Shutterstock Review

Shutterstock rejects photos from contributors for nonsense reasons while other as same popular pages with stock photos accept them. The most important thing are earnings where Shutterstock pays 0,1 USD per photo. Shame and exploit.

As of June 1st Shutterstock announced the new payment policy. Contributors get as low as 0.10$ for one photo. Do your buyers know about this? A brand represents the sum of people's perception of a company's customer service, reputation, advertising and logo. Do the customers want to participate in this insulting payment policy of yours or perhaps go to another stock agency who treat its contributors fair?

Ripping off their contributors. Avoid Shutterstock, both buyers and contributors!

We are not a slaves! We just want to take some money for usual life, not for luxary! 10% royalty, are you kidding us?!!!

This company is scam. For several months, they wrote me threatening letters about the banning of my account. They hide sales from contributor statistics! You get only 1/4 payout selling your creative here! Their new payout policy is robbery and slavery. They changed the rules so as to pay an even lower commission to contributors (10%) from June 1, 2020 and reset their ratings from January 1. The greedy irresponsible organization of crooks.
I hate you shutterstock.

They are paying their contributors almost nothing in return of all the struggle they go through to create content. It's very insulting.

Fraudulent purchases have been made using my Shutterstock account and the company has not responded satisfactorily.

A lot of fine print...read the fine print before paying this company! I wish I had.

Shutterstock is a scam, they enable auto-renew on your account by default and then charge you cancellation fees. Do some google searching on this company first, look to a competitor for better service.

reduced payments to authors to impossibility, we are trying so hard to make high-quality content, and you ...

Shutterstock enable auto-renew on your account by default and then charge you cancellation fees.

I have been a contributor for a long time. I stop working with this company because the management does not respect the content providers, us authors. I do not want to work for free. It's a shame!

They don't reply to your messages and make false advertising

Shutterstock locks you into their annual subscription and if you want to cancel it, you have to pay 60$!

As a professional working in the industry of licensing and clearances for 11 years I have to say that Shutterstock is a really solid company to work with.
Ive been using Shutterstock since they launched something like 7 years ago and am currently on the Premier Program?
They have exceptional customer service and meet the needs of the growing and changing business of stock photography and footage.
Their footage and image license is solid. I have had serveral meetings with clients and their legal team to review Shutterstocks stock licensing language and its impenetrable. We have never had any issues with licensing and it has always fit our clients needs.
The terms are very simple, easy to read and understand.
Great work, great interface and great customer service

I have been a very happy customer of Shutterstock for years. As an accomplished photographer and marketer - I truly appreciate the quality of the images that SS has curated. While they've always been good - the overall image quality is great. We're now subscribing to their video footage - and it's amazing how much great video is on their platform. And pricing is great! We recently had a customer service/order issue which was handled professionally and to my satisfaction.

With only 5 days notice Shutterstock cut their contributors payouts down to 15% which often amounts to a mere .10 for an image. On top of that the only answers they give are the rare letter that tells us how wonderful they are being to their community (really????). Buyers beware as many, many contributors have removed their photos, videos and illustrations. We at SS are supporting each other and hope that buyers will also support those whose work they have been using and look to sites like Almay, Adobe, and Dreamstime which we are moving our portfolios to.

Incredible! No respect from Shutterstock for creative work! They cutted of money for contributors, starts at 15% every new year! Do you like to support this company?

I purchased a five image one time usage for $ 49.00 I downloaded six ROYALTY FREE images; Shutterstock not only charged me $49 for Royalty free images but they also charged me another $49 without my authorization. So in essence, I have paid $98 for six ROYALTY FREE images.
I called trying to get an explanation. Aside from trying to understand what the service person was saying in a very heavy Indian accent, he would not refer the call to a manager as I requested. Finally, after I insisted, he said hold on and about 2 minutes later, he said he would file a ticket and I should get an answer in 48 hours. He could not answer why I was being charged for royalty free images. I was able to delete my credit card from my profile which defaults to auto renew with my selecting this option. I will never use them again. TO CHARGE FOR ROYALTY FREE IMAGES IS FRAUD!

They don't pay their contributors almost nothing. It was already a really small amount and now they even started paying less. Contributors deserve at least 50% of the revenue but get almost nothing.

Watch out. They bait you into signing up for a monthly cost when you want to buy an image. Fortunately, I caught it. Cost me $29 and I could not purchase the image that I wanted. When I tried customer service chat and said as much, the person chatting with me ended the chat. Poor company. Use iStock and purchase by the image. Much better.

Despicable! Somehow Auto Renew was turned on (I always turn it off whenever I see it on any website). And so I have just been charged for something I didn't want. I don't know how they sneaked this through.

Interesting that my complaint is the same as the previous reviewer.

Avoid this company at all costs.

Shutterstock turned left and now it's going to the bottom. You cheating, you loosing! I hope your company will colapse. this is what happend when you dont want to pay your contributors for hard work.

It's an awful company!!! They don't want to pay their contributors enough, they steal money at their clients (auto-renewing of subscriptions). It looks like a fraud... :(

Stay away!!!
I made a anual plan which I decided to cancel.
The cancelation could be done only via phone..
the reason for this is that they have to inform us about the 20$ (+vat) cancelation penalty! Shutterstock provides misleading information.
Of course they don't want to us to cancel the plan or turn off the monthly charge as easy and convinient as you make the plan and commit..
It is rediculous that such a big company uses these strategies to get money from people..

If you need another disappointment in your life then use this site , specially if you want to submit photos

all you can get is this after reviewing your photos (Rejection for 20 days ) !

( Compression Artifacts: Content contains compression artifacts. )

I don't recommend it at all to waste your time to upload at least 10 photos so they steal it and take it maybe and get profit out of it , total scam beware !!!

Do not ever work as a Shutterstock contributor, they will pay you miserable pennies for your photos.

Shutterstock has fraudulently charged our bank account for three years every month for $199 without consent. This totals $6,567, which is more than a quarter of most American people's salaries a year. Shutterstock has only refunded 12 charges out of 33! We only purchase a one time transaction for 40 images. We are a pest control company, not a web development company. 350 images per month is outrageous and not plausible. Why would a pest control company subscribe to a 350 image monthly subscription? You can even access our log in history. Customer service even confirmed our company has only logged in once. It didn't cost your company anything for this "fraudulent" subscription because our company didn't even log in or use its services. Shutterstock was debiting out of our account to obtain free money.

After speaking to a MANAGER she provided what I requested and paid for. Call and confirm your subscription. Get a contact name and number there inventory is worth it .

Previous review
Avoid at all costs ... Google there reviews and the sad fact is they know and dont care !!!

I would like to know how much this company gets each year from people who didn t realise that when they buy a photo they take out an annual subscription unless they notice a box they need to untick (or uncheck). Apparently I have been paying an annual subscription for 3 years and there s surprisingly no way of appealing the fee, which is a little unfair on customers outside the US legal jurisdiction. There are alternative sources of great pictures out there, if you care to look