We read on the forum this spring about the sale of Envato Market, which was acquired by Shutterstock:
The last post on that news was from August, it is now December, does anyone know what happened and do we now work for Envato or Shutterstock?
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Envato is now owned by Shutterstock.
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The key statement as quoted by @baevox contains the answer. However, please note part of the statement which also reads:
Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained herein.
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Yes, I know that and I wrote it in the first post.
But we don’t know what happens next.
With that sale and with us, the authors!
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Envato now prioritizes promoting Elements over the Envato Market, leaving even minor bugs on the Marketplace unresolved. Visitors are often redirected by the “unlimited downloads” banner displayed in every corner. This also causes confusion, as buyers wrongly assume they can access all Envato Market items through Elements. Such misleading practices are driving away potential customers and damaging Envato’s reputation.
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Hi @Boris_Cupac!
As mentioned above, Envato was sold to Shutterstock in July of this year. Before the sale we were 100% privately owned by the Envato founders, with no changes in ownership since they started the company 18 years ago. The founders have now left the business, and Envato has been fully acquired by Shutterstock.
In practical terms, Envato still exists as a company, and we continue to operate our brands and products (Envato Elements, Envato Market and Placeit). We still have our own employees and our own leadership team, though the structure of many Envato teams has changed significantly over the last year. We operate our own strategy, which currently focuses on a heavy growth push in Envato Elements (via product enhancements and marketing), while maintaining both the Market and Placeit platforms.
Most of our resources are currently allocated to three Creative Stock areas on Elements, where there is significant growth potential: Audio is in the middle of a major overhaul, 3D has just launched, and there is a category update on the way for Video. These product changes are followed by new marketing campaigns for each of those content areas. We’re also running our first big brand-focused advertising campaign in the USA, which is currently being tested in Los Angeles and New York City.
There are many regulatory changes that we’re currently adapting to, but the majority of those will just affect our internal processes - you shouldn’t see too many changes affecting how Authors upload, manage and sell content on our sites.
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Dear Ben,
Thank you very much for your answer, I think the new news about the acquisition of the Envato brand, which we, the authors, built with the previous owner, will help everyone a lot in planning the future.
I hope that the campaign in the “center of the world” Los Angeles and New York will be successful and that it will attract a new number of customers, and therefore the number of product sales, which will mean both to the owners, and to us, the authors.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
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“The majority of those will just affect our internal processes though, so you shouldn’t see too many changes affecting how Authors upload, manage and sell content on our sites.”
So we don’t need to anticipate a reduction in revenue shares as a result of the ownership change, both for exclusive and non-exclusive status? Was there any agreement made regarding this that guarantees the maintenance of commission percentages?
Thanks, RadiantFX
Hallo Ben,
I have a question regarded to 10% Australian taxes. From your statement above I conclude that Envato is an American business now. Why do we still pay 10% Australian taxes? The Netherlands for example has a 0,0% tax treaty with America.
Thanks.
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Exactly my thought. I still pay 30% taxes, insteed of 0%, due to the tax agreement between my country (Greece) and USA.
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Hi @RadiantFX. I’ve seen a few similar questions to yours about Envato’s revenue share model, and whether we’re making any changes. At this stage, no - we don’t have any updates to our Author revenue share. If there are any changes in the future, we will communicate them and ensure you have the information needed to understand what it means for you.
Hi @videologio & @Korolkov. Sorry for the confusion caused by my comment above - I’ve updated my post to be more accurate, after checking with our Tax team for more information.
The acquisition means that Shutterstock has acquired the shares in Envato Pty Ltd, but Envato’s underlying arrangements were not impacted. Withholding Tax is still applied in the same way as it was before, and the information in our Tax FAQ article on the Author Help Centre still applies.
Hopefully that covers all the current questions in this thread. I will be out of the office for the next few days, but will be back on Dec 23 to check if any other questions have popped up in here.
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Hello Ben,
Thank you for response,
Greets, Korolkov
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