Call them stock photos, royalty free photos or open source photos. Not all free photo websites are built equal. Many offer free photos that can’t be used for commercial purposes. So what are the best free stock photo websites for small businesses?
Table of Contents
Why Use Royalty Free Photos?
Small businesses need photos, a full text website or marketing material could look rubbish if not done correctly.
In our day job, we have used images of people from the internet next to real world testimonials. The testimony was true, but our clients did not want their face on our website, fair enough. Free photos can also add a break from the text, something to relate to. You may have heard of the 40 / 60 rule, which states you should have no more than 40% of an email covered in images.
Alternatives To Free Photo Websites
We recently covered AI generated images, it’s definitely worth a consideration depending on what you want. AI has its place, but its place isn’t on every blog page on every website. For the time being, real world photos can not be beaten.
What You Can And Can’t Use Stock Photos For?
Can
- Use for commercial use
- Use for personal use
- Alter / change the photo
Can’t
- We can’t sell any unaltered photo we get for free on our own store (heavily unaltered)
- Use photos of people in a poor light, EG: a disgruntled customer or labelling them as an arsehole.
- Just because a photo is free and contains an Apple Mac doesn’t mean we can do what we want, it’s still a trademarked logo and have to abide by the law 2hen using it.
Read each website’s terms and licence to double-check, PicJumbo for example states
“Please keep in mind, although the photos listed here are free to download and use, some photos do not have a model or property release. Some photos may also contain copyrighted brands, logos, objects or personal properties.”
Maybe
- Some stock photo websites require attribution, many say it would be nice if we did, but don’t have to.
The 11 Best Free Stock Photo Websites For Small Businesses
Pexels
Hundreds of thousands of free photos hand-picked by a community of users.
Unsplash
Over 3 million free high-resolution images brought to you by the world’s most generous community of photographers.
Licence Type: Creative Commons Zero
Pixabay
2.7 Million photos, most uploaded by users who have waived their rights to the image. Pixabay is another one of the big players in free photos, so don’t be surprised if you see your chosen image used on another website.
Licence Type: Pixabay Licence
Pictography
Beautiful high resolution photos by Dave Meier, currently a small collection of photos all licensed under Creative Commons Zero
Gratisography
Gratisography, say they have the world’s quirkiest collection of high-resolution free stock images, composed of the world’s best, most creative pictures — images you just won’t find anywhere else.
Licence Type: Creative Commons Zero.
Magdeleine
Though a few photos, they offer search filters that rival even the best stock photo website. Search by dominant colour.
Licence Type: Creative Commons Zero
Split Shire
1452 photos (we counted), a small website run by Daniel Hanescu, a web designer / photography who was unhappy with what the internet offered.
Life Of Pix
A small network of photographers adds content weekly to a vast gallery of high-resolution images.
Licence Type: Creative Commons Zero
New Old Stock
Looking for an old style photo? Created by Cole Townsend, this site contains vintage photos from public archives. They advertised photos as ‘Free of known copyright restrictions’.
Jay Mantri
Another small, less known website providing unique photos not found on other websites. This site has no search function, making it quite hard to find what we are looking for.
Licence Type: Creative Commons Zero.
PicJumbo
Created by Viktor Hanacek of the Czech Republic in 2013. PicJumbo has thousands of great high resolution photos available.
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