Pexels – Free Photos, Free Images

Pexels is a free-to-use stock photo and image platform with a good choice of high quality images operating under the Creative Commons Licence.

The images on the Pexels site are offered in well thought out categories and can be used for almost any purpose, including commercial use, free of charge and with no need to attribute the image to the artist or photopgrapher – although I believe it’s a nice gesture if you do so.

Marketing Tip #1 Its always a good idea to include an image of a pussy cat on most websites

Until I sarted to edit The Digital Marketing Directory I had no idea just how many sources of free images there are. OK, some of them are of dubious quality but if you are prepared to spend a little time and have a good look round you should be able to find free images, free from copyright and other legal issues, fairly easiliy.

To make the job easier for you we have compiled The Digital Marketing Directory listing of good quality free image libraries and Pexels is certainly one of the listings in that directory – rightly so.

Pexels claim to add 100 new images every day and I’ve no reason to disbelieve them. This is not the largest image library in the world, how could it be when competitors like Getty Images and Shutterstock have been in the image industry for years? The difference is, of course, cost. If you want to cherry pick from Shutterstock’s massive archives of sensational, often legendary, images you will need a fairly big budget. Most of us would love to do that but we know that it won’t work with a smaller budget so we seek low cost, or preferably free, alternatives.

That’s where Pexels and sites similar to it come in. I never cease to be surprised by the range and quality of images available for free on many free image sites. Yes, you sacrifice choice up to a point but there are some cracking images on these sites so please do take a look before shelling out hard cash to the big name photo and image libraries.

To add to the freebies there’s a Chrome extension for Pexels although I doubt whether many people will find it that useful.

There’s nothing to lose here, nothing to buy, so please give it a try and see what you think – you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Find out more about Creative Commons Licence here.