Why I've stopped supporting unsplash and why you should too

Hi there! Yes, this will be a bit of a rant, but bare with me cause it’s a good one. There are two huge websites out there that let photographers upload and share their photos for free, they’re called Unsplash and Pexels. I’ve joined them both a long time ago in hopes of sharing my work, some publicity and maybe, just maybe, in the long run beining noticed and finding some work. Since than I became Unsplash Photographer of the Year 2017 and a Pexels Hero and let me tell you one thing: I would not do this again.

Why am I saying this? Reasons are quite a few, but the main ones are these: potential clients don’t care about wanna be photographers on free stock websites and the second one is that these websites will ruin your own websites SEO.

There is also one bigger issue that’s specifically aimed at Unsplash. I do still support Pexels because they seem… genuine, they seem like they care. There are no massive ads on their website or numerous sponsored posts. And Pexels users also donated to me 70 USD in the last six months alone.

That is not the case with Unsplash. Although they allow users to donate to photographers the same as Pexels, for some reason no one ever donated a penny through my account on Unsplash (I just don’t think that that’s something that Unsplash genuinely believes in and promotes on their website). The biggest problem though is the fact that at this point they’re a massive corporation. Their net worth goes into millions, yet most of their hard working staff, which are the content creators, never see any of it. In March 2021 Unsplash was acquired by Getty Images, is now supported by Squarespace, Unfold, Zoom, Microsoft and many many more who decided not to support artists because apparently creativity isn’t worth anything anymore. It really feels like they’re exploiting the hopes and dreams of people purely for their own profit. Have a scroll through their home page. All the sponsored stuff has clear names written on them, while you have to hover over an image to see the artists name. Not to mention how much sponsored stuff is there! In comparison, let’s look at the website of Pexels. No sponsored content on the homepage and there is a clear ‘Donate’ button right next to the photographers name when you open any single photo, a feature that’s apparently impossible to implement for Unsplash.

I honestly can’t condone this selfish approach anymore and I hope that the above arguments make sense and you’ll understand my reasoning. I’d suggest you do the same, but please do feel free to prove me wrong.

P.S. There is a whole argument why you shouldn’t be using free stock websites altogether (and why I’ve deleted most of my content from both websites), but I’ll get into this one on another occasion.

See you out there,

Si