LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 750 million members worldwide. LinkedIn offers two paid subscription options for individual users – LinkedIn Premium and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Both provide additional features and benefits beyond the free LinkedIn account, but they serve different purposes.
LinkedIn Premium is focused on expanding your reach, brand, and opportunities on LinkedIn. It allows you to view more profiles, contact people outside your network, see who’s viewed your profile, take online courses, and access additional insights about your profile and content.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is specifically designed for sales professionals. It focuses on finding and connecting with relevant prospects, building relationships, and ultimately driving more sales. Sales Navigator provides advanced search filters and alerts to identify prospects, detailed contact info, conversation starters, lead recommendations, and other sales intelligence.
The prices for Premium and Sales Navigator can vary based on the subscription level. But generally speaking, LinkedIn Premium costs less than Sales Navigator. The lite version of Premium starts at $29.99 per month, while the basic Sales Navigator plan starts at $64.99 per month.
Here’s an in-depth look at the pricing, features, and differences between LinkedIn Premium and Sales Navigator plans to help you decide which (if either) is right for you.
LinkedIn Premium Plans and Pricing
LinkedIn Premium is designed for networking, branding, and broad reach. There are four paid Premium plan levels available with increasing features and prices:
– Premium Career – $29.99/month
– Premium Business – $59.99/month
– Premium Career & Business – $79.99/month
– Premium Hiring – $99.99/month
The Career plan has the basic Premium features for individual users to boost their brand and access opportunities. The Business plan adds more profile views and advanced search to find relevant contacts. The Career & Business bundle combines features from both plans. Finally, the Hiring plan adds recruiter-focused tools to post jobs and search profiles.
Key features of LinkedIn Premium include:
– Profile badge signaling you’re open to opportunities
– View profiles of anyone, even outside your network
– See full list of people who viewed your profile
– Remove LinkedIn ads
– Take unlimited free online courses
– Advanced profile and company search filters
– Monthly summary of profile visitors and connection requests
– Compare your profile to other applicants
– Additional InMail messages to contact people outside your network
– Save up to 400 Profile Search results
– Access salary insights
The more expensive Premium options provide more profile views, InMails, advanced searches, and saved Profile Search results.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator Plans and Pricing
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is designed for sales professionals to identify, connect with, and build relationships with relevant prospects. There are four paid Sales Navigator plan levels:
– Sales Navigator Team – $64.99/month per user
– Sales Navigator Professional – $79.99/month per user
– Sales Navigator Enterprise – Custom pricing
– Sales Navigator Elite – Custom pricing
The Team plan has core sales features like lead and account search, TeamLink collaboration, and conversation starters. The Professional plan adds more advanced search filters, lead recommendations, conversation insights, and saved lead lists.
The Enterprise and Elite plans require contacting LinkedIn sales to request custom pricing quote based on the size of your sales team and needs. These corporate plans include administrative tools, coaching best practices, custom analytics reporting, and more.
Key features of LinkedIn Sales Navigator include:
– See profiles of anyone, even outside your network
– Advanced lead and account search filters
– Get alerted when relevant prospects update profiles
– View contact info like direct phone and email
– TeamLink to collaborate on accounts
– Conversation starters for initial outreach
– Lead recommendations based on saved searches
– Newsfeed with content posted by saved leads and accounts
– Conversation insights with talking points
– Save lead lists and export for CRM
– Custom analytics and reporting (Enterprise/Elite plans)
The more expensive Sales Navigator options provide more advanced search filters, more saved leads, admin tools, and custom analytics.
LinkedIn Premium vs Sales Navigator Comparison
Here is a side-by-side comparison of the key features in LinkedIn Premium vs Sales Navigator:
| Feature | LinkedIn Premium | LinkedIn Sales Navigator |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Networking, branding, opportunities | Sales prospecting, pipeline |
| View profiles outside your network | Yes | Yes |
| See who viewed your profile | Yes | No |
| Advanced search filters | For profiles and content | For leads and accounts |
| Lead recommendations | No | Yes |
| Conversation starters | No | Yes |
| Direct contact info | No | Yes |
| Save search results | Up to 400 | Unlimited leads |
| Collaboration tools | No | TeamLink |
| CRM integration | No | Yes |
| Coaching content | No | Yes |
| Custom analytics | No | Enterprise/Elite plans |
As you can see from the table, while there is some overlap in being able to view more profiles, Premium and Sales Navigator are largely focused on different use cases – networking vs sales prospecting.
Premium provides more general networking features like seeing profile views, taking courses, and branding tools. Sales Navigator is specifically designed for sales teams to search for accounts, get contact info, automate outreach, and report on pipeline.
Who Should Get LinkedIn Premium vs Sales Navigator?
Based on the key differences in features and purpose between Premium and Sales Navigator, here are some recommendations on which LinkedIn paid plan makes the most sense for different users:
– Job seekers looking to connect with recruiters and hiring managers should consider LinkedIn Premium. The Open Candidates badge and ability to message recruiters outside your network makes Premium ideal for active job seekers.
– Individuals focused on branding, thought leadership, and expanding reach should choose LinkedIn Premium. Premium provides profile badges, expanded network potential, and the ability to see exactly who is engaging with your content and profile.
– Networking-focused professionals that want to connect with peers and industry leaders should get Premium. Premium allows connecting with many more relevant profiles outside your existing network.
– Sales professionals, account executives, business development reps, and sales leaders should choose Sales Navigator. The lead searching, contact info, relationship building tools, and analytics in Sales Navigator optimize it for sales prospecting.
– Sales teams and sales operations leaders should invest in Sales Navigator team plans. The TeamLink collaboration, conversation data, CRM integration, and custom reporting provide enterprise-level sales intelligence.
– Recruiters and talent acquisition professionals should consider the Premium Hiring plan. The recruiter-specific profile searching and ability to post jobs makes Premium Hiring ideal for corporate recruiting.
– Executives and leaders focused on thought leadership content should choose Premium. Premium provides visibility into exactly who is engaging with your posts and profile, allowing leaders to track influence.
In general, Premium is better suited for broad professional networking and brand building, while Sales Navigator is ideal for sales prospecting, pipeline generation, and sales analytics.
What’s Included in Free LinkedIn?
Before deciding if Premium or Sales Navigator is worth the investment, it’s important to understand what you already get with the free version of LinkedIn:
– Create a detailed professional profile
– Connect with colleagues, classmates, partners, and other contacts
– Join industry and interest-based groups
– Follow companies to get news and job postings
– Search profiles outside your network
– Post articles, photos, links, text updates, and more
– Comment on and like posts from your connections
– Send InMail messages to your 1st degree connections
– Receive notifications when you get new profile views and messages
– Build your professional brand with content sharing and engagement
– Message connections in your network for free
– Export limited profile data
So the core professional networking functionality is available for free on LinkedIn. You can build connections, share updates, message your contacts, and develop your personal brand without a paid plan.
The limitations of the free version are:
– No messaging recruiters or those outside your network
– Limited profile views each month
– No seeing full list of who viewed your profile
– Restricted search filters for profiles and content
– No advanced lead searching and sales tools
– Limited data exports and analytics
Both Premium and Sales Navigator lift many of those restrictions, albeit in different ways based on your use case.
Are LinkedIn Premium or Sales Navigator Worth It?
Whether Premium or Sales Navigator are worth the investment really depends on your profession and goals with using LinkedIn.
For most individual professionals, the free LinkedIn plan is often sufficient for networking opportunities within your existing connections. Premium becomes worthwhile if actively job searching, looking to significantly expand your reach, or want to deeply understand your profile and content analytics.
Premium is likely worth it for:
– Job seekers wanting exposure to recruiters
– Thought leaders and personal brands wanting more influence
– Networkers who max out their free profile views each month
– Individuals wanting to know exactly who engages with their profile and content
For sales professionals, Sales Navigator delivers huge value by supercharging lead generation, automating outreach, and providing robust analytics on your pipeline. The time savings in finding and connecting with accounts, plus intelligence for personalized outreach, make Sales Navigator a wise investment for most sales roles.
Sales Navigator is likely worth it for:
– Account execs, business development reps, sales reps
– Sales leaders and operations teams
– Recruiters doing outbound recruiting
– Sales-focused entrepreneurs and startups
If affordable, it may be worth testing Premium or Sales Navigator for a month to experience the additional features firsthand. But for many professionals, the free LinkedIn plan will provide sufficient networking capabilities and career development opportunities without the paid upgrades.
Conclusion
LinkedIn Premium and Sales Navigator provide extra capabilities beyond the free version of LinkedIn in terms of expanding your reach, brand visibility, prospecting, and analytics – but for different purposes.
Premium is ideal for networking, branding, thought leadership, and job seeking. Sales Navigator is tailored specifically for sales professionals to search, connect, and build relationships with accounts.
Premium starts at $29.99/month, while Sales Navigator pricing begins at $64.99/month per user. The paid plans lift restrictions on profile views, messages, and search filters compared to free LinkedIn.
Evaluate your own professional goals and which LinkedIn limitations you want to address before deciding if Premium, Sales Navigator, or sticking with the free plan makes the most sense. But the additional capabilities of the paid plans are valuable for many active LinkedIn users.