LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 722 million members in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. As of January 2021, LinkedIn has over 49 million corporate solutions customers. With LinkedIn, professionals can build their professional identity, connect with colleagues and business partners, access knowledge and insights, and explore job and business opportunities.
Many professionals use LinkedIn to manage their professional identity, build their network, connect with peers and experts in their industry, stay in touch with business contacts, share content and insights, explore new job opportunities, and more. LinkedIn offers both free and paid memberships with varying features and benefits.
LinkedIn Free Account
The basic LinkedIn account is free. With a free LinkedIn account, you can:
- Create a professional profile with photo, summary, work experience, education, skills, accomplishments, recommendations, etc.
- Connect with other professionals in your network
- Join groups relevant to your industry or interests
- Follow companies to receive their updates
- Like, comment on, and share posts from your connections and companies you follow
- Send and receive messages
- Post articles, photos, links, and status updates
- Conduct basic searches of other members and companies
- View profiles of up to 3rd degree connections
- See who viewed your profile
So with a free LinkedIn account, you can create a robust professional profile, build your network, share content and updates, communicate with connections, search for jobs and people, and engage with professional groups – all at no cost. The free account provides a great deal of value for professional networking and career development.
LinkedIn Premium Career Account
LinkedIn does offer paid subscriptions that provide additional features and benefits beyond the free account. The main paid offering is LinkedIn Premium, which is available in several tiers:
LinkedIn Premium Career
LinkedIn Premium Career costs $29.99 per month when paid monthly, or $239.88 per year when paid annually (equating to $19.99 per month). Key features include:
- See who viewed your profile and search for profiles anonymously
- Get insights on how you rank for profile views compared to peers
- Access to LinkedIn Learning premium courses
- Professional identity building tools
- Unlimited expert profile assessments
- Salary comparison and insights
- Interview preparation tools
- Career and skill-based mentoring matches
- Job seeking tools and insights
LinkedIn Premium Career is designed for professionals focused on advancing their careers, gaining new skills, and exploring new job opportunities. The premium features provide additional insights, resources, and tools to build your brand, get noticed by recruiters, prepare for interviews, benchmark salaries, and more.
LinkedIn Premium Business
LinkedIn Premium Business costs $49.99 per month when paid monthly, or $399.88 per year when paid annually (equating to $33.33 per month). It includes all the Premium Career features, plus:
- Unlimited profile searches
- Advanced profile filters
- See who opened your InMail messages
- Trending content feeds
- Compare company pages
- Expanded company searches
- Premium message response rate
LinkedIn Premium Business adds tools for researching people, companies, and roles, recruiting candidates, promoting content, and connecting with professionals outside your network. It is tailored for business owners, executives, recruiters, salespeople, marketers, and other professionals who want to use LinkedIn more strategically for business objectives.
LinkedIn Premium Sales
LinkedIn Premium Sales costs $79.99 per month when paid monthly, or $639.88 per year when paid annually (equating to $53.33 per month). It has all the features of Premium Business, plus:
- Lead recommendations
- Advanced search filters
- Email alerts on saved leads and searches
- Contact management and organization tools
- TeamLink collaboration integration
- Insights on conversations with saved leads
LinkedIn Premium Sales provides sales professionals with tools to identify, manage, and build relationships with target accounts and contacts. It enhances the ability to source leads, manage deal pipelines, conduct sales outreach, synchronize team selling efforts, and gain data-driven insights.
Other LinkedIn Paid Offerings
In addition to Premium subscriptions, LinkedIn offers other paid products and services including:
- LinkedIn Learning: Online courses for professional development. Available as standalone subscription or included in Premium.
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator: Enhanced sales tools and insights. Pricing starts at $79.99/month.
- Recruiter Lite, Recruiter, and Recruiter Corporate: Talent and hiring solutions for recruiters. Pricing varies based on features.
- Businesses Solutions: Packages for companies to manage LinkedIn presence, advertise, hire, engage employees, conduct market research, and more. Custom pricing.
- LinkedIn Marketing Solutions: Tools for companies to build brand, generate leads, and run targeted advertising campaigns. Custom pricing.
These specialized solutions provide robust capabilities and analytics for sales, recruiting, marketing, learning and development, and overall business objectives. They are priced on an individual or company-wide basis depending on needs.
Free vs. Premium LinkedIn: Key Differences
Here is a summary of some of the key differences between the free and paid Premium LinkedIn accounts:
| Features | Free Account | Premium Career | Premium Business | Premium Sales |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profile views insights | Limited | Full insights | Full insights | Full insights |
| Search profiles anonymously | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Send InMail to non-connections | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Expanded company research | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Compare companies | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Lead recommendations | No | No | No | Yes |
| TeamLink collaboration | No | No | No | Yes |
| Learning courses | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
As shown, Premium unlocks more robust tools, insights, and capabilities for professional branding, recruiting, sales prospecting, company research, team collaboration, online learning, and more. The specific features scale up as you move from Career to Business to Sales subscriptions.
Conclusion
The basic LinkedIn account is free and provides substantial value for networking, profile building, content sharing, job seeking, and more. LinkedIn Premium options unlock additional insights and tools tailored to career development, business networking, sales, and recruiting.
Premium is priced on a monthly or discounted annual subscription basis, with increasing capabilities from Career ($19.99-$29.99 per month) to Business ($33.33-$49.99 per month) to Sales ($53.33-$79.99 per month) levels.
Other specialized solutions are available for more robust analytics, platform management, advertising, and business objectives. So in summary, LinkedIn offers both free and paid accounts with expanding features, providing professionals and organizations great flexibility to use the platform in ways aligned to their needs and budget.
