Pexels vs. Substack

Pexels

Pexels

65 Reviews and Ratings

Substack

Substack

10 Reviews and Ratings

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Pexels	Score 10.0 out of 10	N/A	Pexels, headquartered in Berlin, offers stock photos and video under the Creative Commons Zero license, from a global network of creators.	N/A
Substack	Score 9.2 out of 10	N/A	Substack is a subscription-based newsletter publishing platform.	N/A

Pricing

Pexels

Substack

Editions & Modules

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
Pexels	Substack
Free Trial
No	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

Entry-level Setup Fee

No setup fee

No setup fee

Additional Details

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More Pricing Information

Community Pulse
	Pexels	Substack
Considered Both Products	Pexels Luiz Alexandre Viana Magno Postdoctoral Research Scientist Chose Pexels Pexels is more simple. The alternative options give no good search/selection experience. For example, you are limited to searching just one characteristic or the results are not always accurate. For example, your search for A and get B. Finally, I also note that the user does … Incentivized Helpful? Ashley Schwartau Operations Specialist, Learning and Development Chose Pexels I would put Pexels library up against Unsplash. iStock and Shutterstock are both SUPER pricey, and I haven't used either of them in YEARS simply due to the fact that they remain to be cost-prohibitive. Pixabay is fine, but the quality seems far less curated or just like more … Incentivized Helpful? Amy Highland Brand and UX+UI Designer Chose Pexels Pexels has a great search function behind it and is very compatible with the other leading brands. One of the main benefits in comparison is that it is free to use and promotes creativity with its photographers. It has fewer 'stock looking' images as opposed to Adobe or … Incentivized Helpful? MC Mehak Chawla Senior Marketing Associate Chose Pexels Pexels provides a plethora of videos to choose from and you can get the right size. The platform is free and if you use great keywords you can easily find what you are looking for. Users can also contribute to the community and it has challenges which I think are great … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Pexels Pexels has video's! That's the main differentiator why I go to Pexels now. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Pexels I know Pixabay and Unsplash and both are similar to Pexels. All of them have similar features in regards to searching, filtering, or collections. But if I am not wrong, only Pexels has the option to download an image in a customised size. Incentivized Helpful? David Mynář Head Of Online Marketing Chose Pexels Pexels have by far the biggest database for our needs, 9 out of 10 pictures we find is from Pexels. Incentivized Helpful? JB Josh Bender Managing Editor Chose Pexels Pexels has a few unique features that stand out, the most important being a 1-click download from the search results. No need to navigate to another page to find a "download" button. This reduces the time required to find and download an appropriate image. The search results … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Pexels Pexels is very affordable, and has a decent range of free-to-use options. Images have a wide arrange of people and places represented. Incentivized Helpful? Shelby Bass Creative Chose Pexels While I've had to use Getty for more specific image needs, I usually start my image search with Pexels as it's a much more cost-effective option. However, Getty has a much more robust search tool, which I sometimes need in order to track down an image with a specific … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Pexels Whether paid or free stock photography, we go to where the solutions are. Pexels is on our top 5 go-to list. When we can't find what we are looking for on paid stock sites, we look at Pexels. Each platform has its pros and cons. I like that Pexels has a good lifestyle variety, … Incentivized Helpful? Winona Harrod Graphic Designer Chose Pexels Overall, Pexels is a really helpful and easy site to use to get royalty-free imagery. It has been highly beneficial to me in all my design projects obtaining dynamic and natural images that some large-paying stock sites can not provide. Sometimes you can find more variety at … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Pexels In my opinion, they are all very similar. Sometimes when I am searching for something more specific, one or other might well be suited. But, in general, I tend to open at least 3 or 4 different image banks at the same time and use the same search terms on all of them. Since … Incentivized Helpful? Jewell Shaw UI Designer Chose Pexels Pexels is much better than raw pixel because the free options on raw pixel's website are usually images that you would not want to use for your professional marketing needs. They make sure to charge for useful photos. Incentivized Helpful? OS Olaf Schaum Founder Chose Pexels Pexels offers an extensive catalogue of royalty-free, high-quality images and high-resolution videos that can be downloaded without the need for monthly subscriptions or license fees. Most of the time, our stock requirements are easily met. For occasions when we do need more … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Pexels Pexels has more original, creative imagery from new and emerging photographers from all over the world. Pexels constantly adds new content so there's more variety and less likely we'll use the same stock image as others - we get to stand out as original. Supports photographers … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Pexels Pexels is by far the easiest program to use and doesn't require a login which means it's even faster for my team to be able to find the right image and get it into our content in a quick turnaround. Easy to teach, easy to use, my work would be near impossible without it. Incentivized Helpful? PC Patricia Calleja Creative Copywriter Chose Pexels Pexel images are more inspiring, aspiring, creative, and artistic than the usual stock images. We work with Pexels because it is free and we really admire the fact that some photographers or creatives around the world are happy to share their work in such a kind and generous … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Pexels Pexels is one of my favorite stock image tools. The quality is top-notch and the search capabilities/filters really help you find what you want. Incentivized Helpful? Abdellah Ouardirhi étudiant Chose Pexels Adobe Stock Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Pexels Pexels so far has the best user-submitted selections for free photography. They are royalty-free and include a wide variety for all business needs. From personal blogs or your own business to any company type, you can find what you need here without having to buy a stock … Incentivized Helpful? Allen Eshmoili President/CEO Chose Pexels I just found Pexels more simple to use and easy to navigate. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Pexels Really similar offerings, and we actually use both Unsplash and Pexels. Pexels has a nicer user interface to search through photos, but Unsplash isn't bad, either. Incentivized Helpful? CB Cooper Buss CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) Chose Pexels You can get stock images in Canva since we have a professional account but their selection is limited. Also, many of their images are not as high quality as Pexels and the file size is smaller so if you need to blow them up they lose resolution. I only use the Canva images when … Incentivized Helpful? John E. Miller, MBA Managing Partner Chose Pexels I think Shutterstock does not have the same quality photos available for free. In addition, I am not sure if they spend as much time trying to uplift the artist taking the photos as they are uplifting Shutterstock as a go-to resource for these photos and videos. I tend to favor … Incentivized Helpful?	Substack Verified User Anonymous Chose Substack Medium is not so good for running newsletter. I find the mail that a user gets is very easily readable. Also as a creator it's very easy for me to track the analytics and monetise my blogs unlike Medium. Blogger is a very old technology. The kind of integrations and the support … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Substack Substack is like a simple Medium that you can also set up as a paid subscription so you can monetize. Mailchimp has been around for a while so its features are pretty well thought out, but the feature set might be a bit too much for a less experienced email marketer. Substack … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Substack N/A Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Substack I believe Substack seemed to offer a monetising solution to a very time consuming, labour of love blog, but it turned out to be just another dead end. The interface and ease of use is great, but it’s not as chunky with as detailed UX as other newsletter platforms I’ve … Incentivized Helpful? Carter Owen Consumer Strategy Analyst Chose Substack Substack is the DTC version of traditional blogging sites - you own everything, both upside, and risk, which appeals to me more. Compared to Blogger, the ability to monetize and site interface is night and day better. Compared to Medium, which I think has a better interface and … Incentivized Helpful? RA Robb Auspitz Owner Chose Substack Substack is simpler and a lot easier to use than either of the above. Automattic is perpetually trying to sell you on "upgrading" their basic WordPress blogging product which is a pain to work with because of their obsession with "Blocks". It has more SEO and multimedia … Incentivized Helpful?

Best Alternatives
	Pexels	Substack
Small Businesses	Spotify for Podcasters Score 8.1 out of 10	Pexels Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	Adobe Express Score 8.8 out of 10	Pexels Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises	Adobe Express Score 8.8 out of 10	Pexels Score 10.0 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	Pexels	Substack
Likelihood to Recommend	9.2 (0 ratings)	8.7 (0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	8.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Usability	7.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)

User Testimonials
	Pexels	Substack
Likelihood to Recommend	The success of social media campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter depends significantly on the quality of the content used. Pexels maintains the highest quality standards for all content hosted on the platform... with High Definition, excellent composition materials only. Another great thing is that they provide you with an assortment of filtered content suggestions related to the selections. This helps save time. Incentivized Fred Xorla Adzoyi Director, Research & Innovation Read full review	It's well-suited for a creative writer who is comfortable writing essays or short fiction. It's especially well-suited for writers who are focused on writing essays based on personal experiences. I'm not sure it has the tools at this point for someone who wants to serialize a novel or long-form non-fiction book. I'd like to see better multi-media tools for writers/content creators who are fluent in written and audio-visual methods of communicating. Incentivized RA Robb Auspitz Owner Read full review
Pros	High-resolution images – Pexels is full of images that are high enough in resolution to look beautiful on their own, but also high quality enough to be combined with other images without distracting pixelization Stock videos – other free stock sites are often limited to just images, but Pexels has a wide range of videos available as well, which we use to plus up decks Good search functions – while not as robust as some paid sites, Pexels' search functions make it pretty easy to track down what you need Licensing – it's very straightforward to know what you can and can't do with a Pexels photo, which protects my company and our clients Incentivized Shelby Bass Creative Read full review	Content organization/discovery - really easy to search. Newsletter/email integration - by far better at previewing and delivering content than any other site. Incentivized Carter Owen Consumer Strategy Analyst Read full review
Cons	I do think that the library should grow. For example, I was looking for an image of a living room with a fireplace and there were only a few options I get tricked sometimes because I see images I want to use but they are from some other company and they are paid Improve search understanding for multi-word searches Incentivized CB Cooper Buss CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) Read full review	It's really difficult when multiple people are editing the blog at same time. Some things change or get overwritten due to which have to reload the page multiple times. Would like to see an experience just like in Google docs. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Usability	Intuitive and simple interface. Incentivized Stephen Jothiraj Business Development Read full review	No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered	Pexels has a few unique features that stand out, the most important being a 1-click download from the search results. No need to navigate to another page to find a "download" button. This reduces the time required to find and download an appropriate image. The search results load fast, with lazy loading, so there's no annoying pagination at the bottom. I often travel as I work, and at times my internet connection can be slow or unstable. This kind of feature may seem minor to some users, but when on a slower connection, it makes a big difference. If a search term is too broad, it can recommend related keywords to search for - this helps to find the right image faster. JB Josh Bender Managing Editor Read full review	Substack is the DTC version of traditional blogging sites - you own everything, both upside, and risk, which appeals to me more. Compared to Blogger, the ability to monetize and site interface is night and day better. Compared to Medium, which I think has a better interface and content curation abilities, Substack's advertising and promotion of your work are much better because they don't rely on premium members like Medium - it can get very click-baity there. Incentivized Carter Owen Consumer Strategy Analyst Read full review
Return on Investment	Positive: the writing material when well illustrated gain more engagement. Positive: images can inspire better descriptions of scenarios and landscapes and therefore can make long texts more attractive. Positive: we saved a lot of time when writing. Negative: some images do not have enough quality for printing purposes. Incentivized Luiz Alexandre Viana Magno Postdoctoral Research Scientist Read full review	Takes much much less time to produce content that you can charge for. This wasn't doable before, or you'd have to build it yourself Substack has made it much easier for me to stay on top of ex-customer communications. I get repeat business more easily now. Substack's speed & ease mean I can offload content writing & distribution to others Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
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