Our review of stock image site JumpStory
Looking for a high quality stock image site? Find out how JumpStory have revamped their offering and customer service.
Last year we received an email inviting us to sign up to stock image site JumpStory with the promise of a three month free subscription.
For years we’ve used free stock image site Unsplash and love the quality of their photos. But with the high volume of posts we publish, we can sometimes run out of images to choose from.
So we were excited at the prospect of a new selection of images with this promise:
“JumpStory is platform with 25 million high-performing photos, videos, icons, illustrations, and vectors. We have happy users in 130 countries, and unlike our competitors we focus on authentic images, no complex licenses, AI-optimized search & other smart tools.”
And the site looked good:
So we accepted their offer and joined up with a three month free subscription plan. We looked forward to searching their image library, and were hopeful that we’d found a new source for high quality images for our site. If it worked out, we’d have been happy to continue after the three months and join a paid plan.
We could find most images on JumpStory for free on sites like Unsplash
However, when we started using Jumpstory, we were initially disappointed. Many of their images appeared to be the same as those we could already find for free (JumpStory charge a $25 a month subscription to use their services after the free trial) on sites like Unsplash, Pexels and more.
We gave the service a good go, optimistically looking several times over the next few weeks when our search on Unsplash didn’t turn up anything exciting. But we eventually gave up as we rarely found any photo on JumpStory we wanted to use that wasn’t already on Unsplash.
We were charged money by JumpStory without notification
While we were unimpressed by the image selection on JumpStory, we had nothing to lose. We were on a free three month subscription so weren’t paying money (we had to give our bank card details to sign up, with the reassurance they would not be used).
Towards the end of our free subscription we looked for a way to cancel it once it expired to ensure we weren’t charged, but couldn’t find the option.
We waited for some notification from JumpStory asking if we wished to continue with a paid subscription, but received nothing. Instead, they simply took the money from our bank account. And when we asked them to return the money they refused.
After publishing our initial review explaining the above, JumpStory sent us another email informing us that they had refunded our subscription in full. However, while we were grateful for the refund, we were disappointed that it took the threat of publicity to do so. And we wondered where that left other people who don’t have the same platform.
Jumpstory have changed their subscription renewal process
Fast forward eight months, and out of the blue we received a message from the Founder of Jumpstory, Jonathan Løw. Jonathan got in touch to let us know that he’d been away for a year with ill health, but was now back and that the company had improved in a lot of different ways.
One important development was to change their communications regarding subscriptions. Unlike before, now you get notified about their renewal process when you sign up. You also get an email seven days before your renewal date alerting you to the renewal and explaining how you can cancel your account if you wish. And if you don’t want to continue you can now cancel your subscription with one simple click.
We were pleased that Jumpstory have changed their renewal communications. In his message to us, Jonathan emphasises, “we really don’t want people to feel that they’ve been ‘caught’ in any way.”
Jumpstory offer more protection than other, free stock image sites
Jonathan also addressed the issue of image duplication across stock image sites. He acknowledged that, yes sites like Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash etc have similar images as some photographers have shared images with them.
But he says there is one massive difference between Jumpstory and free stock photo sites:
“With JumpStory you get a global insurance, so IF there is a problem with a photo, you don’t get into trouble as a small business.
“With the free websites you DO, and there are many examples of small companies getting sued for using photos from the free platforms. It’s becoming a bigger and bigger problem, but most people using e.g. Unsplash and Pexels are sadly not aware of this.”
You can read more about Jumpstory’s global insurance here.
Jumpstory have also improved their functionality
There have also been several improvements at Jumpstory over the past year. These include:
- A smarter background removal tool to make it easier for you to remove the background from photos.
- An improved WordPress plugin.
- Quicker, easier and more accurate search functionality.
- Better search filters to make it easier to find the exact image you want.
- Image converter to make it easy for you to change the format of your image.
- A charity program in which they give $100 to the favourite charity of their top seller every week.
Why are we updating our review of Jumpstory?
We were delighted to hear about the changes from Jonathan. For Jonathan to care enough to reach out, and to explain the positive changes they have made was a good indication of the company’s ethics in our opinion.
It’s also heartening to see that they regularly donate to charities – again a positive sign of a business with a heart and mission beyond just making money.
We’re always happy to update our articles if we ever get anything wrong, or if situations change – as we did with our initial investigation into Tropic Skincare. So we have been pleased to edit this review of Jumpstory.
Our review: Why we’re now happy to recommend stock image site JumpStory
So, how do we feel about stock image site JumpStory now? Would we recommend it? We’re happy to confirm that we would. We can see that there have been many positive changes to their services, and in particular the new communications around subscription renewal and the ease of unsubscribing eliminate a significant reservation we had before.
We can see that they are a small business who work at continually innovating and delivering an improved service to their customers. And if you chose not to be a customer any more? It’s now easy to leave if you wish.
So yes, we would be happy to recommend giving Jumpstory a try with their 14-day free trial.
Please note this is not a sponsored article. We have been neither asked nor paid by Jumpstory to update this review. It’s a genuine reflection of our opinion and we were happy to set the record straight.
Photo by Lisanto 李奕良
