How to protect your Shutterstock account while you are alive
There is no way to name a beneficiary or successor on a Shutterstock account. While the account holder is alive, Shutterstock allows transferring the account.
Shutterstock's terms provide a path for a Shutterstock account after a death, and what the account holder sets up in advance decides how smoothly that path runs. There is no way to name a beneficiary or successor on a Shutterstock account. While the account holder is alive, Shutterstock allows transferring the account.
How to protect your Shutterstock accounts
Naming who acts after a death
- Designation
Shutterstock offers no beneficiary designation on the contributor account. Its help center points to a will, reviewed and approved by a lawyer, that names the beneficiary of the portfolio.1
What Shutterstock, Inc.'s terms say about sharing and transfers2
- Transferring the account or registration
A living contributor can transfer the account to another person. The transfer moves both access to the account and the copyright in the portfolio, and only the original contributor can start it.2
Shutterstock does not facilitate the sale of contributor accounts, and it reviews every ownership transfer request case by case.2
- Family plans and household sharing
No one may hold more than one active contributor account without Shutterstock's written consent, and a PayPal, Payoneer or Skrill account may not be shared with another contributor.3
Sources3
- 1.What happens to my account if I pass away?
- 2.How do I transfer my account to another person?
- 3.Contributor Terms of Service, Effective as of Tuesday, September 5, 2023
Should you save your passwords for your family?
Some people store account passwords so a family member can sign in later. The practice has three practical limits:
- Two-factor authentication often blocks it. Most accounts require a second factor — a code sent to a phone, an authenticator app, a passkey, or a physical key. A saved password alone frequently does not grant access, and the recovery codes that would are easy to lose or let go stale.
- It usually conflicts with the platform's terms. Most operators prohibit account sharing and signing in as another person, including after a death. Stored credentials are not the operator's recognized access path, and using them can violate the terms of service.
- Operators provide other paths. Where an operator offers a designation tool — Apple's Legacy Contact, Google's Inactive Account Manager, a beneficiary designation — that mechanism grants access the operator recognizes. A password manager's own emergency-access or legacy feature passes credentials through a controlled process. Digital assets named in a will or trust give a fiduciary authority under each state's Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA).
Sources
Data sourced from Shutterstock, Inc. primary sources (11 pages reviewed). How we research.
Shutterstock customer support
Shutterstock Contributor Support
Website
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