We’re all crunched for time, that’s no secret. So sourcing great visual content for your website, blog, press kits, social feeds and more can be daunting. While large brands have the bandwidth and budget to do endless custom shoots, smaller companies need to be more resourceful when planning their marketing strategy.

While Shutterstock, iStock, Getty and other royalty free companies have a dearth of relatively innovative and affordable offerings, it’s great to be able to pull as many creative levers as possible to come up with the perfect blend of images to represent your brand. And it’s especially fantastic when these images and videos are absolutely free!

Why are these sites handing out free photos you wonder? It’s a great way to draw views to sites and thereby generating ad revenue. Some sites, like Unsplash, are owned by big stock photo brands who use the tease of free photos to lure you into buying a license on their paid platforms. Adobe, Getty, Shutterstock have all jumped on the free photo bandwagon. We’ve resisted listing their sites here because they aren’t as user friendly as our favorites. We’re all about saving you time and effort so these are the sources we recommend:

#1 Pexels offers both video and still photos. The site has a robust search that allows you to enter specific keywords (or a phrase) that will bring up images that correspond to what you’re looking for. Having video that can be pulled for reels and promo videos is a big plus. Images have a true creative feel. Pro Tip: Even if you don’t immediately see what you’re looking for, click on images that are in the vein of what you want and scroll down to see similar shots that may have more appeal to you.

Shown below Gillian Harrison from Pexels

#2 Unsplash is probably one of the best known sites for free images. The site offers more than 3 million images, all free to use for any purpose you like. They offer still photos only at this point, and many of shots are in heavy rotation on Instagram. Search is very narrow and will bring up images that correspond to each word, but will not search for a phrase. For example if you’re looking for a woman looking in the mirror for your skincare brand, typing in “woman looking in mirror” will bring up images of woman, mirrors, and people and animals looking. Images have both a commercial and creative feel.

#3 Burst is an image tool from Shopify that offers a good selection of images only. The art tends to be more on the commercial side, although the catalog of images is growing steadily.

#4 Kaboompics is an overlooked source that is user friendly. It provides still images only, but you can search by color or palette to create a vision board experience that can help guide you through image planning. The site also offers the option to see all images from a given shoot, saving oodles of time if you find an image you like but something is just off and you need an alternate view.More to Explore

Image by Caroline Grabowsky at Kaboompics

#5 Pixabay offers a good range of still photos, videos, vectors and illustrations. The search is pretty straightforward and there’s a lot to get your creative juices flowing.