Pexels is a provider of

stock photography Stock photography is the supply of photographs which are often licensed for specific uses. The stock photo industry, which began to gain hold in the 1920s, has established models including traditional macrostock photography, midstock photography, ...

and stock footage. It was founded in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

in 2014 and maintains a library with over 3.2 million free stock photos and videos.

History

Pexels was founded by twin brothers Ingo and Bruno Joseph in

Fuldabrück Fuldabrück is a municipality in the district of Kassel, in Hesse, Germany. It is situated along the Fulda river, 8 kilometers south of Kassel. The municipality of Fuldabrück consists of the former independent villages Bergshausen, Dittershaus ...

Hesse Hesse (, , ) or Hessia (, ; german: Hessen ), officially the State of Hessen (german: links=no, Land Hessen), is a state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt. Two other major historic cities are Dar ...

. The brothers started the platform in 2014 with around 800 photos. Since 2015 Daniel Frese is part of the team. The graphic design platform

Canva Canva is an Australian graphic design platform that is used to create social media graphics and presentations. The app includes readymade templates for users to use, and the platform is free and offers paid subscriptions such as Canva Pro and ...

acquired Pexels in 2018.

Business model

Pexels provides media for online download, maintaining a library that contains over 3.2 million photos and videos, growing each month by roughly 200,000 files. The content is uploaded by the users and reviewed manually. Using and downloading the media is free, the website generates income through advertisements for paid content databases. There is also a donation option for users, and while attribution of the content creator is not required, it is appreciated. Through the merger with Canva, Pexels' database is available in the Canva application. Pexels is committed to providing a diverse database, for example by including

LGBTQ+ ' is an Acronym, initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an Hyponymy and hypernymy, umbrella term for Sexuality and gende ...

stock content, and through a partnership with Nappy, a platform that focuses on POC content.

License

Pexels doesn't offer media under CC0

Creative Commons license A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyric ...

but has their own set of rules for the use of their photos and footage. Their license does not permit the user to sell unaltered copies of a photo or video, to imply endorsement of their own product by people or brands in the images, or to resell the content on other stock platforms.

Staff

The Pexels staff consists of the three founders, who live in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

, Germany, and a team of 40 who are based in Germany, other parts of

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

, and

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north ...

and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...

. The company does not have headquarters, all staff work from their respective homes. Bruno and Ingo Joseph were

CEOs Kea ( el, Κέα), also known as Tzia ( el, Τζια) and in antiquity Keos ( el, Κέως, la, Ceos), is a Greek island in the Cyclades archipelago in the Aegean Sea. Kea is part of the Kea-Kythnos regional unit. Geography It is the island of ...

until November 2018, when Clifford Obrecht, founder of Canva, became CEO of the company. Bruno Joseph was reinstated as CEO in July 2020.Request in

Bundesanzeiger The ''Bundesanzeiger'' is an official publication of the Federal Republic of Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, ...

Unternehmensregister, 09.07.2020, retrieved 21.04.2021.

External links

*{{Official website, https://www.pexels.com/

References