Stock photo memberships for your business (free and paid)
After years as a website designer, I can tell you the difference between an amazing website that will help grow your business … and one that ends up being a digital business card (i.e. it'll get thrown in the digital trash when you tell someone about it).
Along with great copy (i.e. the words) and an intentional brand (i.e. the colours, fonts, and overall vibe), the thing that can make or break your website is:
Stop you in your scroll photos
While I'm a recovering perfectionist and try not to have everything perfect, there's no doubt that beautiful photos on your website and social media entices people to stay around a little longer, read another post or two, and start to like and trust you. Hopefully they opt into your email list so that you own their information forever and aren't at the mercy of perpetual algorithm changes on social media.
It’s been studied that you have about 50 milliseconds for a website visitor to form an opinion of your business (source). You could say the same for social media or anything public facing. You only have 50 milliseconds to communicate something of value, and think about how much information someone can absorb by reading for 50 milliseconds versus looking at some pictures.
It's true when they say "a picture is worth a thousand words".
It seems superficial to focus on pretty pictures, but studies show that babies look at the faces of attractive people longer than unattractive ones. It's literally built into our brains and DNA to want to see pretty things.
That doesn't mean you have to look like a model or have a perfectly styled house to succeed in business, but having beautiful pictures isn't going to hurt your business growth. Plus with how saturated the online business industry is becoming (or just life in general, everyone is B.U.S.Y), you need every advantage you can get.
The BEST news ever is that you don't even have to take the pictures yourself! There's no need to buy a fancy camera or props to style your pictures with. No spending hours on editing. No co-ordinating colours or figuring out a content calendar months in advance. No paying a photographer thousands of dollars, either.
You can just join stock photo memberships for your business (or find great ones for free!).
I repeat, you can buy beautiful photos and videos already done for you. *Mind blown*. And with the rise of online businesses, there are so many people providing this type of service for you, so much so that some have finally niched down into stock photos just for health & wellness businesses, website designers, and many other industries!
I wanted to share my favourite stock photo membership and other sources because there are so many of them out there. Some are free but require more time for you to sift through the garbage to find the hidden treasures, and some are paid memberships but the content is top notch.
If you want to save yourself hours of time scrolling around stock image websites, here are my favourite stock photos memberships for your business to use on your website or social media:
Pre P.S. This post contains affiliate links. When you click on an affiliate link and make a purchase, I receive a small commission at no cost to you. Affiliate links are marked with an asterisk (*).
PRICE: Free or $7+ CAD/month for premium assets
COLLECTION SIZE: Thousands
CONTENT TYPE: Photo + Illustrations
Unsplash is a completely free photo database that has no strings attached. Everything is completely free! It's not like other stock photo websites that say they're free, but they're just links to other websites that actually host the photos where you have to pay big bucks (upwards of $30 per image) to use them.
You'll set up a free username and password so that you can download as many free images as you want.
In recent years they have a paid option called Unsplash+ that includes premium assets not available for free, but it's super affordable and I gladly pay the less than $100 a year for their amazing photos.
This website might take some digging to find photos that fit your brand and feel of your business, but there are some beautiful images. If you've done any branding exercises, you'll know what to enter into the search bar to see images that fit your brand. The more specific you can be, the better chance of finding photos that match your brand.
In the past, I've searched things like "woman on phone top view" or "modern desktop" to find flat lays. That being said, so many photos in Unsplash aren't properly labelled, so searching terms like "kale" or "peonies" will bring up beautiful, feminine, modern photos that don't have those particular subjects in them (they're just popular terms many people search for nowadays).
I like to use the 'collections' option when I find amazing images to save them all in one spot so I don't have to search for them later. Once you find some pictures you love, click on the author name to find more pictures by them, because chances are you'll love the style, feel, and colours of those pictures as well.
Major bonus alert: I've spent hours looking for modern, clean, beautiful and free stock photos for you. Get my curated collection of 500+ free photos!
Here's a little preview:
Élevae Visuals (paid)
PRICE: $42+ US/month
COLLECTION SIZE: Thousands
CONTENT TYPE: Photo + Video + Canva Templates
Élevae Visuals* (formerly Social Squares) is a high-end stock photo membership that I’ve used for years. At times my Instagram feed was 25-30% filled with stock photos from them!
Since these photos are also high resolution, you can use them on your website or pins for Pinterest.
I love this membership because the $42 US/month price point makes it affordable when you want more than 2 photos per month (compared to buying individual images on Creative Market or Stills).
There are no limits on the number of photos you can download. I repeat, you can download an unlimited number of stock photos for your business! The images are clean and modern, light and bright with some pops of colour.
Élevae Visuals is constantly asking their customers about their needs however they're always feminine and are perfect for a female entrepreneur or any online business where the ideal clients are women with great taste.
In recent years they’ve also introduced video which makes their assets even more useful with the evolution of social media, along with design templates you can edit in Canva.
Here's a little preview:
Haute Stock (paid)
PRICE: $149 US/quarter or $499 US/year
COLLECTION SIZE: 7,000+ photos and videos
CONTENT TYPE: Photo + Video + Graphics + Canva Templates
Haute Stock* is a favourite stock photo membership that also provides high quality videos to use on your website or social media. This membership also includes quite the collection of Canva templates for assets such as email marketing, workbooks, Instagram posts and Pinterest pins.
These stock photos have a high-end feel, with some neutral colours, some colourful images, and women of all different skin tones (fantastic for any businesses who are striving to be more inclusive!).
Just like Élevae, you get unlimited downloads each month.
Here's a little preview:
Pexels (free)
PRICE: Free
COLLECTION SIZE: Thousands
CONTENT TYPE: Photo + Videos
I don't use Pexels as much as Unsplash for photos, but if I need free stock videos? Pexels is my go to.
Pexels is very similar to Unsplash in that it has creators contributing photos and videos to the site, and if you like one photo, you can click on the creator to see if they have other photos or videos that follow that style. This makes it much quicker to find a cohesive collection of assets if the creator has more than one that go together.
You could spend hours, days, weeks, or even months exploring a site like Pexels and finding just the right photo or video for your brand. In the search bar, you can filter whether you're looking for photos or videos, which is helpful when weeding through their thousands upon thousands of assets.
Use their free account and collections feature to organize the assets you like the most, you won't regret it in the future when you're looking for the perfect photo or video that you already saved.
Here's a little preview:
Death to the Stock Photo (paid)
PRICE: $19+ US/month
COLLECTION SIZE: THOUSANDS
CONTENT TYPE: Photos + Videos
I started using Death to the Stock Photo in the fall of 2024 because I wanted some stock photos that felt a little bit grittier, raw, and less perfect while still looking high-end. I guess you could say I was tired of using photos that felt like what a 40-year-old suburban mom would like (which I totally am!) and instead wanted some cool girl photos.
It also shouldn't be discounted how affordable Death to the Stock Photo is for such high quality assets, especially considering they include video.
Every collection is different and ranges from the truly out there and provocative to a cooler, slightly more grittier version of the clean girl aesthetic.
Just like with Haute Stock and Élevae, you get unlimited downloads each month.
Here's a little preview:
The Vault Stock (paid)
PRICE: $39.95+ US/month
COLLECTION SIZE: THOUSANDS
CONTENT TYPE: Photos + Videos + AI prompts + Canva templates + Lightroom presets + other graphics
Full disclosure: as of writing this post I have not personally used The Vault Stock … but I have seen it in use by other creatives and the stock photos were so good that I had to ask where they got them from. Answer: The Vault Stock.
What I've seen looks so good that when my annual membership is up for Haute Stock in the fall, I'm considering not renewing and moving over to The Vault Stock.
Since I haven't been inside the membership to see the full breadth of assets I can't share a preview, but you can see tons of examples of their assets from their website and Instagram.
What's interesting is that this is the first paid stock photo membership I've seen (other than Unsplash, where there are more and more obviously digitally created photos in their database) who has overtly used and marketed AI as a positive!
All levels of their stock photo membership includes 1,000+ AI-generated images to use, and the Elite version of their membership includes AI image prompts so you can create your own on-brand photos using Midjourney.
It'll be interesting to see how the other paid stock photo memberships mentioned above navigate AI in the coming years, but for now, if you're pro-AI, The Vault Stock has you covered for gorgeous AI-generated photos.
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That's it, that's my list of the best stock photo membership for your business. Enjoy combing through all of the photos and videos and finding the best ones for your particular flavour of brand!