You probably already have a free LinkedIn account. Who doesn’t, right? At some stage, though, you’ll likely need to consider upgrading to a Premium account, especially if you plan to use it for outreach and lead generation.
So, in this post, I’ll explain LinkedIn Premium costs in detail, as well as some of its pros and cons. Ultimately, you’ll learn if LinkedIn Premium is worth it for you.
How Much Does LinkedIn Premium Cost?
When it comes to LinkedIn’s Premium offering, you have a few choices at different price levels:
- Linkedin Premium Career, priced at $39.99 per month.
- Linkedin Premium Business, priced at $47.99 per month.
- Linkedin Sales Navigator Core, priced at $79.99 per user per month.
- Linkedin Recruiter Lite, priced at $140 per month.
Each of these plans has a specific purpose. When it comes to lead generation, you’ll likely need either LinkedIn Premium Business or Sales Navigator.
Premium is ideal if you’d like to grow your network and includes unlimited people browsing and a few InMail credits.
However, if lead generation is your main focus, you can’t beat Sales Navigator. Here, you’ll get access to the Sales Navigator platform, which is specifically designed to streamline your lead generation efforts.
You’ll also get unlimited people browsing, 50 InMail credits, lead and account lists, lead recommendations, advanced lead search, and more.
Is LinkedIn Premium Worth It?
Now, is LinkedIn Premium really worth it? It really depends on which plan you're choosing and what you're looking for.
Let's review each plan.
Linkedin Premium Career
The offering of that plan is to help you find a job faster. Linkedin Premium Career costs $39,99 / month.
With Linkedin Premium Career, you get:
- 5 InMails per month
- See Who's Viewed Your Profile from the last 90 days
- Open Profile
- Job and applicant insights
- Top Applicant Job recommendations
- Company insights
- Resume insights
- 16,000+ LinkedIn Learning courses
- Full access to Interview Preparation tools
Pro: LinkedIn Learning
Although not directly related to lead generation, another significant benefit of LinkedIn Premium is that it gives you access to a massive library of courses presented by industry experts on LinkedIn Learning.
You'll find courses on anything from business to communication, technology, marketing, and more.
This allows you to expand your skill set, which, in turn, helps you gather more leads and make more sales. And, if you don't find a course you'd like to do, you probably will sometime in the future, as the library is constantly expanded with new courses almost every week.
My personal opinion is that Linkedin Premium Career is not really worth it.
You're unlikely to contact people via InMail to apply for a job (probably better to apply through the standard process or to send an email). You don't really care about who viewed your profile if they didn't contact you.
Linkedin Premium Business
Linkedin Premium Business is designed to help you grow and nurture your network.
LinkedIn Premium Business starts at $47.99 per month.
With Linkedin Premium Business, you get:
- 15 InMails per month
- See Who's Viewed Your Profile from the last 90 days
- Unlimited People Browsing
- Open Profile
- Job and applicant insights
- Top Applicant Job recommendations
- Company insights
- Resume insights
- 16,000+ LinkedIn Learning courses
- Full access to Interview Preparation tools
Pro: Extended Capabilities
One of LinkedIn Premium’s major benefits is that it gives you access to extended capabilities by removing many restrictions that a free account has.
For example, with a free account, you can only do several advanced searches and browse a limited number of people before these limitations kick in, which might limit the number of leads you can generate.
Luckily, with a Premium account, this won’t be a problem.
Pro: Open Profile
With a free account, only people connected to you on the LinkedIn platform, in other words, in your network, can send you a message.
When you have a Premium account, though, you’ll have the option to allow people outside your network to get in touch with you. This eliminates any friction for potential leads interested in your product or service.
Pro: Profile Views
When someone has looked at your profile, they’ll be more likely to answer messages you send them or accept your connection request. So, seeing who viewed your profile is precious. The problem is that, with a free account, you can only see your profile's most recent five viewers.
In contrast, with a Premium account, you can see all the people who have viewed your profile in the past 90 days.
In addition, you’ll also see the number of profile visitors you get every week. This helps you gauge how well your profile is optimized.
Pro: InMail
We’ve mentioned that only people in your network can message you if you have a free account. The same applies to you. So, you can only send messages to those people in your network.
To get past this limitation, you’ll need to use InMail.
Some benefits of InMail include a higher response rate than regular messages and more character space.
InMail is particularly useful when you want to get in touch with a prospect before sending them a connection request. Because you can include more information in your connection request note, it becomes easier to explain why you’re reaching out and why you should be connected.
Fortunately, with a Premium account, you’ll have access to a certain number of InMail credits, depending on the plan you’ve subscribed to.
Con: LinkedIn Premium Is Pricey
One of the major cons of using LinkedIn Premium is that it isn’t cheap. Sure, it does offer features that can help you grow your business and generate more revenue. Still, you’ll have to carefully consider its costs against where you are in your business’s lifecycle.
This is even more relevant if you’re a new business trying to limit and manage its expenses.
You’ll also have to consider the various limits, credit top-ups, and additional tools you’ll need to run effective outreach through LinkedIn.
My personal opinion is that Linkedin Premium Business is not really worth it, too.
Some things in this plan are nice to have, but you're paying a hefty price while missing on the big value which is Sales Navigator. So to me, you might as well pay +20% extra to get the next plan (Sales Navigator) and get 200% more value.
Linkedin Premium Sales Navigator Core
Linkedin Premium Sales Navigator is the real sales offering of Linkedin. It's the real deal, including all the perks from the other plans + access to the Sales Navigator database. Mandatory subscription if you're in sales in my eyes...
LinkedIn Sales Navigator Core costs $79.99 per user per month.
It has the same features as Linkedin Premium Business, but with more things. Specifically:
- 50 InMails per month
- See Who's Viewed Your Profile from the last 365 days
- + Access to Sales Navigator
Pro: You Get Access to Sales Navigator
Sales Navigator is one of the best B2B contact databases. After all, everyone has a LinkedIn profile. And since it’s used for job searches and expanding influence, you can bet they keep it updated!
Since the data is directly from the social network, it is as up-to-date as you can get compared to other tools.
But one problem is that you can’t bulk-export leads from Sales Navigator. This makes it hard to scale outreach without additional cold outreach tools and LinkedIn scrapers.
Fortunately, you can solve that problem with Findymail.
Findymail lets you export leads outside of Sales Navigator and enrich them with B2B emails so that you can reach out to them by email.
In my opinion, Linkedin Sales Navigator + Findymail is one of the best combo you can have right now for sales and lead generation. A must-have!
Linkedin Premium Recruiter Lite
Linkedin Premium Recruiter Lite is basically Linkedin Sales Navigator but for recruiters instead of sales.
LinkedIn Recruiter Lite costs $140 per user per month.
With Recruiter Lite you get:
- Recruiter Lite platform
- 30 InMails per month
- Access to your 2nd and 3rd degree networks
- 20+ advanced search filters
- Candidate search alerts
- Candidate recommendations daily
- Search with smart suggestions
- Personalized outreach with saved templates
- Post a free job
- Projects for organization and tracking
- InMail performance insights
- Jobs analytics
- Company insights
- 16,000+ LinkedIn Learning courses
- Full access to Interview Preparation tools
I'll be honest, I never worked in the recruitment niche so I don't really know if Recruiter Lite is very good or not. But we've had people requesting for Findymail to work with Linkedin Recruiter so I guess it is used.
Given how useful Sales Navigator is when you're in sales, I bet that Recruiter Lite is also a must have if you're doing recruiting on a day-to-day basis.
So, Is LinkedIn Premium Worth It?
Earlier, I said you’d need to weigh the pros and cons to decide if LinkedIn Premium is worth it.
If you’re a sales professional or a sales team manager, your team could definitely use Sales Navigator in their arsenal. However, it’s not the only tool you’ll need - not by a long shot.
What's good about all those Linkedin premium plans is that you have a one month trial to test things out first. Only after testing can you decide if you get more value than how much it's costing you.
At the end of the day, all that matters is selling more. Is LinkedIn Premium going to make it easier for you to find and get in touch with the right leads for your business?
If the answer is a resounding “YES,” it’s time to hit the upgrade button!
