When it comes to elevating your brand’s presence, it’s a known fact that quality images alongside other visual content are essential. However, these contents cost a lot to create, and with your brand aiming to make profits, you’ll need to save up on costs.
Understanding the Essence of Stock Photo Websites
You see, to beat the uneconomical challenge of creating high-quality images, you can simply download free images, vectors, and illustrations from stock photo websites. This allows you to hold on to your leads for a longer period, improve your engagements, and boost your search engine ranking in the long run.
So, with the intro out of the way, it’s time to dive into our main event for today – 123RF. Today, we look at the fastest-growing stock website as well as how content creators and their brands benefit from the stock images provided by 123RF.
To give further insight into just how impressive 123RF is as a stock website, we’ll be looking at other stock websites as yardsticks. In other words, we’ll be analyzing 123RF and how it stands against other competitors, which will, in turn, give you a good look at how best to start your stock website experience.
The other websites in our article today include Envato Elements, Storyblocks, and Freepik. So, let’s get started. Shall we?
What is 123RF?
Founded in 2005, 123RF has grown into one of the largest digital hubs for stock photos and content. Its aim has always been to provide aid to clients who need to bring their different stories and projects to life through creative imagery, sounds, and motion.
Not only have they made this their goal, but the workers at 123RF have become professionals at it, scouting the globe for talents who contribute to the millions of royalty-free content at their disposal. And that’s not all.
123RF is fast becoming a global innovator in the world of content creation. Its impact in the creative industry revolves around the use of new products and services to help clientele find creative solutions as quickly as possible.
In addition, 123RF also offers quick and free image editing tools to help auto-enhance images, easy background removal, and get rid of common photo defects. You also enjoy tons of content, as many as 120,000 daily and over 80 million in total.
Envato Elements
Home to over 60 million user content, Envato Elements is a stock website presented by Envato Pty. Ltd. that provides its customers with a lifetime commercial license. Also, Envato Elements provides a range of content with an unlimited downloads feature, allowing customers to get creative with their designs through unlimited experimentation and creations at their disposal.
Moving on, Envato Elements also provides customers with the opportunity to test the website during a 7-day free trial period before committing to a subscription plan. Speaking of subscription plans, students get a 30% discount when they subscribe to the site.
Storyblocks
Storyblocks is the world’s premier stock website offering images, videos, and audio. You get access to over a million royalty-free images, footage, video, and photo assets.
In addition, with a subscription plan, you get access to unlimited downloads that allow your creative juices to flow to the max. Customers also enjoy easy, in-browsing editing, easy integration with the API, and of course, affordable plans.
Freepik
Our last competitor on this list is Freepik, the all-in-one photo platform. With tons of free images and stock vectors, customers can try out these features before committing to a paid plan. Freepik aims to provide top-quality content at affordable rates.
Other features of Freepik include the option to bookmark and save your favorite images, so you never have to look for them, stock filters and effects that make searches easy, a website available in 10 languages, and stress-free usage with no image copyright issues.
How Do Envato Elements, Storyblocks, and Freepik Stand Against 123RF?
Now that we’ve gotten a good look at these stock websites, what they are, and the features on offer, we can start to distinguish each website to create a scale of preference in our heads. From here, we get a good idea of the different perks of each site.
Because we aim to highlight how these stock websites compare with each other, it’s necessary to create a series of elements and judge each website based on their scores in each element. Therefore, we’ll be looking at how 123RF compares to the other stock websites based on price, the quantity of content, licensing, and quality.
123RF Vs Envato Elements
- Price – 123RF has a plus plan that offers unlimited downloads for as low as $10 a month. Envato Elements, however, offers this feature for $14.50 a month.
- Quantity – both these websites offer unlimited downloads for videos, images, and vectors, only differed by Envato Elements having 60 million contents while 123RF provides as many as 80 million different contents.
- License – both sites have license agreements, allowing for fuss-free experiences
- Quality – for the price of their plans, both offer quality content
123RF Vs. Storyblocks
- Price – while 123RF PLUS allows customers access to unlimited downloads for $10/month, you’ll need to pay $30/month to enjoy this feature on Storyblocks.
- Quantity – with Storyblocks, you get access to over 1 million pieces of content. But with 123RF, you get access to over 80 million, including 120,000, every day.
- License – both offer licenses for both personal and commercial use
- Quality – also, quality is pretty decent in Storyblocks but with a wider range and more tools at a lower price, 123RF scores higher here.
123RF Vs. Freepik
- Price – Freepik offers a monthly subscription plan of $14/month, but it still costs higher than 123RF’s $10/month plan.
- Quantity – 123RF is a hub for over 80 million content, but Freepik is limited to just over 35 million.
- License – again, a license is not an issue for either stock website meaning you can use both free of image copyright issues.
- Quality – since Freepik has a basic nature and a slow application, the quality score is low even though the images, videos, and vectors are of decent quality.
Verdict
As we can see, each stock website offers the necessary licensing needed to avoid legal issues. Also, there’s the guarantee of royalty-free images, videos, and vectors as well as unlimited downloads for millions of content. However, it all boils down to the price aspect of each website and the number of content you can play around with. In the end, 123RF comes out on top as the overall pick.