Finding fresh logos, graphics, photos and videos can be a pain in the ass for website designers. Plus, it’s equally expensive.
Enter Envato Elements!
Here’s a detailed Envato Elements review with everything you need to know about it including its pros and cons. Plus, the review will help you make an informed decision especially if you are not sure whether or not to subscribe to their plan.
If you prefer a video review, here we go:
Otherwise, let’s continue.
What is Envato Elements?
Envato Elements is a service that allows web designers access many different elements of design including:
- Plugins and WordPress themes
- Music
- Graphic assets
- Presentation templates among other template types
- Graphic assets
The subscription service competes with many different stock licensing services in the industry including Getty, Unsplash and Adobe Stock among others. One of the best things about Envato Elements is that it provides different types of assets. This in turn, allows users to reduce the number of subscriptions they need.
For the most part, users stand to benefit the most from this subscription service including videographers, graphic and web designers among other users that fall in this category. Envato Elements offer three different subscription plans that include: team subscription, single subscription and single subscription that comes with a discount.
Enterprise level members, on the other hand, can ask for customized prices.
Difference Between Envato Market and Envato Elements
The most important thing to note from this review is that Envato has different products. Some of the products include Placeit by Envato, Milkshake, Reshot, Mix Kit, Envato Elements, Envato Tutorials and Envato Market.
The most popular products are Envato Market and Envato Elements which people can’t seem to tell apart. For starters, both platforms usually offer a wide range of design elements that clients can buy even though there’s a huge difference.
Envato Elements is typically a subscription service while Envato marketplace serves as a creators and developers platform to sell high-quality products. Here’s a list of premium products that you can purchase on Envato marketplace:
- 3D files
- Audio
- Code
- Graphics
- Plugins
- Themes
- Photos among others
Most of the products that Envato Marketplace offers are of premium quality since they are usually from vetted and well-known developers. The main difference between Envato Marketplace and Envato Elements is that the latter offers a subscription service with endless downloads. Clients have to purchase the products individually when it comes to Envato Marketplace.
Envato Elements Pricing Plans
One of the best things about Envato Elements is that their pricing plans are straightforward as compared to its counterparts. It saves you the hassle that comes with dealing with overly complicated credit systems. Plus, you don’t have to worry about choosing from the different packages available especially when each one of them offers very different features.
Envato Elements offers a relatively affordable pricing plan and you only get to choose a single package. If you are a student working on a tight budget, you can go for the single package that comes with a discount to save a few bucks. What’s more, you can pay for the subscription service as a business using multiple accounts. The best thing about it is that all the packages have the same features.
Envato Elements pricing plans fall on the lower side of the spectrum as compared to its counterparts like Adobe Stock. Plus, instead of doing the credits every month, you’ll be able to get unlimited downloads. This means that the subscription plan might be cheaper in the long run especially if you tend to use the service regularly.
Envato Elements Free Trial Plan
The other reason why you need to subscribe to this service is that free trial plan. We all like free things, right? At least I do! The free trial gives you a chance to try out the platform before investing your hard-earned money. You can access all features with the free trial including a commercial licensing agreement and unlimited downloads.
The Envato Elements 7-day free trial period gives you enough time to check out the platform to ascertain if it suits your needs. Once you’re done, you can upgrade to a premium license with ease which you can also cancel anytime.
Envato Elements Features
The most frequently asked question about Envato Elements is – Why you I need this subscription service and what can I get from it? Read o to find out more.
As earlier mentioned, one of the things that sets Envato Elements apart and makes it have an edge over the others is the availability of many different creative assets. This platform has everything you need whereas other alternatives focus on a few things like photos and videos.
The wide range of available features in one place makes finding everything you are looking for a lot easier especially for a new video, graphic or website. Plus, it saves you the trouble of having to pay for multiple subscriptions. Here’s a highlight of the options subscribers have with Envato Elements;
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Stock Videos
Stock videos fall on the higher side of the pricing spectrum. Plus, most stock video platforms limit the number of videos you can download monthly. However, this is not the case with Envato Elements since you get access to unlimited downloads with no credit system.
Envato Elements offers more than a million motion graphics and thousands of stock videos. What’s more, you can filter these features with ease based on:
Different properties such as looped and alpha channeled videos
- Frame rate
- Resolution
- Length
You can also find different stock video examples on Envato Elements including landscape footage, modeling and people sitting around, drone footage over big cities and other different types of stock videos.
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Video Templates
Save for the stock photos, you also get to download a wide range of video templates which makes creating promotional and marketing videos a lot easier. These types of videos usually serve different purpose since you can use them to podcast, promote products, commercials, video openings and YouTube just to mention a few.
Generally, there are thousands of video templates available on the platform for video editors. Here’s a recommendation of some of the different video editors you can choose from:
- Adobe Premiere Pro
- Adobe After Effects
- DaVinci Resolve
- Final Cut Pro
- Apple Motion
You can use some of these filters to search through the available video templates:
- Plugins required
- Resolution
- Categories
- Application supported
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Music
When it comes to different types of media, music is equally expensive to source just like stock footage. Dealing with different platforms for stock audio can be quite challenging and a bit complicated. However, Envato Elements has made everything easy since it has simplified the entire process of searching for quality audio to use on things like commercials, video openings, podcasts and other related things where you might need to include stock audio.
Thanks to Envato Elements, you get to choose royalty-free stock audios from the thousands available in different genres. You can find different types of audio tracks on the platform including holiday songs, electronic songs and folk songs among others. Sorting these tracks is equally easy by using filters like:
- Categories
- Genre
- Length
- Properties
- Tempo
- Instruments
- Mood
- Vocals
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Sound Effects
Envato Elements has an edge over its counterparts when it comes to sound effects owing to its diverse offerings. It offers hundreds of thousands of sound effects and sound bytes that you can use for different purposes including podcasts, commercials and videos.
Here are some of the examples of the sound bytes that users can download when using this platform:
- Futuristic sounds
- Cartoon sounds
- Nature sounds
- Industrial sounds
- Urban sounds
- Game sounds
- Human sounds
You can make the search a little bit easier by using filters since there are thousands you’ll need to browse through. You can filter by: property, length and category.
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Graphic Templates
There’s a wide variety of images and graphics to choose from the platform and that can make it a little bit confusing. For instance, the graphics section is quite different from the graphics templates. The latter offers different things like scene generators, user interface graphics kit, mockup graphics, logos, infographics and user experience among others.
Generally, there are more than 200,000 graphic templates that you can download and customize to suit your personal specifications. You can also filter through the available graphics by supported applications, categories, orientation, color space and different properties such as vector or layered.
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Graphics
Envato Elements also offers different graphics that are not similar to those available on graphics templates. Here are examples of some of the graphics you can download:
- Social media graphics
- Icons
- Illustrations
- Backgrounds
- Patterns
- Textures
- Objects
In overall, there are hundreds of thousands of graphics that Envato Elements offer that you can download. You can use the graphics in editors including Affinity Designer, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Sketch and Figma.
Here are some of the filters you can use to search through the available graphics on the platform:
- File types
- Applications supported
- Categories
- Properties like tileable, layered and vector
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Presentation Templates
Creating different presentations for frequent internal meetings, sales and marketing can be a bane of your life. And this one of the areas where Envato Elements potentially comes in handy. Envato Elements offers thousands of designed presentations done professionally.
The professionally designed presentations serve many different purposes ranging from sales and marketing to creating slide decks. You can filter the available presentations on the platform based on certain slide show editing platforms like PowerPoint, Google Slides and Keynote.
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Photos
You probably know the challenges that come with sourcing fresh images that haven’t appeared on other websites if you’ve created one before. Some popular sites such as Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay for some reason usually offer images that have been overly used into oblivion. In this case, you can choose to pay for the stock photos to ensure you get the best.
However, you’ll realize that most paid stock photos are equally common. The only difference is that the frequency at which they appear on websites is relatively low as compared to the free ones.
Envato Elements provide millions of stock photos to choose from. You can use the photos for different purposes including social media platforms and website. Filter through the search to make it easier by background, orientation, color and the number of people.
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Fonts
Fonts play a significant role when it comes to creating branding for the website and marketing materials since you need to make it unique. However, fonts are usually relatively expensive especially for licensing if you don’t want to use the free ones available like Google fonts. Plus, free fonts are sometimes so basic.
Envato Elements offers thousands of fonts in different styles including decorative fonts, script & handwritten, sans serif and serif among others.
As usual, you can filter through your search when looking for the best font using: sizing, spacing, categories and properties like web fonts.
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Add-Ons
Envato Elements also have different creative offerings and their add-ons are appealing as they are functional. Here are examples of the available add-ons that work remarkably well with most design tools like:
- Adobe Lightroom
- Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe Photoshop
- Procreate
- Figma
- Sketch
There’s a total of about 15, 000 add-ons available on the platform that you can choose from. Plus, they serve different functions and purposes. Here are some of the examples where you can use the add-ons: Adding smoke effects on Adobe Photoshop, creating firestorm effects on Adobe Illustrator and adding a text style Game logo when using Adobe Illustrator.
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Web Templates
Envato Elements is equally resourceful when it comes to web templates. The platform offers a wide range of web templates ranging from landing page templates to email templates. These templates can significantly reduce time taken to design pages while providing premium quality designs.
There are more than 3,000 web templates available on the platform. This means that you have a variety to choose from including templates for your website’s homepage sign ups and sales landing page templates and sales and marketing email templates. Examples include a creative coming soon template, a clean eBook landing page and a modern e-newsletter templates for the emails.
You can use filters to search through the available options by properties like responsive, retina-ready templates and PSD files templates and categories.
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CMS Templates
Envato Elements offer a range of templates for different Content Management Systems that fall outside WordPress. This means that you can easily get the designs you are looking for even if your website is not custom coded.
You get to choose from different CMS templates available when using Envato Elements ranging from full website themes to single-page templates. Plus, it supports some of the most popular platforms like Magneto and Shopify.
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Drupal
Drupal was launched in 2001. It’s an open-source Content Management System for free. Initially, it was quite popular especially among web developers that were looking for an excellent alternative to the famous custom-coded alternatives.
However, people almost forgot about Drupal when WordPress took over the industry. If you are looking for templates that are easy to use on your Drupal website then Envato Elements is your go-to solution. Drupal offers around fifty templates only.
It’s always advisable to make use of the free trial especially if you plan on using the templates. This way, you can explore the available options to see if you can find one to suit your needs before subscribing.
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Joomla
Joomla is also a free and top tier open-source content management system that was launched in 2005 right after WordPress. Just like Drupal, Joomla was long forgotten after the triumphant entry of WordPress. Some people still use Joomla but its popularity is nothing close to what its counterparts boast about.
Envato Elements has you covered if you have a Joomla website and are looking to explore premium quality templates. The templates make the whole designing and redesigning a website a lot easier. The only major limitation is that professionally designed templates available on the platform are very few.
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Magento
Magento was launched in 2008. It’s an open-source eCommerce management system that’s an excellent alternative to WooCommerce. Save for Shopify, it’s quite popular since its one of the most widely used alternatives.
If you are looking to make the entire process of designing and redesigning a website a lot easier then you should try out the professionally designed templates available on the platform. However, the templates are few.
Like other alternative content management system platforms, Magento also offers very few templates. However, the free trial comes in handy as it allows you to test out before subscribing to any plan.
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Shopify
Shopify is one of the biggest global eCommerce solutions along with WooCommerce. The best thing about this eCommerce platform is the ease of use. Plus, it allows users to customize things. In this case, Envato Elements comes in handy as well.
In addition, Envato Elements platform offers more than 200 Shopify theme templates. These span an array of industries and niches that makes setting up your Shopify store effortless. Here are some examples of industries and niches with templates:
- Ceramics
- Furniture
- Grocery
- Biking
- Fashion
The above-mentioned options are the great ones even though there are more than six. These are just some of the examples of Shopify themes available on Envato Marketplace.
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Other Content Management System Templates
Save for the content management system templates discussed earlier, there are many different templates and themes for other platforms. You’ll find different industries and niches available just like in the rest of the CMS themes. This makes customizing your website to your personal specifications a lot easier, notwithstanding the platform the site is built on.
Here’s a highlight of other content management system themes and templates available on the platform:
- Muse
- OpenCart
- Ghost
- Prestashop
- Tumblr
- Unbounce
There are a gazillion templates and themes available in each category. Just like other CMS platforms, it’s advisable to check out the free trial before subscribing to ensure it suits your needs.
WordPress Elements
Envato Elements also offers a lot of resources for WordPress. This means that there are tons of add-ons, template kits, themes and plug ins available. This makes creating an ideal WordPress website a lot easier.
Themes
Plugins and themes are the most important components of WordPress. You can easily customize your WordPress website to make it look more appealing thanks to the two features. Otherwise, you’d need to learn coding to create customized website solutions or pay a developer.
Envato Elements comes in handy as it helps solve this problem by offering a significant number of WordPress themes best suited for different needs and a wide range of niches. You can find these themes to serve different purposes including:
- Personal websites
- eCommerce and shopping
- Courses
- Blogging
- Travel
- Crypto
- Tech
- Charity
There are many themes available on the platform covering different purposes and niches. However, the ones mentioned on the list above represent solid niches to give you a true representation of what to expect.
Plugins
WordPress typically excels in creating the most user-friendly platform for development when it comes to plugins. Fortunately, Envato Elements also thrives in this aspect. There are more than 700 plugins available on this platform which means there’s a variety to choose from. You can use the plugins for different solutions and functions alike.
All these plugins are usually premium solutions that you can only find on Envato Elements. Here’s a highlight of some of the best WordPress plugins on Envato Elements:
- Cookie solutions
- Back-to-top solutions
- Social media
- Search Engine Optimization
- Affiliate management
- Portfolio creation
There are other different plugins and solutions alongside the ones mentioned above that Envato Elements offer on their platform.
Template Kits
Template Kits is another solution that Envato Elements offers when it comes to WordPress assets. The template kits allow users to customize their websites according to their personal preferences without using any code. The best thing about it is that you can tweak the website to get the design that suits your needs once its up and running.
Here are some examples of WordPress template kits categories and niches that you can find on Envato Elements platform:
- Entertainment
- Automotive
- Podcasts
- Education
- Fashion
- Events
- Blogs
There are more than 25 industries and niches on the platform with thousands of template kits.
3D Objects
3D objects are creative assets found on Envato Elements platform usually generated from actual objects. You can download the files as Photoshop files otherwise known as PSD files or PNG files.
Here’s a highlight of different 3D objects available on Envato Elements platform:
- Bikes
- Sunglasses
- Lightbulbs
- Phones
- Paintbrushes
- Books
- People
- Plants
- Houses
In general, there are hundreds of thousands of different types of 3D objects available on the platform and the figure is on an upward spiral. This means that there’s a variety to choose from. You can use the 3D objects for different purposes. Plus, they are easily customizable especially when you download them as PSD files.
Free Monthly Files
There are tons of free solutions available on Envato Elements platform along with other high-quality creative assets. The files usually cover a number of creative assets and files available on the platform.
Here’s a highlight of some of the free items you’ll find on Envato Elements:
- Stock photos
- Stock videos
- Fonts
- Graphic templates
- Lightroom presets
There are other options spanning an array of categories. There are twelve different files you can choose from every month by simply creating an account and signing in.
Envato Elements Plugin for WordPress
Save for downloading items from Envato Elements platform directly, you can also install plugins. Installing WordPress plugin will help you add different elements to the website. It not only saves time but also makes swapping out the things you might need for your site a lot easier.
In addition, the WordPress plugin allows users to browse through the available files on Envato Elements. You can also import the files directly to your site and add the plugin and use it at no extra cost. Plus, WordPress plugin works remarkably well with Elementor.
User Interface and Experience
Envato Elements’ user interface is almost similar to that of most websites including Adobe Stock and other stock photo solutions such as Pexels and Pixabay. The user interface makes it easy to navigate and search for different creative assets. The filters will also come in handy when browsing through the content you are looking for.
Customer Support
Envato Elements could use some improvement when it comes to customer support especially on the available options. There are few support options on the platform with the most popular being Frequently Asked Questions and user forum along with other resourceful articles. Envato blog, on the other hand, covers some general topics about Envato as a whole instead of Envato Elements.
Conclusion
Envato Elements is a viable option if you need access to free creative assets. It’s lacking in some aspects especially when it comes to creative assets on platforms like Drupal and Joomla even though they are rarely used.
However, Envato Elements offers a wide range of creative assets that most designers will appreciate. Plus, the platform is equally easy to use.