[14] Creating his own online marketplace,[5] Oringer initially uploaded 30,000 of his own stock photos and made them available via subscription,[5] with unlimited downloads and a monthly starting fee of US$49.

[5] Shutterstock expanded beyond subscriptions into à la carte pricing in August 2008, with its "On Demand" service removing daily download limits.

[17] Fast Company argued the deal put "Shutterstock on a competitive playing field with Getty, whose iStock Photo is also credit-based.

[19][21] The firm announced the Shutterstock Instant tool in May 2012, which displayed images in an interlocking mosaic to increase viewing speed.

[22][23] In May 2012, Shutterstock filed for an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, which it completed on October 17, 2012, under the ticker SSTK.

[24] At the time, Shutterstock was available in 20 languages including Thai, Korean, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese.

[25] In September 2013, Shutterstock launched Offset, marketplace prioritizing high end curated photos from established artists.

[35] Penske Media Corporation formed a partnership with Shutterstock in June 2015 to create and license entertainment and fashion images.

According to the terms of the deal, by 2016 Shutterstock would have an exclusive right and license to PMC's archive,[36] which included magazines such as Variety, Women's Wear Daily,[34] and Deadline.

"[37] In July 2016, Shutterstock revealed a partnership with Google advertising products including AdSense, AdWords, and AdMob.

[45] In May 2020, the company announced that it updated its contributor earnings structure as of June 1, from a minimum flat-rate to a percentage-based model.

[51][52] In July 2023, Shutterstock announced a six-year partnership with OpenAI in which it would provide access to its audio, video and image libraries as training data for DALL-E.

In turn, OpenAI would provide generative AI capabilities to Shutterstock's mobile users through Giphy database.

[27] After maintaining its New York headquarters for years in a Wall Street office,[5] in March 2014 Shutterstock relocated into the Empire State Building.

"[21] The Atlantic further wrote that Shutterstock is "a web community in the manner of a Facebook or a Twitter or a Pinterest, with its value relying almost entirely on the enthusiasms of its contributors.

"[21] With potential contributors able to apply to the site for free,[14] Shutterstock has a team of reviewers "charged with ensuring editorial consistency and quality.

Shutterstock Footage operates similarly to their image library, offering video clips by subscription or on a per-clip basis.

With development in-house by Shutterstock Labs, the tool "indexes hexagram data to yield search results by color.

"[23] In July 2014, Shutterstock launched Palette, which allows users to add colors to the terms of the search, in addition to keywords.

[31] Shutterstock has developed a number of tools utilizing a "convolutional neural network" that it created[37] to help with reverse image search technology.

[70] The network is "essentially a computer system that is trained to recognize images—there are millions of specific items such as cats, bicycles, the night sky—and pull up the most relevant photos."

It "breaks down the key components of a photo numerically, drawing from its pixel data instead of metadata that is pulled from those tags and keywords.

[42] The system is designed to return no results to users with IP addresses in China in response to six queries for forbidden keywords or phrases: "Xi Jinping", "Mao Zedong", "Taiwan flag", "dictator", "Chinese flag", "yellow umbrella", or variations.