Dreamstime

Not pleased with price hike of images. They used to cost 1-3 credits, they now cost 11-13 and consequently packages are more expensive.

I had to double pay for images I purchased a few days ago because I wanted to download in a different format. This will be my last time using your service.

Confusing Purchasing description.
Strongly dislike the recurring charges to my credit card. Most people only want a 1 time purchase. If they want more they purchase more when they''re ready.

I haven't done very much yet but am sure it will be ok

I don't want to pay in Costa Rican currency, but can't figure out how to change it. AND every time I pay, you switch me to autopay, which I hate.

I've been using Dreamstime for over 5 years, and downloading images has gone smoothly, and at decent prices. However, I am now working on a corporate video, where I am having HUGE issues downloading 2 of the 3 videos I've used in my composition, and customer service is useless. They do not communicate or understand the problem. Going on over 2 weeks now where I'm running over my deadline, and Dreamstime has yet to respond in a clear manner or resolve the problem. Completely unprofessional, and unacceptable. It takes them over 3 days to respond to every email. A week goes by with just a single point of contact. This site is not for professionals!

I agree with the poor reviews here. Ridiculous that they get your payment information and give you NOTHING in return. There is NO free trial, be sure of that! I canceled and will never use them again. Deposit Photos is much better and really has a one-week trial with a few downloads available during that time.

Not happy as couldn't purchase two back-to-back sets of credits on the same card?

Impossible d'avoir une page traduite en français! Une honte!
Certainement un bon moyen de faire de l'argent?

Extremely useless customer support. Opened cases with them for billing and never replied. They disputed my CC chargeback and has created false claims. Do not sign up with them unless you want to be hit with random charges!

I was a loyal dreamstime customer for several years - the photos were affordable, imaginative and varied. In fact, I used to use Dreamstime to generate ideas when I was stuck: I'd put a conceptual word into the search box and would be delighted with the range of beautiful and abstract ways of representing my words, sometimes so perfect it would change the whole concept behind the promotion or artwork I was doing.

Now though, it's almost completely useless.

- The quality control on the photographs is poor: the search results are saturated with awful vector art that would have looked at home in Microsoft's clip art galleries of the early 90s, and the photos are bland, staged shots with unconvincing models holding bits of paper or some kind of 3D representation of the actual word, not artful conceptual photos
- The price of photos over the years has crept up to the point that you'd be lucky to get 2 decent photos with a bundle of credits. It no longer beats the competitors on price
- It's highly Americanised - do your contributing photographers include anyone from around the world anymore? I've grown used to searching for 'faucet' instead of 'tap' for example, but the results for any search rarely contain imagery that would be quintessential in other countries. I can rarely find anything relevant to our UK markets now.

I don't know if this is all just the price of popularity - all of the second-rate image peddlers jump on the bandwagon and suddenly the searches are hopeless and the prices jump up - or the result of "improvements" to the site. Please, whatever is happening, find out what's causing the noticeable decline in quality and put it right... or lose loyal customers.

Like others leaving reviews, I signed up for the 5 free images. They were watermarked images. Then I was charged for one month. What the hell? I downloaded (and used) one image. Then I was billed for a second month, and the credits from the first month were gone like a cellphone carrier, the credits don't roll over. Other sites like 123RF and Shutterstock are more reasonably priced and (depending on the plan) you have the credits until you use them.As it stands, I used one high-res image from Dreamstime and it cost $60... I could have downloaded dozens of photos from 123rf, and in the future I will...

Have used your service for years but this last time was surprised at how expensive Dreamstime has become, sad to say we are looking elsewhere now...

For me Dreamstimes was a perfect solution for small budget projects from his fist day. In last 2 years the prices vent so high that I buy less on Dreamstimes and more on Higher quality sites. The prices getting closer but quality still way far.

When you have to then pay to download any of the pictures. Highly misleading and just pisses people off. I see what you're trying to do with the whole foot in the door technique, we get them by saying it's free to create an account (technically true) but you miss the practical point when you say it's free! Would not recommend and you need to change your gimmicky marketing practice and stick to the substance of your product and being clear about what you're offering.

I did get a refund for the unwanted service of a monthly subscription. I got an email to state this from another person, not the one that blocked the account when I said I wouldn't be using it because it had become too complicated to use now. So glad to not have to deal with recurring payments. I am glad I paid through paypal. Other people have stated once they had your card details they kept signing you up again. I used their service for years with no problems, just buying some credits to use for photos when I needed. You pay in advance anyway before you use the service, don't know why they have started the cloak and danger mystery boxes you have to unclick. I'd be afraid to use their service again now because of this experience.

A few years ago the prices ware more attractive.

While I can appreciate that they are a business, and that free options would be limited, their search function is either broken, or a lie. Searching with only "free images" selected leads you to a selection of images which are actually a mix of free and paid; if you attempt to download them, will bring up a prompt for your subscription information.

If you're putting together a website for commercial purposes or something, maybe they are worth it, but if you're just looking for materials for a lesson handout, etc. don't bother looking here.

I am unable to download the images I paid for. Two support requests have gone unanswered. When you try to download an image it takes you to a payment page despite the account page showing my credits. Very poor website also.

I've been subscribed to Dreamstime for about a year now, and in that time have cancelled my subscription twice only to renew it again after they sent me a discount offer.

First, the good.

Dreamstime has a wide selection of the types of images that I like.

Content discovery is also pretty good due to the fact that on each image they will also provide more images of the same kind, more images featuring that model/location and more images from the photographer.

Those two combined mean that I have downloaded a lot of images from the site over my subscription period.

Now the bad.

As I said, I've cancelled twice in that time only to be tempted back by slashed prices. Why? Because the site is INCREDIBLY frustrating to use and although they claim that feedback is important, I've raised my concerns with them on multiple occasions and nothing has changed.

If you view too many photos in a short period of time when just using the site at a casual pace, it will suddenly decide that you must be a bot and it will present you with a page where you must hold down your finger on a button for a period of time to prove that you are a human.

But this test often doesn't work, failing to return you to the site. It just hangs there. Refresh the page and you have to start all over again. Try another image instead and you have to try all over again. I've done the test 5 times in a row and it still wouldn't let me back in.

The real kicker is that it does this even for logged-in users with active subscriptions and hundreds of downloads available on their account! Lol!

If I've paid for 500+ images every month, why would it even matter if I was using a bot to download them? As long as I'm just downloading the images I've already paid for, who cares how I do it, right?

Except I'm not even using a bot to download images - I'm just casually opening images in tabs, viewing them and then deciding if I want to download them or not. Like a normal human would do.

Even for the short period of time that you are able to view and download images before the site decides that you are a bot and locks you out, the downloads are incredibly slow. You hit the download button and then have to wait 3-5 seconds for the site to finally decide to give you the file. Multiply that across however many images you have in your download allocation for that month and that is a LOT of waiting around looking at loading spinners.

I've saved a list of the images that I want to check out and I am slowly working my way through the images every month. Once I've checked them all out, I plan to cancel my membership for a third and final time purely because of how frustrating and terrible the user experience is.

This outfit really leads you on. You sign up for free trial as the hook. Then they want an extra $25 upgrade to your free account, or your downloaded images will still have watermarks on them. They should be way more upfront about that. When you are in free mode all you get is essentially preview copies. They have good images but the come on free approach is not appealing. Just be honest and say for $25 you can get 15 images per month.

Pricing is cost-prohibitive. I'll look for other options.