Vecteezy

Vecteezy was founded by designer Shawn Rubel. Rubel, a Canadian, moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky, around 2004 for a website development job, and while working at Camping World he started the Photoshop brush website Brusheezy as a side project. After that site took off, he applied the same concept to launch Vecteezy in 2007, which initially offered only free vector graphics. Rubel has said he invested just a few hundred dollars to build the site, that it became profitable within a month or two of launch thanks to advertising revenue, and that in 2009 he left his day job to run it full-time.⁠[1][2][3][1][1][1][3]

Vecteezy initially relied entirely on advertising and affiliate marketing revenue, with all content free. In 2010 it launched the paid Vecteezy Pro, shifting to a freemium model: it kept and continued to add free assets while selling exclusive premium content through subscriptions and download credits.⁠[1][1][1]

Rubel later purchased the Eezy.com domain name and built a network of websites providing stock graphics, website themes, and video clips; Eezy started in a tiny office in the Western Kentucky University Small Business Accelerator. As of January 2019, Eezy had 30 employees, about half of whom worked remotely, and its network of websites drew some 5 million visitors per month, with 80 percent of traffic coming from outside the United States; Eezy had received a Business Innovation Award from the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce.⁠[2][2][2][2][2][2][2]

In 2021, Vecteezy was named for the first time to the Inc. 5000, Inc. magazine’s list of fast-growing private companies, and it made the list again in 2022.⁠[3][4]

In 2023, Vecteezy launched an artificial intelligence–powered reverse image search feature that lets users upload any image to find similar assets.⁠[3][3]

On April 20, 2023, Vecteezy announced an exclusive partnership with ShutterstockShutterstockShutterstock is a stock and creative content platform headquartered in New York, United States, that licenses images, video, music, and editorial content to businesses and individuals and provides metadata for machine learning and generative artificial intelligence; it has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since 2012 (ticker SSTK). In January 2025 it signed a merger agreement with Getty Images; the agreement was terminated on July 7, 2026, and the merger was not completed.Open the full entry as its premier image source, under which Shutterstock images would appear in search results alongside Vecteezy’s own assets; for the previous three years, Vecteezy had a similar partnership with Getty ImagesGetty ImagesGetty Images is a visual content company headquartered in Seattle, United States, whose three brands, Getty Images, iStock, and Unsplash, license creative images, editorial images such as news and sports pictures, video, and music. Its holding company, Getty Images Holdings, Inc., was listed on the New York Stock Exchange from 2022 and has traded over the counter since September 2026.Open the full entry’ iStockiStockiStock is Getty Images’ affordable stock website for small and medium-sized businesses, offering royalty-free images, illustrations, vectors, video, and music available for individual purchase or by subscription. Its predecessor, iStockphoto, whose model of selling at low prices and sharing revenue with photographers on each transaction is regarded as the first microstock, was acquired by Getty Images in 2006.Open the full entry. The company said at the time that it expected revenue of $15 million in 2023, up 42% year over year, and more than 30 million files by year-end; it was profitable and had not taken outside funding.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][4]

In July 2025, Rubel said the company was headquartered in Bowling Green, with a team of 56 people across four continents, and that its revenue came from Pro subscriptions, ads shown to free users, and partnerships. As of August 2026, Rubel said the site offered more than 60 million assets and served more than 20 million users each month.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][3]

Vecteezy: Official website: https://www.vecteezy.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]