune. You can access 4 million stock images, including vectors and fonts, for $99/year. You can download 200 images annually, and they can be used forever, even after your account expires. The price per image for this plan is $0.49. This subscription is highly recommended, but there are limited seats available, so act now to avoid losing the chance.

The Pleasant Surprise – Depositphotos

Depositphotos has more than 50 million royalty-free, high-quality stock images. Their latest plan, Flexible, is my recommendation. You can access their entire library of vectors and photos for 29 USD per month. In addition, you can also download up to 30 high-resolution images each month. The unused downloads are automatically transferred to the next month. All additional images purchased after your 30 image limit will be charged 1 USD each.

Shutterstock – The Biggest

Let’s take a look at the best – Shutterstock. Shutterstock has the largest royalty-free collection with more than 100,000,000 images and more than 50,000 images added daily. This means that you will find what you need here.

Here’s a great example: I looked through several photo stock libraries for images of Mallorca that I needed for an article. Although I had found them on other sites, I was amazed to find more than 24,000 when I searched Shutterstock. New York is home to over half a million stock photos, illustrations and vectors. This is a huge database!

Now I need to find a way to speed up my browsing of the images. Or to make a decision quicker than wasting hours looking at photos of idyllic beaches or tiny villages. It would be best if you looked into their subscriptions. It all depends on your needs.