By Olivia Yang

Images are one of the best ways to increase engagement for your business. In fact, including images on social media posts can lead to 40% more shares than posts without photos. 

However, it’s important to keep in mind that online photos are always owned by someone else. If used without permission (such as a Creative Commons license), the original owner can file a lawsuit for copyright infringement. Additionally, Google complies with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and can disable access to content on your website, blog, social media, etc. that is used without permission.

To avoid these issues and still include images on your marketing materials, check out these 7 stock photo websites and find the perfect pictures for your business. 

Free Websites:

All of these websites provide stock photos completely free of charge.

  1. Unsplash

Unsplash’s large collection of over 3.48 million photos allows you to download and use images for free. 

  1. Burst (by Shopify) 

Burst by Shopify provides high quality, free images ranging from food, to beauty, to technology for personal or commercial use.

  1. Vecteezy

Vecteezy boasts a large collection of both images and videos for free download and commercial use. Browse their free selection or gain access to premium stock photos and footage by joining Vecteezy Pro. 

  1. Freepik

Freepik has over 25 million graphic resources, including high-quality photos, designs, and templates for free use. 

  1. Pexels

Pexels provides millions of free stock images, with a large business collection of over 100,000 photos.

Premium Websites: 

These websites provide high quality photos for use with a small fee. 

  1. Shutterstock 

Shutterstock’s photo editing software is embedded in the website, making it easy to touch up images from their selection of millions. 

  1. Adobe Stock

Adobe Stock is integrated with Photoshop, the perfect package deal for selecting and editing photos.