Why people choose Shutterstock over others?

Why do people rather choose Shutterstock paid site over other copyright free images sites like pixabay, pexel and unsplash, these sites gives copyright free images for absolutely free.

Because they have much more awesome pictures, those free stock photo websites have very limited image resource, many times you will find, you can't find any image of keywords, or no good spot-on images at all.

I agree with @terrycody . I was doing some image search for one of the sites I'm working on, and the absolute best images that I could find were all coming from SS. All other sources - while still having a lot of images - are very limited in images that are relevant to obscure / unpopular niches.

But SS is expensive as fuck, so I'm not paying them anything, I'd rather create my own images in paint than paying for images now. I remember the early 90s when you could do whatever the hell you wanted on the internet without anyone giving a shit. But now, you can't even view content anymore without:

- signing up
- being logged in
- having your physical address, bank account, and phone number added to your account for some parasitic company to have access to all of your data
- have money added to your account (even if you never use that money, you just need to fund the already rich for no reason at all)
- record yourself holding your ID in front of the camera like a convict, for the same parasitic ultra rich companies to see you so they can monetize you without your consent and without sharing the profits with you

I'm exaggerating a bit with these, yes, but there is some truth to what I'm saying. For example, Twitter doesn't allow you to even read the tweets anymore without you being logged in, Steam doesn't allow you to comment on anything without being logged in and have money deposited into your account, Reddit and Youtube don't allow you to even upvote a post without being logged in, and I'm pretty sure that I've seen some image browsing sites (Imgur, DA, or another one, I don't remember which one) not allowing you to even look at pictures anymore if you're not logged in. So yeah...

Anyway, I went on a little rant here, I apologize but sometimes I do have such small escapades

But the point is that Shutterstock have way more, and better images than most other sites that I've checked. Them and iStock.com, too actually. Both of these sites (although they might be owned by the same company) have the best images. But like I said, I'm not paying them anything. I'd rather become a janitor or car painter than paying for images in order to make money online while enriching mobster companies who want to monopolize everything and monetize even your soul

Problem with free stock image sites (or very cheap, like Freepik), is that you will have 100x index copies for each single image published there. So the SEO value for such images are almost 0.
You will only find some value for free stock sites, if you take advantange of their API, with some extra retouching (AI) + some lettering on top so the final result is not recognizable by the algorithm as a exact match.

Some "expensive" stock sites, still have some not indexed images, but I believe nowadays they are pretty rare, even the most expensive like the premium ones from 123rf

iStock and Shutterstock are way better than these free stock image/video sites. Whenever I see sponsored iStock photos/videos on free stock websites, they look way better.

I'm also looking for a good source of images and I saw on a website these pictures from shutterstock... but I see they have copyright in the corner... why? because on other sites I find exactly the same images without copyright, and I'm only talking about big sites.

Easy: tons of online publishers and SOFTWARE companies use images from pixabay, pexel and unsplash

Overused

Plus, lots of images from those free places aren't relevant to specific themes/topics or 'drill down' enough

The best alternative to shutterstock is FREE AI image generation....

People choose Shutterstock over other stock photo sites because it offers high-quality images, a wide variety of photos and illustrations, and affordable pricing.