DepositPhotos Review: Ultimate Stock Image Service?

I have been reviewing a lot of software recently, but today I want to do something a little different and review a stock photo service. As someone who has been running online business' for some years now I wanted to share with you my experiences of DepositPhotos, and how I rate it among other similar services. so, here is my full and honest DespositPhotos review 🙂

Why Do You Need Stock Photos?

If you are creating any kind of content online you will need high quality and authentic photos to make this content pop and become more attractive to your readers. Low resolution or non-relevant photos simply won't cut it. Ideally, you can use your own personal photos, the most authentic photos of all. The problems becomes when you are uploading 60 articles a month and simply don't have enough of your own photos to go round. This is where stock photo sites come in.

What Makes a Good Stock Photo Site?

In my opinion, the most important factor is the search engine element to the stock photo service. When you type something into the search bar on their website portal, you want a wide selection of relevant and high quality photos to pop up. You don't want to waste your time looking and searching around for them. I have used some services with great looking pictures, but have not been suitable because finding the exact photo you need at the right time is frustratingly slow!

Other than this, you want photos that look high quality and authentic (as appose to staged and cheesy).

How This Review Will Go Down!

The main part of this review will be doing image searches using DepositPhotos and one other competing service I happen to have access to, YayImages. When the search analysis is complete I will rap up by looking at other details such as ease of use and price!

Search 1: Marketing Funnels

Searching for images on the phrase 'marketing funnels' this is what I got back from both services.

DEPOSITPHOTOS:

YAYimages:

This first search result was a clear winner for DepositPhotos! See how the selection of relevant images the search function found was far superior to that of YAYimages. All of their first results seem way too similar! This is exactly the type of thing I don't like with stock photo vendors.

Search 2: Sad Gamer

DEPOSITPHOTOS:

YAYimages:

This one was a weird one for YAYimages. When I think of a 'sad gamer' I think first of a sad person playing video games and possibly someone sad playing another type of game….maybe soccer or basketball or a card game or something! What I don't think of are sad children or emojis. The results for this search were simply terrible for YAYimages.

Then take a look at what DepositPhotos offered, a stream of on point pictures exactly targeted around the keywords used. I scrolled through the results and saw a great selection of varied stock photos around this subject. I would happily use most of these photos on my sites and be proud!

Search 3: Surprised Magician

DEPOSITPHOTOS:

YAYimages:

DepositPhotos came up with a great selection of photos. High quality, and a great selection even for a rather obscure keyword! Those magicians actually do look surprised! Haha! Look at what YAYimages managed, and it is almost liked it stripped out the 'surprised' element. Not a surprised magician in sight! Also, low quality vector images are in this search way too high up. This just highlights, not only the immense library of images DepositPhotos has, but also the quality of the search engine they have on there site.

How Much Does DepositPhotos Cost?

This is where we bring in the cost. We can now see how amazing the quality and breadth of images are on DepositPhotos, but if they are asking the earth for them most people won't be interested.

So why don't we compare what YAY Images and DepositPhotos are doing in terms of pricing.

YAY goes first:

Followed by DepositPhotos:

Actually, the monthly subscription costs are surprisingly similar considering the difference in quality we witnessed above. YAYimages are at $29 a month for 35 images at their lowest, whilst DespositPhotos is $29 for 30 images. I would pay that little bit extra for Deposit's quality and selection any day of the week. For both services any unused images do roll over to the next month, which is great to see.

When looking at buying image packs rather than a monthly commitment DepositPhoto users do pay a premium. 25 images will cost you $99 whilst YAYimages gives you a full 50 images for $39. That's quite a difference.

Maybe we are being unfair to DepositPhotos, when you see how much better their images are than YAY you surely expect to pay more. How about if we compare their pricing to one of the mainstays in the stock image world – Shutterstock. They are more on the level of DepositPhotos, so how much do they cost? Shutterstock charge $49 a month for a measly 10 images, so it makes you realize that for quality stock images DepositPhotos are actually priced well. A image pack containing 25 images over at Shutterstock would be a massive $229. The same over at DepositPhotos would be $99.

Other Features of DepositPhotos….

We have discussed the main features of a stock image provider, the selection and quality of images, and the search engine they use to help you locate photos. Now lets cover some of the other features.

Suggested Topics

If you look closely at some of the screen shots above from DepositPhotos image searches, you will see that when you search they offer some suggested topics along the top. I have found these useful. Sometimes, I have clumsily typed in an inaccurate term that doesn't really describe what I am looking for. This suggested topics bar at the top of the results quickly alerts me to this and allows me to choose something more suitable. Although it seems like such a small feature, It has gotten me out of a sticky patch of quite a few occasions 🙂

Search by Image

Depositphotos recently added a new feature that lets you upload a photo of your own and the service will find you something similar.

Filters

There is a really well designed filter bar on the left side of the DepsoitPhotos website, that has an amazing amount of filtering options for your image searches. This really allows you to drill down and find the exact type of image you might want. This bar can be reduced to a thin strip of icons if you don't like having the wider version pictured. In this icon mode, when you click on an icon a small toggle or dialogue box pops out to help you adjust your filters. This is a much faster and simpler way to filter if the wide version is overwhelming for you.

Help Center

There really much help needed for most stock photo services. However, it is great to see a slick and well presented one here, offering all the help that a user might want. They have a live chat option to if you really get stuck.

Licence Options

As you would expect from any reputable stock image service, DepositPhotos does have several options for the licences offered with their images.

The standard licence is the default one that comes with the images, this would be fine for most purposes. This is perfect for use in blogs, print, advertising and marketing. There is a print run of 500,000 on this licence though.

You can purchase an extended licence for images bought as on demand downloads. This takes away the print run limit and allows you to include the image in commercially resold items. A prime example might be adding it to a print on demand t-shirt to sell. These extended licence on demand images have to be purchased separately, starting at $89 for one image. The price decreases the more that you buy.

Please read the licence agreements thoroughly before using any of their images though!!

Would I Recommend DepositPhotos?

I have been using DepositPhotos for a long time now and have been very happy with the service I have gotten. This is my number one place to go for authentic and high quality stock images, especially when I am looking for something quite niche or unique. I feel that this review process has backed up why I use their service so much. An excellent quality standard at a reasonable price (when you compare to similar quality competition).

If you are interested, you can click HERE to sign up for a free account to try DepositPhotos for yourself. Then you can let me know what you think about them?

Thank you for reading my DepositPhotos review. Stock images are an important part of any online business, hopefully you have a better idea how to find a good one 🙂

Disclaimer: My reviews are always full and honest. Yes, they may have affiliate links in where I can earn a small commission, but this never influences my rating. I want you to trust and come back to my reviews!