I gather there are some people who recommend sites like this and get paid for it. I’m not one of them. To be honest, I’m not sure where I’d start.

As I’m just chucking this quick article together to fill out my site for launch, it’s not going to be a full review, but suffice to say that I’ve kept coming back to these people when I’ve needed stock media in a hurry to get jobs done.

I keep thinking there must be better options. Search for anything and stuff comes up which isn’t 100% great, but that’s not the point. I usually just need the one photo, graphic or video clip that’s just good enough, is free from rights hassles and I don’t have to go out and take or make myself. If it saves me an hour, it’s totally worth a bit of trawl.

In 2025, after about ten years of constant use, I tried unsubscribing. I figured I could save the money and make whatever I needed with AI.

It seemed like a good idea for a few months, until a client that I’d made some videos using Envato stock wanted me to make more versions – they liked them, they were effective for sales – so I resubscribed to re-licence the bits I’d used and add more. While I was there, just for a month, I realised I could make a lot more use of stuff I’d overlooked.

So I kept going back from time to time for a particular clip here or a rather good design there. Picking out the effective stuff is always the main battle.

This was having sunk a year’s investment into an Artlist subscription which, to be fair, got me a load of nice footage I needed for some special projects, and some beautiful music to go with them which was unmatched elsewhere. But I couldn’t bring myself to keep putting money down for Artlist.

I could with Envato Elements. Mainly because it’s a lot less money.

At some point I hope to do a deep dive into best uses for it. This is a bit much for a context-free piece, so I’m looking to write something more helpful about creative work in general and illustrate it with examples from stock providers.

I think it’s also worth noting how much stock providers are also ploughing into their generative AI offerings. It’s not that they’re developing much beyond access to the major players’ APIs, but these can be a good way to dabble and get a bit of useful material. I should stress “a bit”, because the charging models tend to be very off-putting for people who work like I do, wanting and needing huge quantities of candidate material to sort through on the way to a good finished product. As a result, slop is encouraged – it’s hard to justify not accepting the first outputs as the final ones – and to me, that’s a potentially career-ending combination of lazy, dull and rubbish. Why settle for that?

Envato Elements offers a bargain hoard of stock and an OK place to experiment with AI. It’s all amazing if you’re not at all fussy. It’s more frustrating if you are, but still worth the time and effort to find a useful needle in a stack of hay and smelly things that also get found in hay.