Bigstock
Bigstock is an online royalty-free, international microstock photography website that sells images via a credit-based system. Bigstock’s photos, vectors and illustrations cost from between 1 and 6 credits each, depending on size, with credits ranging from $.90 to US$3.00. BigStockPhoto was founded in Davis, California, in the fall of 2004. Bigstock adds to its library every day as photographers and designers from around the world submit their work. As of June 2015, Bigstock had more than 25 million royalty-free images (photos, vectors and illustrations) available.
On September 23, 2009, Bigstock announced that it had been purchased by Shutterstock, a subscription-based microstock company.
Bigstock was founded in 2004 with the goal of providing affordable, royalty-free images – perfect for any type of design project. Since then, Bigstock has grown into one of the world’s largest credit-based stock image agencies, offering millions of high quality photographs, illustrations, and vectors. Bigstock’s extensive image library, its affordability and strong search engine have made the company an important resource for image buyers worldwide. In 2009, Shutterstock, the world’s largest subscription-based stock image company, acquired Bigstock. Bigstock, based in New York City, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Shutterstock.
It was founded in 2004 and acquired by Shutterstock in 2009. Since then, its library has grown tremendously, and now features more than 100 million stock photos.
Bigstock sells images using subscription plans, which offer the best prices ($0.16/image to $2.76/image) and on-demand with credits. These are significantly more expensive ($0.99/download to $3.00/download), but allow for a lot more flexibility and the Extended license.
Reasons to choose Bigstock:
- Owned by Shutterstock
- More than 100 million images
- Affordable subscriptions plans and flexible on-demand packs
- Price per image starting at $0.16
Features
Bigstock — one of the most expensive microstocks presented in our reviews. It has image gallery of 9-millions of photos and illustrations in rasterized and vector format and offers its customers to make single purchases spending from 1 to 6 credits depending on size and format of each file (see “What are the credits and what are they for?”).
Though prices shown in credits are really low, the cost of 1 credit, which can be spent within a year, is pretty high. So, to buy minimal package of 6 credits you’ll have to spent $13. In this case the cost of 1 credit is $2.17 and this is one of the maximum cost of 1 credit among all microstocks reviewed by PhotoBuyerGuide.com. But the more credits you buy the lower is the cost of each credit. And this is one of the main advantages of Bigstock: if you buy big amount of credits this microstock allows to purchase high resolution images for really low price — 12Mpx photo will cost only $5.94.
The next feature that can be considered as disadvantage is lack of possibility to make purchases using subscription. This is explained by the acquisition of Bigstock by Shutterstock Images during the autumn of 2009.
Also Bigstock has relatively low prices for extended licenses, differentiated in cost depending of the number of usage times: Single Use — 15 credits, Limited Use — 40 credits, Unlimited Use — 120 credits. Real cost of these licenses depends of credit package you buy and starts from $13.50.
It’s worth noting that Bigstock’s Single Use special license allows you to single use purchased content in any derivative goods intended for resale. If you need to sell several items of your product then you’ll have to buy the same number of licenses. It costs just 15 credits per license and it’s much cheapier than other microstocks offer because their extended license means big number of uses. At Bigstock you pay only for your real needs. Great solution for small-scale business.
For customers who need just 1 image there is a possibility to buy 1 image without preliminary registration or credits purchasing. But in this case image cost little higher than usual. Extended license for such kind of purchases is available as well.
So we recommend Bigstock to customers, who are quite often in need of high-resolution images or searching images for extended license usage.
PROS
- 100 million images
- 35 free images trial
- Large variety of subscription plans
- One of the lowest stock photo prices
CONS
- Premium images are expensive
- Non-responsive support team
Bigstock deals
Pricing: starting at 0.16/image
Bigstock sells photos with subscriptions and on-demand with credits. The subscription plans come with the best price per photo and are the best for you if you have consistent image needs.
On the other hand, on-demand packs offer a lot of flexibility but are as a tradeoff more expensive.
Subscription plans: Cheaper, but less flexible
Bigstock sells photos with subscription plans of various sizes and length of commitments.
These plans can be divided into daily and monthly image subscription plans, and a couple of videos plans.
I’ll take you over each group of plans separately, so you don’t get lost.
Daily subscriptions (from $0.16/image)
Daily image subscription consists of plans of 5, 10, 20, and 50 images per day that can last 1 month, 3 months, or 12 months.
The larger the plan and the longer it lasts, the lower cost per image gets. Therefore, if you choose 50 images/day for 12 months, you can get images for as low as $0.16/image.
| Downloads | Plan duration | Total images | Cost/image | Total cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 images/day | 1 month | 150 | $0.53 | $79 |
| 3 months | 450 | $0.44 | $199 | |
| 12 months | 1,825 | $0.35 | $639 | |
| 10 images/day | 1 month | 300 | $0.33 | $99 |
| 3 months | 900 | $0.30 | $269 | |
| 12 months | 3,650 | $0.27 | $969 | |
| 20 images/day | 1 month | 600 | $0.28 | $169 |
| 3 months | 1,800 | $0.26 | $459 | |
| 12 months | 7,300 | $0.22 | $1,589 | |
| 50 images/day | 1 month | 1,500 | $0.22 | $329 |
| 3 months | 4,500 | $0.21 | $929 | |
| 12 months | 18,250 | $0.16 | $2,879 |
