Pixabay

A legal (yet, illegal in every sense) extortion letter from Getty Images ignited my need to find another source of genuinely free images online. Hence, ended up finding this awesome free source of truly free images online i. E. pixabay.com. I fear all the time that such a great source could easily be bought (gobbled up) by greedy and infamous businesses i. E. Getty and we will have to find some other source for genuinely free images. Until that happens, let's all enjoy the free ride.

I haven't actually contributed to the site myself but its pretty good if you're just looking for photos for various practice projects. The pics are of good quality and can be downloaded in various sizes.

I looked on pixabay for pics I could use on the website I'm building, after a google search of leading sites. To my dismay not one of my searches produced anything. Total waste of time. Customer service is a joke, no help whats so ever and rude. I would not recommend pixabay to anyone.

I used this once for a small generic graphic. It had been planted by a scam troll operation out of southern California. They claimed to own the rights and threatened to sue. It all came to nothing but was a big unpleasant hassle. They didn't really own the absolute rights but were able to produce superficial documentation. They had uploaded the file to Pixabay as bait for the unwitting. I think there may be a lot of similar baits planted across the entire site. Be really careful if you use any of this stuff.

They say to log in so no robot verifications. So you do and then every other download you have to go through a series of several verifications! Site is a joke as far as a valid site. Too bad because there are good pictures, but you can only look at them unless you enjoy fighting with the poor quality pictures you have to fight to find what they're asking for. If they only want you to download 1, then say so. Don't play games!

I came across this website as a Social Media manage in need of a great number of images of good quality on a daily basis and this website has half a million of them. Not only that, if you have good images lurking on your computer you are prepared to share with the community, this is the place to do it. The website is wonderfully simple to use, the owners are very responsive to users's suggestions and all in all, it's a great site. I love it!

I, too, was threatened with a lawsuit from Getty. I'm usually very careful and the one time, I wasn't, well, I learned my lesson.
I absolutely love this site. I downloaded several images and sent them to my graphic designer to be used in my promotional items! I'm so happy with this site. I can use their images without the worry of a lawsuit. And I love that I can contribute to artists who I like.

Let me tell you about my living hell first of all. I innocently uploaded a picture for my blog from google images. It had no copyright or 'this belongs to' so I assumed I was allowed to use it.
Fast forward to today: I've had threatening letters from Getty images to sue me for thousands and they are demanding payment for me using 'their image' They still haven't given me proof that it the image belongs to them. Anyway in my distress I found thousands of people are in this position. On reasearch I came across pixabay a royalty free site with amazing photos and vectors. The community are friendly and helpful which is why I want to share their site with you. Please don't just upload images from the net as they are not 'free'. Safeguard yourselves and go to legitimate websites like this one and download images hassle free.

- the pic database is huge
- you can get "tips" from other users
- easy to use query tools with different categories
- you have to put in captcha only if you're an unregistered user

After reading the reviews on this site, it's clear that itwouldn't have made a single bit of difference if I had actually read every single word of the ToS before making an account on Pixabay.

I accept responsibility for not properly researching the rules and regulations, but what I will not accept is the absolutely abhorrent and unprofessional manner in which I was responded to by Simon, the so-called CEO of this company.

I have made sure to keep screenshots of the email exchanges, where he proceeded to insult me and even called me "slow" because apparently I did not understand the rules before making an account on their site.

It is also very suspicious that they keep a PayPal donation button on the page that was formally your profile when you deactivate your account. Essentially, they are making profit off of images that people donated to their site free of charge.

Do not bother with this website. There are infinitely more legitimate stock image websites out there that do not behave in this manner and will treat their users with actual respect.

As a contributor there I can say it is not a scam. Because it provides free images, so there are no misleading advertisements.