500px Reviews 162

I had forgotten about this site ever since it was sold to a Chinese company until I received an email this morning that I had licensed an image and received $0.01 in commission. The site itself licensed it for $30. I deleted my account immediately.

That is a 99.9% commission on a sale for 500PX!

Completely pointless for a contributor. Images get dismissed initially and then brought back for approval weeks, sometimes years, later.

My latest sales netted me $0.01 each. Could a site be more pointless?

It's been updated now but still as pointless as ever. Like other they've employed AI to filter out the dross but it's very poor. Licensing is still a mystery. No support.

Data breach, still suffer from 2015. Spam mails occuring. I was free customer, but for five years I have to pay with my data. Thanks for nothing.

Good site but I wanted to cancel and refund my subscription and was denied due to it was a reoccurring subscription and not with 30 days of the original subscription (a year ago)

500px is legit and an excellent website. The site just lets you showcase your photos to the world as your portfolio, similar to the way you can on Flickr Pro. I am very happy with the website for great reviews on my photos by members who leave comments. Using 500px is a great alternate to creating a website and the Pro account is not expensive. I also post to my website, always good to have your photos on multiple websites for self promotion. Adrian

do not be a sucker and upgrade to a paid account because you think you will be able to get paid for your work.. this site is the worst of the worst

run don't walk from 500px

Personal review of 500px (0 Stars) – absolutely 100 % not worth it.

500px looks like a great resource for photographers and it's why I signed up. I was looking forward to seeing other photographers' work and refining my own, but it turns out that 500px is a very basic service and is primarily a photo-sharing site, like Instagram, but it is also capable of selling your work. There are many sites like this and in my opinion, all are better services. Society6, Printable, SmugMug, etc. most of which take a percentage of sales, some of which require a subscription. 500px is the latter and where I encountered the largest problem.
I had gone a year with them in hopes that I would see a positive result, or at least an increased knowledge. I did see some beautiful photos from other users, but that was about the extent of it. As my subscription came close to renewal, I was not sent a notification of pending renewal, and quite honestly, I had forgotten all about it, because I had forgotten about 500px altogether by that time. On the day of renewal at 12:01 am I was billed at the yearly rate. I got a ping on my cell phone and when I got up that morning, I deleted my account and stopped the recurring billing. I contacted 500px the same day as my renewal and explained to them, I missed stopping the auto-pay by a few hours and requested a refund as I had deleted my account and had no intention of renewing. I was met with a reply that included a statement about agreeing to the terms of service and that refunds were not allowed after the autopay completes. I explained the situation again and noted again that I was stopping the auto pay the same day as my renewal. I was once again sent a flat response in an uncaring attitude. I accepted that the representative could not assist me and instead turned to my credit card company, who aided me in blocking any purchase from 500px beginning with the renewal charge that day.

Lesson learned, 500px is a poor service, and not worth the money. There are a bajillion other sites out there that are significantly better and don’t have shady business practices such as this. I would urge you to take your business elsewhere.

Very poor site , completely lacking any form of social interaction , might as well just post on Instagram

Of course they have the auto-renewal enabled - as most subscriptions. However, with all my subscriptions, this is the first time a service refuses to refund auto-renewal. Every single one that had auto-renewal agreed to refund whenever contacted (as a "courtesy").
Ok, that's on the terms of service, but that doesn't mean the sneaky auto-renewal is neither right nor morally correct. I believe the #FTC should reign in this kind of rip-off with subscriptions that are all around.

This is a ripoff Chinese owned, even if you canceled the membership they will take the money and say. "Per our terms of service we only issue refunds within 30 days of the initial first purchase for Awesome and Pro memberships. We’re unable to provide refunds for recurring annual payments once processed."

I think This website is good for sharing photo But I prefer some other sites and don't use it that much, I think they should have better ways for showing photo stats and the website layout is not that much appealing.

I have been using 500px for a lot of years and finally deleted my photos and account and I'll tell you why:

- The concept of 500px is fatally flawed by hardcoding exposure to popularity. The website is basically a popularity contest. You comment on as many photos as you can, like as many photos as you can and follow as many people as you can so they return the favour and boost your views. And this brings me to:
- The website is running rampant with bots. Which is no suprise since you can get free 500px bots on github. You are always competing against bots so no matter what you do, you won't have a high enough pulse or views or likes and will never climb to the top, unless you use a botting service
- There are no meaningful interaction between users, no feedback is given or requested, the groups are a super diluted feature which is poorly implemented, clunky to use and not engaging at all.
- Their photo licensing service is a scam. It takes ages, they reject photos without giving a reason and they do not disclose the prices for which they sell the photos, instead they give a tiny amount that is not proportional to the selling value of the photo. That's if they sell and if they pay. Read online some horror stories where people received a few cents, but 500px licensed the photos for hundreds of dollars
- The people running the company are wannabe celebrities, I remember reading an interview with the founder in which he boasted by always having a condom in his wallet. They only care about champagne, caviar and women, their entire business is a major cashgrab. Sounds like every other business coming from California lately.
- They recently added a new feature called Resources. These are basically tutorials or lectures. The problem is that anyone can post and sell them for whatever they want. There is no feedback and approval system in place, so the quality of these is very low. There are better free tutorials on YouTube.

In conclusion: stay away from this place, it's nothing but lies and deceipt!

have closed my account with my photos saying that I upload plagiarized photos!! I write a month to help saying that they are my photos and I am the one who has copyright to these photos and there is no answer.

I joined 500px as a photographer thinking that it would be just like every other portfolio website. My initial thought is that you just upload your work, submit it for licensing review, and hope that your work sells. What I got was a mix of portfolio sites and social media that was done very very well. The community is friendly, the discover section actually makes you feel like your work is being shown, and the pricing on the website's premium features are more than fair when compared with other services.

The upload process is reminiscent of many others (Examples being Shutterstock or Adobe Contributor). You upload your content, title it, add descriptions, add tags, and post. Nothing out of the ordinary. The rest of the website, however, functions almost like Instagram in a sense that it feels like a social media platform specifically for photographers. You can like, share, and comment on posts. You can add posts to galleries. You can have genuine interaction with others on the site. This was an almost refreshing change of past for me, as my experience as a contributor to other sites has mostly been a focus on uploading and nothing more. As I said above, the community is friendly as well. I got many comments on my work saying how nice it was, and the community on 500px is a global one. This means your work is being seen by individuals around the world and not just in select locations.

The discover tab on 500px works wonders as well. It does a fantastic job showcasing the works of many photographers, and it actually makes you feel like your uploads are being shown. There's even detailed statistics for premium members, something that feels lacking on similar sites.

I would highly recommend 500px to photographers. Not only is it a nice platform to work with, but the community and their kind words/interactions is an absolute blessing. Nothing made me feel like I'm on track with my photography work like the positive reinforcement of my peers, and the potential to sell your work is always good as well. Great website, good prices, I highly recommend.

Like so many others have complained, I got caught with the auto renewal scam. I didn’t realize that they had set me up for auto renewal when I signed up the first year. I reached out to them on the same day they charged my card for auto renewal (BTW, the renewal price was about 4 times more than what I had paid for the first year). I put in a ticket requesting a refund. I explained that I’m not a professional photographer, I don’t use the website and I have not uploaded anything for a very long time as I don’t find this website useful for my purposes. The ticket was picked up by someone named ‘Dillon’ and he rudely refused to refund the money. He pointed me to the ‘terms and conditions’ I had agreed to when I initially signed up last year. Since I am not using this platform, I then requested him to downgrade my plan and refund just the difference. He refused that as well. So I guess they work on a policy that when they get your money, they will never give it back under any circumstances. I have never come across a nasty company like this one. Stay away!

Like others on this board I got caught with the auto renew and when I requested that the account be closed and a refund issued on the day the payment was taken I was given the please read our terms and conditions - no refunds on auto enrol. If you do decide to join this site and I would advise you don't, make sure you turn off the auto enrol feature / scam.

I've been caught with this similar auto enrol with other Internet sites and all have refunded without question - these guys don't.

when you want to cancel your account they will not refund the remainder of your payment. Very poor.

I haven't seen a worse site, they are rude, they take photos without any explanation, they threaten to ban, etc. I RATED BIH 500px with 0

Don't forget to cancel your membership, they will renew it without your consent and you won't get a refund.

I thought the website was OK before I had this bad experience and there is nothing I can do. What is worse is that they treat you like it is all your fault.