We are all aware of how frustrating it can be to hunt for stock photos or videos when you are on that design spree. Especially when inspiration tends to strike at random and you need those assets immediately or you risk losing that productivity momentum that is full of creativity.
Click Here To Try Envato Elements
With Envato Elements, for a mere monthly fee, you gain access to millions of assets that you can use for your projects. Let’s do a deep dive and see if Envato Elements is the right fit for your business or not.
Envato Elements Review
Interface
Starting with the initial layout of the website, the user interface of Envato Elements is surprisingly well thought out. The website layout is familiar, with a big search bar and dropdown menus for categories. You can quickly preview videos and use filters like color and orientation to narrow down your search. When you pick something, you get details and clear licensing terms.
At first glance, Envato Elements looks like other media libraries online. But it offers lots of different stuff, like photos, graphics, and templates.
When you search, you get results fast, categorized neatly. Hover over a video to see a quick preview before you click.
But the best part? Envato’s search filter system. Filters such as color, people presence, and file orientation enhance the search experience, allowing you to find precisely what you need without wasting time.
The entire site feels pretty intuitive to use and you’ll have no issues traversing through this site.
Envato Market
Now coming on to Envato Market. The Envato Market comprises millions of digital assets you can buy with a click of a button. These are some of the asset libraries that form Envato Market.
Royalty-free stock photos – PhotoDune
Royalty-free videos and video templates – VideoHive
Graphic templates, logos, icons – Graphic River
Royalty-free audios and audio templates – AudioJungle
Themes and templates for websites – ThemeForest
3D Print models – 3DOcean
Code snippets, scripts, plugins – CodeCanyon
All the assets have to be purchased individually.
But how is Envato Elements different from Envato Market?
When it comes to Envato Elements, you get access to millions of stock photos, videos, audio, and a lot more for only $16.50 per month. You get unlimited downloads for a fraction of the cost and they don’t have to be purchased individually. You can access all of these assets complete with proper licenses. Moreover, the list is updated frequently and thousands of assets are added every week.
HOWEVER, the assets listed on Elements are not the same as the ones listed on Market.
Envato Elements: Who’s it best for?
Short Answer: Envato Elements is best for anyone who’s into producing digital content of any sort.
Long Answer: The Envato Elements library is stacked with millions of assets.
Literally millions.
So much so that it appeals to plenty of professionals of different backgrounds.
Bloggers use it to boost their online presence with high-quality images. Digital Marketers use it to enhance campaigns with a variety of marketing templates and tools. Photographers and Photo Editors find it an invaluable resource for stock photos and editing tools. Educators and E-Learning professionals use it to enable the creation of engaging materials with educational templates. Musicians and Podcast Producers get access to royalty-free music and audio effects. Animators and Motion Designers find it a rich source of high-quality animations and motion graphics.
If you are a creator or a professional who deals with digital forms of media, Envato Elements is something you should highly consider. The same goes for freelancers and agencies too. The rise in the quality of production will not only leave your clients impressed but will also form the basis of a stellar portfolio.
Envato Elements: Licensing
You won’t have to ever worry about licensing when it comes to Envato Elements. All of their assets are backed up by a license that is fair not only to the users/consumers but also to the creator as well.
With the implementation of licensing, the creators are assured fair earnings and the user/consumer never has to worry about copyright issues.
When you download any item from Envato Elements, it comes with a single-use commercial license. This license grants you the freedom to utilize the item in various projects, including those of a commercial nature. However, it’s essential to note that each download is licensed for one specific use only. Should you wish to incorporate the item into another project, you’ll need to register it again.
In essence, the Envato Elements license provides comprehensive commercial rights, albeit with some restrictions. These limitations include constraints on resale, merchandising, and the assertion of copyright/trademark rights over downloaded assets.
What will happen to your licenses if your Envato Elements subscription expires?
With Envato Elements, you receive Future-Proof Licensing. This guarantees that even if you opt to terminate your subscription with Envato Elements, you retain the ability to continue utilizing the elements you’ve already downloaded and registered.
If you have any more queries or doubts with regard to licensing, you can check this link out.
Envato Elements: Pricing
This is where Envato Elements truly shines. For a mere $16.50 per month, you can access millions of digital assets. This is super helpful if you are a freelancer or own a small agency.
Click Here To Try Envato Elements
Moreover, students get 30% off. Which is pretty neat. Level up your game and one-up all your classmates with high-quality stock photos and videos.
So what’s the catch?
Well, the $16.50 price tag per month is only if you purchase the annual plan. The annual plan costs $198 which comes down to $16.50 per month. The same applies to the student plan.
However, if you wish to take up a monthly subscription then it will cost you around $33 per month.
Moving on to teams and enterprise packages; The Teams Plan allows 5 members for $10.75 each. The price varies according to the number of team members. And for the Enterprise package, you’ll have to get in touch with them and describe what are you looking for. A solution will be tailor-made based on your needs and charged accordingly.
Envato Elements Library
As we are aware by now, Envato Elements offers an extensive library of over 16 million creative assets. While it may not surpass Adobe Stock in sheer quantity, its diverse range of high-quality assets ensures that you can achieve impressive results across various projects.
From stock videos and motion graphics to music, sound effects, and graphic templates, the platform covers an extensive spectrum of categories, catering directly to your creative requirements.
Whether you’re searching for presentation templates, photos, fonts, web templates, CMS templates, or WordPress themes and plugins, Envato Elements has you covered. You can further add more to your creative toolkit with add-ons, 3D assets, and WordPress extensions.
Customise Video templates
The best part about video templates at Envato Elements is that each component is customizable. Be it text, images, footage, or overlays, you can tailor them to match the aesthetics of the video you’re creating. The final will reflect your brand and will help you maintain the tone.
With over 27,000 video templates, it also supports major editing software like Premier Pro, After Effects, Final Cut Pro, and a lot more.
Access to Royalty Free Music and Sound Effects
Choose from over 66,000 royalty-free audio tracks on Envato Elements, spanning diverse genres, moods, and instruments. You can level up your content with high-quality sound effects as well. Nature sounds, Human sounds, Game sounds, Cartoon sounds, Industrial sounds, Transitions, Movements, name it and Envato Elements will have you covered.
The music you choose is royalty-free and complete with appropriate licenses. None of your videos will ever be flagged for copyright on YouTube.
Millions of Photos and Images at Your Fingertips
Envato Elements offers an astonishing collection of photos, totaling over 51 million images including 1 million from Envato Elements and an additional 50 million from Twenty20, a stock photo marketplace recently acquired by Envato. You can easily refine your search results based on color, orientation (landscape or portrait), and background style (isolated or blurred).
Upgrade your Product Pitches and End Product with Graphic Templates
Change the game and stand out from the competition with Investor pitches, website concepts, or even data analytical dashboards. With a vast collection of 115,000 graphic templates and elements, there’s no limit to what one can achieve visually anymore with an Envato Elements subscription.
Your brand can now excel at storytelling while showcasing your expertise and taste for visual aesthetics. Illustrations, patterns, icons, and social media packs tailored for stories, posts, and banner ads, to textures, backgrounds, and miscellaneous objects, all of these in one subscription. You can further refine and categorize these components by properties such as whether it’s vectored, layered, or tileable. Specify your preferred file type, whether it’s JPG or PNG, and ensure compatibility with your preferred editing software such as Sketch, Figma, Affinity Designer, Adobe Photoshop, and Illustrator.
What do the Online Reviews say about Envato Elements?
When it comes to obtaining genuine feedback instead of promotional endorsements, Reddit emerges as a valuable platform where users freely express their experiences and suggestions. Let’s dwell deeper into what Redditors have to say about this whole debate:
‘I use Envato elements daily. Textures, stock, music, sound effects, elements, plugins, you name it they’ve got it and the license is broad. If you take advantage of its broad uses and embrace it, it’s absolutely worth it.’ – u/Anon3580
‘Envato Elements is great. I use it all the time and it has paid for itself over and over. Music is pretty good. Stock footage is OK, but could use a freshening up. The search function on EE is much better than Storyblocks (to which I also subscribe). AE templates are good jumping off points for projects, but know that they do require a lot of work to make them fit your own personal projects…unless you want short video clips with funky transitions and text to appear on every scene. Then you’re golden!’ – u/bboru2000
However, there’s a fair bit of criticism too. For instance, u/disgruntledempanada was particularly not happy with their subscription. They said:
‘It’s decent until you’re looking for audio and AUDIOJUNGLE AUDIOJUNGLE AUDIOJUNGLE just starts repeating in your head all the time because you’ve heard it 3 million times.
Some of the templates can be pretty outdated and when clients ask for revisions on some of the complex elements and it can be a nightmare to have to deconstruct them.’
And u/goodfella311 believes the Envato Elements library lacks quality stuff:
‘I’ve had envato for several years now. At first it was amazing. But after a while I found that the really high quality stuff isn’t available there. I end up having to buy it from an indie creator. Things like motion graphics, titles, Ps actions, etc. It’s excellent if I need something simple where that slick creative edge won’t be noticed or appreciated. In other words Envato is good for generic stuff.’
Envato Elements has a generally positive reputation on Trustpilot, a popular review platform.
The most common criticism seems to be about the overall quality of assets compared to Envato’s competitors and their search filters not being optimized enough.
Upon scouring through Quora, the general consensus about Envato Elements seems to be the same:
Envato Elements: Cons
Now that we have gone through the reviews and what all Envato Elements are about, let us go through the cons of it.
Limited Support
You’ll need to keep your expectations in check for this one. Envato Elements may not offer the same level of personalized support as other services, which is frankly quite frustrating. There have been complaints wherein the customer support doesn’t come through and users had to initiate a chargeback through a payment vendor (PayPal) but to no avail.
Premium Assets Locked Behind a Pay Wall
After using Envato Elements for a bit, you’ll find yourself being spoilt for choice. But after combing through thousands of assets per day for your clients, you’ll find that the best assets are premium assets.
And these ‘premium assets’ are never included for free in your Envato Elements subscription. In most cases, you’ll have to purchase them separately despite having a subscription.
These premium assets are available in Envato Marketplace which houses AudioJungle, VideoHive, ThemeForest, and a lot more.
Limited Licensing
Although Envato Elements provides a broad range of assets, the licensing terms may not suit everyone. Some users might find the restrictions on usage or redistribution too restrictive for their needs.
What’s even more tedious is that if you like a certain asset, re-using it on any other projects requires you to register for licensing again. For that matter, every asset has to be re-registered if you want to use it again.
Lack of Support for WordPress
Here’s a thread I found from Reddit that advises against Envato Elements when it comes to WordPress Themes and plugins. Users are having problems with WordPress Themes where the developers do not provide any support after a certain timeframe. There are cases where themes have been launched only for the developers to abandon them or not update them at all.
Some users have even mentioned that it’s better to research with the developer first to get an idea of their work, consistency, and support. However, I would not recommend using WordPress assets from Envato Elements at all. There are free themes and plugins on the wp.org repository that are better in quality and will fare you well.
Rest Assured You Are Paying for QUALITY
Now that we have established that Envato Elements has a library that is STACKED with millions of assets, where do these assets come from?
Well, these assets are sourced from producers/creators/artists. They are known as creators or ‘Authors’ and are sourced by Envato with a very stringent selection process.
The authors can sell everything that is digital and creative. Be it music/audio, video, design assets, website themes, stock images and footage, and a lot more. And not to forget that some authors even sell code scripts.
Envato levies an ‘Author Fee’ for every asset sold on the platform.
But how is all this relevant to you?
Well for starters, all the authors on Envato are paid well with 98% of the authors earning consistently each month.
And even though these assets are sourced from thousands of Authors, 99% of them have their work licensed and generated earnings. With these kinds of ratios, Users download almost all of its entirety when it comes to the Envato Elements library.
But what’s even more interesting is that Envato puts quality first when it comes to listing these assets. Firstly Authors have to go through a screening and a very stringent selection process before they are onboarded as an authors.
Secondly, before submitting their work, authors have to abide by strict guidelines and processes that ensure the overall quality of assets is not subpar.
So much so that some Envato suggest removing pieces or assets that don’t sell well or are no longer trendy. You can read all about their best-quality practices here.
FAQs – Fewly Asked Questions
How safe is Envato Elements?
Unlike other digital platforms, Envato Elements has a strict hiring policy for their authors to ensure that they are authentic and verified. Moreover, all the assets pass through a screening to meet Envato’s design criteria and are also detected for any malware. Rest assured the assets you download are completely safe.
Are there any limitations on downloads?
No, there are no limitations on downloads with an Envato Elements subscription. You can download as many items as you need for your projects without any restrictions.
Can I use Envato Elements assets in commercial projects?
Yes, you can use Envato Elements assets in both personal and commercial projects. Once you download an item, you have the right to use it according to the Envato Elements license agreement.
How is the Envato Market different from Envato Elements?
To put it in the simplest terms:
Envato Market – A marketplace where you can purchase millions of design assets.
Envato Elements – A marketplace that works on a subscription basis. You can download the assets on an unlimited basis and have access to free unrestricted use of it.
Can I use Envato Elements assets after my subscription expires?
No, you can only use Envato Elements assets in new projects while your subscription is active. Once your subscription expires, you will no longer have the rights to use the assets in new projects, but you can continue to use them in projects that were created while your subscription was active.
Are there any additional fees for using Envato Elements assets?
No, there are no additional fees for using Envato Elements assets once you have a subscription. All assets are included in the subscription price, and you can use them without any extra charges.
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