Envato Elements Review (2024) – The Resource Archive for Website Owners & Creatives

If you work online, you have probably purchased something from Envato to help you with one of your projects.

Envato are one of the biggest online providers of digital assets. Operating out of Melbourne, Australia, the company has seven major asset directories.

• ThemeForest – Website themes and templates
• CodeCanyon – Scripts, plugins and code snippets
• VideoHive – Royalty free videos and templates
• AudioJungle – Royalty free music and audio
• GraphicRiver – Fonts, logos, icons, and graphical templates
• PhotoDune – Royalty free stock images
• 3DOcean – 3D print models and CG textures

Over the last few years Envato has expanded its operations and launched a freelancing marketplace, website builder, online tutorials and courses service, and more.

The service that has made the biggest impression is Envato Elements; which Envato have been marketing as the “Ultimate Creative Asset Subscription”.

If you purchase an Envato Elements membership, you will gain access to millions of digital assets. These assets can be downloaded and used an unlimited number of times.

In this article, I would like to take a closer look at the Envato Elements service and show you why many content creators and developers are signing up.

What is Envato Elements?

Envato’s main digital asset resource directories continue to sell products on an individual basis. These prices are set by the asset author, however Envato takes a fee for allowing the author to sell on their platform.

The cost of purchasing items on Envato websites will, therefore, vary greatly. For example, you might pay $60 for a WordPress theme on ThemeForest, $25 for a WordPress plugin on CodeCanyon, $35 for a logo on GraphicRiver and $5 for a photograph on PhotoDune.

As you can see, if you are regularly purchasing digital assets for your projects, your expenses can quickly rack up.

Instead of paying for each item individually, Envato Elements gives you access to a huge digital asset archive for just $16.50 per month.

The archive contains themes, plugins, graphics, fonts, music, stock photos, and more. There is no restriction on how many times Envato Elements members can download these items.

When you consider the savings that Envato Elements could give you, it is easy to understand why the service is growing in popularity.

What Does Envato Elements Offer?

Visitors can browse around the Envato Elements website freely and look at what is on offer, however I recommending signing in as Envato publish a host of free digital files on the home page and they regularly change which files are available.

You can sign in using your Envato account. If you have ever bought anything from an Envato marketplace such as ThemeForest, you should have an account.

If not, it only takes a few seconds to sign up for a new account.

When you start browsing Envato Elements, you start to get an appreciation for how big its archive is.

At the time of writing, over 1.6 million assets are available for download; however, the archive is growing quickly, with more than 22,000 new items added within the last week alone.

In addition to free files, the home page also shows the latest items added to the archive and a curated list of what they consider to be top-quality assets.

The Envato Elements membership will give you access to over 5,900 fonts, 22,000 vectors, 15,000 video templates, 110,000 audio files, 880,000 photos (and 50 million more through Twenty20), 1,800 actions and presets, 22,000 icons, 46,000 logos and 460,000 motion graphics.

Email templates, image backgrounds, and infographics, are available too and members also get access to tutorials and courses on TutsPlus.

Looking for Lightroom Presets? – Check out our “20 Best Photography Lightroom Presets To Supercharge Workflow” to help you take your photographs to the next level.

If you have a WordPress website, I recommend installing the Envato Elements WordPress plugin. This allows you to browse through the archive from within the WordPress admin area and insert media directly into your posts and pages.

80 template kits and over 1,400 page templates can also be viewed within the Envato Elements WordPress plugin . You can insert these into your website using Elementor or Beaver Builder. Both of these drag and drop page builders are free to download.

There really is something for everyone in the Envato Elements membership.

• If you’re a blogger, you will gain access to a huge library of stock images that you can insert into your content
• YouTubers will love the video templates, audio files and motion graphics that are available
• Website designs can utilise thousands of fonts, vectors, icons, logos and more

Of course, 1.6 million items means nothing if the quality of those items is poor.

Thankfully, that is not the case. Envato has obviously taken a strict approach as to which items are included in their Elements archive and which are not. I did not come across any items that were included to just boost their catalogue numbers for marketing purposes.

It is also important to note that many popular items available in Envato marketplaces are not free to download under an Elements subscription. In other words, a subscription to Envato Elements does not permit you to download any file from any Envato marketplace.

Let’s take a closer look at how you can find great items on Envato Elements.

Finding the Items You Need in Envato Elements

With such a large library of digital assets, you are going to have to narrow down your search if you want to find what you are looking for.

Thankfully, this is simple, since Envato allows you to search through categories and apply filters to ensure that search results are more relevant.

If you know exactly what you want, you may prefer to use the search bar that is displayed at the top of every page. You can restrict the search to one particular category to help show better results.

Clicking on the “Browse” button at the top of the page will take you to the “All Items” page.

A list of item categories is displayed at the top of this page. Underneath is a selection of items from each category. This is a great way to shop around the different items as you can see a preview from each category.

If you hover over the “Browse” button, a list of item categories and sub-categories will be shown.

This is a useful menu as you can access it from any page on Envato Elements.

One of the most effective ways of finding suitable digital items is to use filters.

When a category is selected, a list of filters will be displayed to the left-hand side of the page. This allows you to refine your search further by restricting displayed items to specific sub-categories and other relevant tags.

For example, you can restrict results to items that work with Adobe Photoshop.

Good search functionality is essential to any large digital library that contains millions of items.

If you use the right combination of keywords, the search bar at the top of each page might be all you use to find items; however, I found myself going into categories frequently and narrowing down my search using filters.

Be sure to check underneath the main description area for items too as related items are displayed underneath.

The Envato Elements Membership

You do not have to be signed in to browse Envato Elements. Visitors can freely browse the whole digital archive and view the same items as members. The only difference is that on item pages, there is an option to download instead of a banner encouraging you to sign up.

The item page gives you a full explanation as to what the item is and what it can do. It also shows the files that are included, the file types, the applications that can be used with the item, item dimensions, included colour variations and other relevant information.

When you’re just browsing around and doing research for a project, it pays to take a note of the items you like.

You can do this by bookmarking items and placing them into collections. You can then review these items later when you’re ready to get started on your project.

Any file you want has to be added to a project if you want to download it with a license. All you have to do is add the title of a new project or assign the file to an existing project. You can then download the file.

You can still download files without a license if you wish.

A preview is available for video files. This lets you see a video before deciding on whether you should download it.

Envato details information such as resolution, file size, frame rate, and looping, for each video.

What I like about the whole system is its simplicity. You do not have to jump through pages and pages to download the item you want. You just click on the item you want, assign it to a project, and click download.

All stock image and video files are high quality too. Most of the photographs I checked had a resolution of over 5,000 pixels in width. Likewise, most video files are available in 1080p or 4K resolutions.

How Much Does Envato Elements Cost?

An Envato Elements membership gives you access to over 1,600,000 digital assets on Envato Elements and over 50,000,000 stock photos on Twenty20. Courses and eBooks from TutsPlus are also provided with the membership.

All of this can be yours for just $16.50 per month plus tax (those of us in Europe pay €14.50 per month).

Students can save a further 30% by entering a student email address when signing up.

You will be pleased to hear that you are not forced to sign up to a long-term contract. The membership is charged monthly and you can cancel at any time you want.

Whilst you can download an unlimited number of digital products, a little common sense has to be used as this does not mean you fully own the asset. For example, you are not allowed to download an item and resell it or use print graphics on t-shirts for selling commercially.

Be sure to read the license terms of Envato Elements to understand exactly what is allowed.

Final Thoughts

I hope you have enjoyed this look at Envato Elements.

I believe that this is a service that many people will benefit from using. When you consider how many items are available to you, the monthly cost of using the service is incredibly low. Memberships can be cancelled at any time too so you do not have to worry about being tied into a long-term contract.

What is particularly pleasing is the quality of items that are included. If you delve deep in a lot of stock image websites, you will come across many low-quality images, videos and graphics. Envato could have included more items to boost their number of items, but instead, they have put quality controls in place to ensure each item is actually worth downloading and using.

Whilst I do appreciate what Envato Elements has to offer, the service obviously is not for everyone.

Firstly, like any online membership service, you need to use it regularly to make a subscription worthwhile. If you do not need to download images, videos, audios, and other digital files on a regular basis, then you would be better just purchasing the items individually as and when you need them.

Secondly, Envato Elements may not contain the items you are looking for. Many popular files on Envato marketplaces are not included in an Elements membership. This means that you either need to restrict yourself to the files that are available or you need to purchase the items you need separately.

My second point is important to understand before you sign up, however, you also need to remember that a monthly membership for Envato Elements is only $16.50 per month. You aren’t paying hundreds of dollars every month.

I believe that for some customers, Envato Elements will be an “All-in-One” solution that gives them everything they need; but for others, the Elements service will be a low-cost addition that complements other purchases.

I encourage you to visit Envato Elements and browse around to see what it offers. It will help you appreciate the quality of items that they have in their archive.

Did you enjoy this article? – If so, you may also want to see our list of best places to find free stock photos.