For several years, the stock media industry has seen a growing demand for media content other than still images: stock footage and stock audio are the most relevant. Furthermore, today’s content creators need access to all these media formats simultaneously.
To fulfill this demand, this year, several stock photo agencies rolled out multimedia download subscriptions, plans that let you download a combination of photos, videos, and music tracks with one same subscription for a fixed monthly fee.
Multimedia plans save you time and money in all the visual resources you need for your creative endeavors, and today we’ll look at the best offers out there.
Shall we?
| Agency | Best Price for Multimedia Plan | What's Included | Price per Download |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shutterstock | $49 per month | 25 credits for downloads | $1.96 per image $15.68 per video $7.84 per music track |
| iStock | $99 per month | 25 downloads | $3.96 per image, video, or audio file |
| Adobe Stock | $49.99 per month | 25 standard assets or 3 HD videos | $1.99 per image – $15.99 per HD video |
| Canva Pro | $9.99 per month | Unlimited downloads: images, videos, music | The more you download, the less each asset costs |
Best Multimedia Download Plans
Below we compiled the best multimedia subscription offers in the industry from reputable stock photo sites.
Each of these services has its pros and cons, so we recommend you have a detailed look to see which meets your needs.
Shutterstock Flex
Shutterstock, one of the most popular stock photo sites, has a multimedia downloads plan named Shutterstock Flex that lets you get images, videos, and music files with one subscription.
The Flex plan gives you 25 credits per month, and you can then use these credits to download files of your choice, knowing each media type costs a different amount of credits.
- Images: 1 credit each (up to 25 images/mo)
- Videos: 8 credits each (up to 3 videos/mo)
- Music tracks: 4 credits each (up to 6 music tracks/mo)
The price depends on how long you’re willing to commit:
- Month-to-month: $69/mo
- Annual billed monthly: $49/mo
- Annual billed upfront: $499/yr
All content downloaded with a Flex plan comes with a Standard Royalty Free license and is cleared for marketing, advertising, and other commercially oriented uses.
You can mix and match the type of media and the volume of downloads however you want within your allotted credits every month. So, for example, in one month, you could download one video, one music track, and six photos; the next month, you could download two music tracks and one video, and so on. However, all unused downloads expire at the end of the month.
With Flex, you don’t pay extra for quality. The largest-sized photo or a small web-sized illustration costs just one credit. HD and 4K video clips cost eight credits each.
A big plus: the Flex subscription comes with free access to Shutterstock Creative Flow, the agency’s AI-driven platform of online tools for creatives that includes a user-friendly design tool and many other valuable features. This service typically comes at $12.99 per month, but you get it at no added cost and for as long as you subscribe to Shutterstock Flex!
Do you want good news? You can save even more on multimedia downloads using our exclusive Shutterstock coupon code with 25% off all subscriptions, including Flex!
And we saved the best for last: You can now also try this service for free! With the Shutterstock free trial, you can get a smaller-volume Flex plan for free for 30 days and download up to 10 images without paying a penny!
iStock Premium+Video
The renowned stock photo agency iStock now includes a multimedia subscription that lets you get images, videos, sound effects, and music using the same download plan. It’s called Premium+Video and gives you access to the entirety of iStock’s catalog: images, illustrations, and videos, both in the Essential and the Signature collections. Additionally, it gives you access to a stock audio library from its partner Epidemic Sound, so you can get all the media needed to complete any project.
There are three volume tiers, each with different price points:
- 10 downloads/month: $149 month-to-month or $99 per month with an annual plan
- 25 downloads/month: $229 month-to-month or $165 per month with an annual plan
- 50 downloads/month: $349 month-to-month or $265 per month with an annual plan
All media files are under a Standard Royalty-Free license and are suitable for commercial use to promote your business, your professional services or simply showcase your creativity.
With a Premium+Video subscription, you can download any asset you need from iStock, and one asset equals one download, regardless of the media format and resolution. This is a great advantage that cuts down costs by a lot: imagine that you can download a 4K exclusive video for only $5.30!
Another highlight is that they enable the rolling over of up to 250 unused downloads from one month to the next, so you don’t miss out if you don’t get to use up all your downloads in one month. Remember that this feature is only valid while your subscription is active. If you have an annual subscription, auto-renew activated, or otherwise, make sure to renew your plan before it expires manually.
The greatest news is that you can enjoy this multimedia plan at the lowest price ever with our special iStock promo code, which has 15% off for all iStock subscription plans!
Adobe Stock Multi-Asset Plans
Adobe Stock is Adobe’s native stock media service, available as a stand-alone as well as integrated into Creative Cloud applications. It has high-quality stock photos, illustrations, 3D graphics and stock music (what they call standard assets), and stock videos in its catalog. More recently, it started offering multi-asset subscription plans.
The multi-asset downloads are enabled for the higher three out of their four volume-tiered plans, and the pricing is as follows:
- $69.99 a month or $49.99/mo with annual commitment: 25 standard assets or 3 HD videos
- $99.99 a month or $79.99/mo with annual commitment: 40 standard assets or 6 HD videos
- $249.99 a month or $199.99/mo with annual commitment: 750 standard assets or 25 HD videos
Subscription downloads come with a Standard Royalty Free license coverage, enabling use for commercial purposes –marketing, advertising, branding, etc.–.
These memberships have reasonable prices, an HD video can cost you just $7.99 apiece, and a photo or 3D asset can be as little as 26 cents. While they do not include access to 4K video downloads, they do entitle you to a 20% discount on 4K footage and Premium assets and Enhanced licenses, a nice bonus. Another good addition is the rollover of unused credits, which varies depending on which volume plan you select.
Adobe Stock is an excellent choice if you work with Adobe tools. And best of all, you can try it out for free, for the smallest volume plan, for 30 days, with the Adobe Stock free trial!
Canva Pro
Canva is a smart, user-friendly design platform with wholly-owned stock media resources (photos, illustrations, graphics, videos, audio), free and paid, to use in your designs.
Canva Pro, the paid membership for small businesses and independent professionals, gives you access to premium features and an extensive catalog of premium media assets. This is effectively a multimedia download deal; the best is that it gives you unlimited downloads. It costs:
- $12.99 per month or $119.99 per year for one person
All images, videos, and audio files downloaded with Canva Pro are suitable for commercial use. Still, one crucial highlight is that you can only use these assets within designs or projects made with Canva (you can’t use the files stand-alone). However, the fact that you can use as many photos and videos as you wish (so you don't have to worry about unused downloads or allowance limits) makes it one of the most affordable options.
Anyone who wants to design beautiful visuals and compelling videos but lacks the skills to do it with professional tools can benefit from Canva Pro and its unlimited multimedia subscription. And you can now enjoy it for free and for an extended time: our exclusive Canva Pro free trial gives you 45 days of free and full access to Canva Pro!
Who Should Buy a Multimedia Plan
At the above-listed sites, multimedia subscriptions are available to all customers, but depending on your creative needs, investing in one of these plans can make more sense.
Naturally, multimedia download plans are the perfect fit if you are a multimedia creative and/or constantly use all kinds of media formats in your projects.
Say that you need to improve your business's online presence; you need to push out social media posts with beautiful images, Instagram reels, and YouTube videos. What if you need to make a pitch presentation video for a business meeting? It is great to have it sorted to download high-quality photos, videos, and music whenever required.
Equally relevant, an all-in-one stock media subscription is more convenient when you have a restricted budget.
Like all subscription offers, these plans significantly reduce the per-download price –compared to buying on-demand– and have a fixed monthly or annual fee that helps you keep your accounting under control. When your pockets aren’t deep enough to cover separate subscriptions – which would give you maybe more downloads of each and for a lower per-item rate, but they’d cost a lot more than a single multimedia download plan.
See it this way: It makes more sense to spend 50 bucks a month to download photos and the occasional video and music track than paying $30 for an image-only subscription plus $50 each time you need a stock footage clip.
Who is Better Off with a Single-Media Subscription
There are a few creatives that don't really get much out of a multimedia download plan and should stick to one-media-only subscriptions instead.
If you use stock photos almost exclusively and only need video or audio content rarely, you will get more for your money with an image subscription.
Those are cheaper than multimedia ones, and there is no point in paying extra for the chance to download videos if you almost never will.
And if you need large amounts of new images and videos constantly, then investing in an image subscription and a video subscription is actually more convenient in the end because you pay less per item and you get the right number of downloads to meet your creative needs.
So what do you think, are multimedia download plans for you?
