A file you drop into Vecteezy's SFTP folder is not submitted yet. It has only arrived. Vecteezy moves content through four states, and the step most contributors underestimate sits between the first two, where titles, keywords and the Free or Pro choice get attached. Skip it and the files sit in the upload area indefinitely, counted as nothing.
The four states a Vecteezy file passes through
Vecteezy's own contributor documentation names four content states: Add Data, Pending Review, Approved and Not Approved. They are not labels on a progress bar. Each one is a different queue, with different things you are allowed to do to a file while it sits there.
Add Data is the holding area. A file that transferred successfully but carries no usable title, keywords or license selection lands here and stays. Pending Review means you have pressed Submit For Review and a member of the Vecteezy Content Team now has it. Approved means it passed and is queued for export. Not Approved splits in practice into two different outcomes: files that need a correction, and files that are declined for good.
The practical consequence is that there is no such thing as a Vecteezy upload that half-worked. Either the metadata is complete enough to submit, or the file is parked in a state where nobody is reviewing it and no clock is running.
From transfer to live listing on Vecteezy
Vecteezy's four content states in order: transfer, Add Data, Pending Review for about 7 to 10 days, then Approved and live within roughly 24 to 48 hours.
Getting files in: SFTP, the web uploader, or an aggregator
Vecteezy accepts three delivery routes, and the choice mostly comes down to volume. The web uploader takes photos, vectors and videos together in one dropzone, so you do not pick a content type first, and previews for vectors and videos are generated for you. For anything past a handful of files per session, SFTP is the route that holds up.
SFTP credentials live in the Content Manager, under the FTP uploading section, and are copied into a standard transfer client. Vecteezy's documentation names FileZilla, ForkLift, Cyberduck and Xpiks as clients contributors use, and tells you to set the port to 22 or pick SFTP as the protocol. No separate server address is published in the article itself; it comes with the credentials.
One change matters if you learned this workflow some years ago. Transfers used to require going back to the Content Manager and clicking a button to process whatever had arrived. Since August 2024 that step is gone: uploads begin processing on their own, and valid files appear on the Add Data page, or go straight into review if your Upload Settings say so.
Format expectations are narrow, and worth checking against your export preset before a large transfer. Vecteezy's FTP documentation lists EPS plus JPG for vectors, JPG for photos, and MOV, MP4 or R3D for video. The Auto Submit documentation lists a slightly wider set of eligible types, adding PNG and PSD. Where two pages differ, the safe reading is the narrower one for the route you are actually using, because a file in an unlisted format does not become a draft you can fix later. It simply never turns into a submittable resource.
Three ways to attach metadata, and they are not interchangeable
Metadata reaches a Vecteezy file by one of three routes. You can embed titles and keywords in the file before transfer, upload a CSV that maps metadata onto filenames, or let Vecteezy's own Magic Metadata fill the fields. Embedded metadata and CSV both let a file qualify for automatic submission. Choosing Magic Metadata sends the file to Add Data instead, on the assumption that you will look at what it produced before it goes to a reviewer.
The CSV format is strict in one respect and loose in several. Filename is the only required column, and it has to be the first one. Title, Description, Keywords and License are all optional. Keywords are comma-separated. License accepts pro, free or editorial, or can be left blank. Save the file as .csv, and if you downloaded the template from the Add Data page, leave the Filename and Id columns exactly as they are.
Filename matching is where CSVs fail quietly. The value has to match the file exactly, spaces are discouraged, and for files delivered over FTP the extension is omitted, so kitchen-knife-board-01 rather than kitchen-knife-board-01.jpg. Get that wrong and the row matches nothing: the upload reports success and the file still has no title. Motion Graphics are a separate case, and require the CSV downloaded from Add Data rather than one you built yourself.
Auto Submit, and the two cases where it costs you
Auto Submit is an Upload Setting rather than a button. You switch it on per content type in the Upload Settings panel on the upload page, and from then on eligible files bypass Add Data and go directly into Pending Review. The same panel is where the AI-generated declaration, the default license and the Magic Metadata option live.
Eligibility is specific. Vecteezy's documentation lists vectors, photos, videos, PNGs and PSDs as eligible file types, Pro, Free and Editorial as eligible licenses, and web, SFTP and the stock aggregator as eligible upload methods. The file also needs a title and keywords that meet Vecteezy's minimum standards, supplied by embedding or by CSV. A file that arrives without them, or with Magic Metadata selected, goes to Add Data instead and waits for you.
Two situations make Auto Submit the wrong choice. The first is any file that needs a model or property release: Vecteezy says plainly not to auto-submit those, because the release has to be attached before a reviewer sees the file. The second is any batch you are not fully confident about, because once a file auto-submits you generally cannot change its title, keywords, release or license unless the reviewer asks for corrections. The only way back is to delete it from the Pending Review page and upload it again with Auto Submit off.
There is also an account-level consequence that most third-party guides leave out. Vecteezy states that submitting large volumes of non-compliant files can get Auto Submit disabled for your account, or the contributor account terminated. Automatic submission is a convenience extended on the assumption that you have already read the content guidelines, not a way to outsource reading them.
Vecteezy pre-submit check
A pre-submit check built from Vecteezy's own upload documentation: metadata and license on every file, the SFTP and CSV format rules, and the cases where Auto Submit should stay off.
Batch editing, 100 resources at a time
The Add Data tools let you multi-select and apply titles, keywords and releases across up to 100 resources at once. That is the one hard numeric limit Vecteezy publishes for this part of the workflow, and it is generous enough that most contributors never hit it in a single sitting.
For product or series work the cap still shapes how you organise a session. A 400-file shoot becomes four selections, and the useful discipline is to make each selection a group that genuinely shares keywords rather than four arbitrary slices of a hundred. A shared keyword set applied across files that do not share a subject is how near-duplicate metadata gets created, which is a different and harder problem to undo. What the keyword field itself expects per file is covered in Vecteezy's keywording rules.
What review actually involves
Review is manual. A member of the Vecteezy Content Team opens each resource and checks it against the content requirements, and files are worked in the order they were received, with no priority lane to buy into. Vecteezy's own figure for how long this takes is about 7 to 10 days on average, stated alongside the caveat that submission volume moves it. Treat it as a planning number, not a promise.
The outcome arrives as a status change in the contributor dashboard, and Not Approved is the status worth reading carefully, because it covers two different things. One is a file that needs an edit and can still reach approval once that edit lands. The other is a file declined outright. The dashboard separates them, action needed on one side and declined on the other, and the first category is where re-submittable work hides. The common decline reasons and what each one means are worth knowing before you commit a large batch to the queue.
Approved files are queued for export and go live in roughly 24 to 48 hours after that, which is when download counts and earnings start appearing against them. So the honest end-to-end expectation for a file submitted today is somewhere around a week and a half before it can earn anything, assuming it passes first time.
Free, Pro, and who actually decides
Every new file carries a Free or Pro choice made at upload. You pick, but Vecteezy makes the final call on which files are accepted into Pro, so the selection is a request rather than a setting. Reading the Free and Pro guidelines before submitting to Pro is worth the fifteen minutes, because a Pro request on content that reads as Free is a slower path to the same outcome. How the two tiers differ on the earnings side is covered in the Vecteezy contributor program guide.
Where the workflow quietly breaks
Four failure modes account for most of the files that never make it live, and none of them produce an error at the moment they happen. That is what makes them expensive.
Files stranded in Add Data are the first and by far the most common. They transferred, so your client reported success, but no title or keywords ever attached and nothing is reviewing them. This is the usual shape of the complaint that two hundred files were uploaded and nothing happened.
CSV rows that match nothing are the second. An extension left on a filename, a file renamed after the sheet was written, a space where there was none. The CSV upload itself succeeds, so the only signal is that the metadata is still empty when you look at the grid.
Releases missed by Auto Submit are the third, and the costliest in time. A recognisable person or a private property in frame, auto-submitted without the release attached, comes back needing correction after a full review cycle has already elapsed.
Format mismatches at the transfer stage are the fourth: a ProRes file where MOV, MP4 or R3D was expected, a vector delivered without its JPG companion. Checking Vecteezy's metadata and file requirements against your export preset once, properly, removes this entire class of problem for good.
Running Vecteezy as one lane of several
Vecteezy is rarely the only destination for a file, and nothing above generalises. The CSV column names are Vecteezy's. The ceiling of 49 keywords and the weighting Adobe Stock puts on the first ten positions are Adobe's rules, not Vecteezy's. Shutterstock's band of 7 to 50 keywords and its 200-character title limit are its own again. Metadata that satisfies one agency's validator can be refused by the next, which is why one exported CSV pushed everywhere tends to produce a different rejection at each destination rather than a clean run.
That mapping problem is what Rastock AI is built around: generate metadata once, then shape it per agency, with banned and mandatory keyword handling, per-platform title and keyword limits, delivery over FTP or SFTP to 10+ agencies, and a status view that shows which files landed where. There is no revenue share and no ownership claim on your files, and IPTC and CSV export stay yours to take elsewhere. Pricing is a flat subscription, and the trial runs 14 days with no card required.
Frequently asked questions
How long does Vecteezy review take?
Vecteezy's contributor documentation gives about 7 to 10 days on average, with files reviewed manually in the order they were received. The figure moves with submission volume, so a busy period runs longer. Once a file is approved it is exported and typically goes live within another 24 to 48 hours, which is when downloads and earnings start registering against it.
Can I upload to Vecteezy by FTP?
Yes, over SFTP. Credentials are copied from the Content Manager into a transfer client such as FileZilla, ForkLift, Cyberduck or Xpiks, with the port set to 22 or SFTP selected as the protocol. Since August 2024 transferred files are processed automatically, so the old step of returning to the Content Manager to click a process button is gone.
Why are my transferred files not in review?
They are almost certainly sitting in Add Data. Transferring a file is not submitting it: Vecteezy needs a title, keywords and a Free or Pro selection, plus a release where one applies, before the Submit For Review button does anything. Files without usable metadata wait there until you supply it or switch on Auto Submit for that content type.
What does a Vecteezy metadata CSV need?
Filename in the first column, on every row, matching the file exactly. For FTP-delivered files the extension is omitted. Title, Description, Keywords and License are optional; keywords are comma-separated and License takes pro, free, editorial or blank. Save it as .csv. If the template came from the Add Data page, leave the Filename and Id columns untouched.
Should I turn on Auto Submit?
It helps when your metadata is already embedded or delivered by CSV and you are confident in the batch. Avoid it for anything needing a model or property release, since the release has to be attached before review. Note also that once a file auto-submits you generally cannot edit its title, keywords, license or release unless a reviewer requests corrections.
How many files can I edit at once on Vecteezy?
Up to 100 resources in a single multi-select, which is the limit Vecteezy publishes for batch editing titles, keywords and releases. Larger shoots are handled as several selections. Group them by shared subject rather than by arbitrary count, so one keyword set is not applied across files that do not actually share the same content.