Depositphotos Review: The Best Source for Diverse Stock Photos?

As meaningful as words are, they leave a more lasting impression when they're accompanied by images, animations, or videos. But, not everyone has a media archive at their fingertips, making stock photo databases a useful and valuable resource.

And there are plenty of providers that offer paid and free collections of stock media. These differ in terms of quality, price, selection, and license. Especially when it comes to legal aspects, sticking with paid providers can save more in the long run, since they almost always offer indemnification, accepting full responsibility for the licenses their content is under. In this review, we've taken a closer look at Depositphotos.

In 2009, Dmitry Sergeev founded Depositphotos* in Kyiv, quickly gaining attention from investors who pledged millions of dollars to his startup. Growth was constant, and by 2013, the company logged its millionth customer, offering access to around 20 million files. Complementing its database, Depositphotos also developed different apps, offers, and spin-offs, such as Crello, an online design editor, and in 2014, Bird in Flight, its own magazine.

Today, the company is one of the most popular stock media brands, is headquartered in New York City, and has dozens of different country teams. Since 2014, its database has increased ten times in size, now including around 200 million files.

You won't get far with Depositphotos without an account. Thankfully, setting one up is easy, either with Google, Facebook, or by inputting your email address. Once finished, you can get started.

The platform's homepage is compact. After you're logged in, a small header highlights the newest pictures added to the service's database. Below, there's a search bar that you can use to find what you're looking for by specifying the type of media, inputting a word or phrase, or performing a reverse image search. Underneath, you'll see your dashboard, where you can manage your account, review your purchases and downloads, and add or remove favorites. Scrolling down, teasers showcasing different collections, subscription plans, popular search requests, and contact information for the provider's support are offered.

Perusing the homepage can pay off. Along with trending photos and different collections, you'll also find seasonal offers and guides. Collections are particularly appealing if you know which topics you'll need visual content for. To secure one of these, you won't need to purchase a subscription, but rather, the ability to download one or multiple photos from a specific topic at a fixed price (there are around 100 pictures per topic). Examples include pets, people, and wilderness.

If you're looking for a specific image, Depositphotos will not disappoint thanks to its high-quality search results and extraordinary filter options. With some services, you'll only be able to choose between portrait or landscape photos, however, Depositphotos offers options for panoramic and quadratic shots as well. Search results can be further refined according to their point of view, date added, number of people, age, gender, and ethnicity. There are even filters for the time of day and season.

When performing a search, you can specify how many files should be displayed on a page, and whether images you select should open in a new window or not by clicking on the slide control icon to the right (under the "Sign Up" button).

By selecting Editorial Only from the filter list or clicking on Editorial in the header menu, you can see what material Depositphotos offers for journalists, new agencies, and bloggers. Take care though, as these cannot be used for commercial purposes. Things are different with the more than 65,000 free files Depositphotos has. Among these, you'll find plenty of high-quality motifs.

You'll be able to favorite media by clicking on the star logo that appears on an image when you hover over it. When logged in, a star will scroll with you on the page you're visiting, so that you can monitor what you've already saved. Your favorites can be organized, edited, and shared with others in user-defined lists.

Depositphotos offers access to more than 10 million videos, sorted by theme and type. This makes it particularly easy to search for slow motion, time-lapse, and 3D animations.

It's also possible to specify whether you'd like videos with people in them or not, or loops for scientific topics. In addition, you can search by keyword or phrase, as well as exclude certain terms. All of these options make it easy to find just the video you're looking for.

You won't only find high-quality visual material in Depositphotos' database, with more than 800,000 audio files on offer as well. These are well-suited for film projects or audio podcasts. Music can be filtered by its BPM, length, genre, and mood. It would be nice if they added an option to see music or sound effects that are ideal for looping. Sound effects are categorized according to their type though, which is more than enough.

Do you want to enlarge an image or enhance its quality? Or remove its background? For these and many other kinds of photo editing, you can use Depositphotos' online tool, which performed very well during our assessment. In addition, you'll also find plenty of templates for social media posts in Depositphotos' catalog which can be edited using its layout program, Crello. To use the free version, Depositphotos will simply import your login credentials for your existing account on the platform.

Those who want to offer images from Depositphotos under their own branding can do so by agreeing to a partner contact with the platform and its API integration. The well-rated and intuitive app allows images to be selected and downloaded while on the go.

With more than 230 million high-quality media files, comprehensive filters, as well as practical photo-editing tools, Depositphotos is one of the most well-equipped providers in the branch. Its site is easy to navigate and its extra features are appealing, rounding out what is an excellent offer.

As we've seen above, Depositphotos excels in terms of both quality and quantity. All the same, how well does the provider do when it comes to everyday usage? To find out, we searched for five keywords and phrases and assessed the platform's results. These were: web hosting, ecommerce, antivirus, business, and email marketing.

Web hosting: Before filtering our results, Depositphotos yielded around 18,000 results, which included a few illustrations, even though we specified images only. Most of the results appeared relevant to our search query. A few classics that you might come across elsewhere were mixed in, but so were plenty of modern and fresh interpretations as well. In order to make the search more efficient, you should definitely use the platform's filter options. When clicking on a picture, a window opens showing what sizes it's available in, as well as links to similar images.

Ecommerce: For this, we got just under 25,000 hits. We jumped to the last page of the results and were happy to see that most of the images remained relevant to our query. It's impossible to browse through so many photos without filters, especially since Depositphotos offers so many atypical, albeit innovative interpretations and motifs. We did notice that some of the results weren't images, but advertisements for subscriptions or packages, which was somewhat annoying.

Antivirus:  For this search term, Depositphotos provided us with slightly more than 10,000 images, most of which had something to do with computer viruses, however, there were a few non-technical results as well. Alongside rather typical pictures were a number of clever and humorous options, the majority of which were relevant.

Business: 3.2 million images and counting were returned after our search with this keyword. Once again, filters came to the rescue, making it possible to find something that might match our needs. Most of the results that were displayed for us were relevant and of high quality.

Email marketing: Just under 9,000 results came up with the last phrase we searched for. In addition to the usual suspects, we also noticed a few comical takes which were qualitatively excellent and relevant.

Accurate, clever, and high-quality are all adjectives we have no difficulty using to describe the results we were shown when searching for images for everyday use on Depositphotos. Its numerous filters make finding the right picture efficient, so long as you know what you're looking for.

Illustrations and vector graphics are another part of Depositphotos' catalog. For these, you'll find a wide selection of colorful and interesting options. The same holds for its videos, which include sleek overlay clips, as well as unusual (in a good way) options. Audio files and sound effects just round out the overall excellent offerings for all stock content not related to images.

Depositphotos has three separate licenses: Standard, Extended, and Editorial Use Only. For Standard licenses, you'll be able to use the media covered for personal and commercial purposes, such as on blogs or websites, as well as for advertising and marketing. Print usage is also allowed, however, only for the first 500,000 examples.

Should you want to print more than 500,000 copies of something, you'll need to select the Extended License when doing an on-demand download. This makes it possible to use media for resale or free distribution, such as posters, postcards, cups, or t-shirts.

The third type includes media that is only intended for editorial purposes, such as informational blogs or newspapers. There's no charge for these, however, they cannot be marketed.

Depositphotos does its utmost to make itself available to its customers, offering a number of different contact options. Support can be reached via live chat, email, hotline, or contact form. When testing it out, we submitted two queries, both of which were answered within two hours by friendly and competent staffers.

Most questions relating to the platform, its collections, and stock photography, in general, are answered on Depositphotos' website. We recommend checking out the platform's blog for useful tips.

Depositphotos has two pricing plans: for individual users and for businesses. With both, you'll get quite a bit of quality at a fair price, regardless of whether you select a subscription or an on-demand package (for images, videos, and audio, respectively). With a subscription, downloads that you don't use will carry over to the next month so long as your subscription remains active.

Things are similar when it comes to videos, however, you'll need to use your videos each month, since they don't carry over. If you need audio, you can pay a flat rate for unlimited music, sound, and jingle downloads, or, opt for an on-demand package.

Below, you can find an overview of Depositphoto's current prices:

The table below shows how much Depositphotos costs per year if purchasing 10 stock photos per months in relation to the other providers from our sample.

Both price and performance are good with Depositphotos. The provider impressed us with its intuitive platform, huge media archive, straightforward licensing model, fast support, and fair prices. Beyond that, Depositphotos regularly offers sales and special deals, even though most of these are targeted at its corporate clients.

Still, you'll need to pay attention to which subscription you select, since the prices for businesses are higher than for individuals. This might be easily overseen and should be communicated in a more transparent fashion, at least in our opinion.

At the end of the day though, Depositphotos is a great option for small and medium-sized enterprises that need high-quality media material for marketing and want to have plenty of choices.

Many users value Depositphotos' solid price-performance ratio as well as their bountiful media catalog. We compiled a number of customer reviews for you below.

Should you need more professional material, you might want to take a look at premium providers like Getty Images. Be forewarned though, you'll need a big budget to gain access to such media.

At the other end of the spectrum, if you're working with more modest resources, we recommend casting your glance towards 123RF. The Malaysian provider is a real bargain, offering good quality media that won't break the bank.

More of the best alternatives can be found below: