Pixoto brings monthly subscription plans to its community vote-based stock image library

Back in January, we brought you news on Pixoto, an online stock image library that’s striving to stand out from the slew of incumbents already operating in the crowded space.

Finding the right stock snaps can be a tricky and time-consuming affair. To help users find the best imagery, however, Pixoto uses a proprietary community-based ranking system called ‘ImageDuel’ to hep surface the most relevant photos.

As the name suggests, it’s essentially a Facemash-style system, whereby users select their favorite from two randomly-chosen photos, though admittedly it works best when there’s a lot of users contributing. When you first sign up (Twitter or Facebook is mandatory), you get 100 credits, 10 of which you ‘spend’ each time you upload an image from your computer, Facebook, Instagram or cloud-based service such as Flickr, Picasa or Dropbox.

Now, to ensure uploaders also vote, they can only earn more credits by voting for other submissions. The result, in theory at least, is that the best images rise to the top of search results thanks to an active community.

To date, more than one million photos have been ranked by Pixoto users, and the company is now announcing a new stock photo subscription service that lets members download high-res images starting from $0.33 each.

The price of Pixoto

The new three-tiered subscription offering will set you back $19/month for 5 downloads ($3.80 each); $49/month for 100 downloads ($0.49 each); or $99/month for 300 downloads ($0.33 each).

“Over the past few months, our library of available images has grown four-fold, and we are getting more than 50,000 new stock images per week,” explains Jason B. Kiefer, Pixoto founder CEO. “With our new memberships and expanded image offerings we believe we can provide the vast majority of a small business’ image needs for $49 a month.”

Pixoto also recently launched the Pixoto Art Shop for canvas prints based on other users’ images, or they can also order canvas prints of their own snaps at wholesale prices.

Pixoto is an interesting concept for sure, though given it integrates with the likes of Instagram, there is a danger that some of the images you search for will be below par.

Indeed, while the resolution for each photo is displayed on the site, there’s currently no filter to stipulate a minimum quality, which seems like a massive omission, especially given the target user-base won’t be looking for a smartphone screensaver. Kiefer, however, says that as things stand, around three-quarters of all the images on the site are more than 4 megapixels, and plans are in place to introduce the aforementioned filter shortly.

➤ Pixoto