LinkedIn is a popular professional networking platform used by over 800 million members worldwide. While the basic LinkedIn service is free, there are also premium subscription options that provide additional features for a monthly or annual fee. However, the pricing structure and optional extras can sometimes cause confusion around exactly what LinkedIn is charging for. This article will examine the key paid elements of LinkedIn in detail.
LinkedIn Premium Subscriptions
LinkedIn offers several tiers of premium subscriptions for individual members which unlock additional features and benefits beyond the free account. The core premium options are:
- LinkedIn Premium Career – $29.99 per month
- LinkedIn Premium Business – $49.99 per month
- LinkedIn Premium Sales – $79.99 per month
Each tier builds on the level below to provide more advanced tools tailored to job seekers, business networking, and sales professions respectively. Key features unlocked across the board include:
- See who’s viewed your profile
- Read unlimited articles on LinkedIn
- See full profiles of your connections
- Advanced profile analytics
- InMail messages to contact anyone on LinkedIn
- Premium badge to stand out
So in short, the core subscriptions focus on allowing more visibility of other users, more insights into your own profile, and additional ways to reach out to new connections.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
In addition to the premium tiers above, LinkedIn offers a more specialized Sales Navigator product. This is priced at between $64.99 and $99.99 per month depending on features.
Sales Navigator provides sales professionals with an advanced suite of tools to identify, track, and engage with promising leads and accounts. Key features include:
- Advanced search filters and alerts to identify prospects
- CRM-style tracking of target companies and contacts
- Insights into companies and leads
- Notifications when prospects view your profile
- Team tools for sales collaboration
- Sales analytics and reporting
So Sales Navigator aims to help salespeople maximize the potential of LinkedIn as a lead generation and sales intelligence platform through premium tools and data.
LinkedIn Recruiter
Recruiter is LinkedIn’s dedicated subscription package for recruiting professionals and HR teams. Pricing is structured according to the number of users and level of access. Some example packages include:
- Professional – $899.95 per month for 1 user
- Business Plus – $4,999.95 per month for up to 25 users
- Enterprise – Custom pricing for larger teams and access
Key features for recruiters include:
- Advanced search and alerts for finding candidates
- Tools to manage jobs, prospects and pipeline
- Integrated InMail and communications
- Analytics on hiring performance
- Premium profile visibility as a recruiter
- Ability to create company pages
So in summary, Recruiter subscriptions focus on making LinkedIn a complete sourcing, relationship management, and analytics platform for recruiting functions.
Other LinkedIn Premium Options
In addition to the core premium categories above, LinkedIn also offers some more specialized premium solutions:
- Learning subscriptions – Get unlimited access to LinkedIn Learning professional video courses for between $19.99 and $29.99 per month depending on plan.
- Recruiter Lite – Pared down recruiter account for small businesses priced at $199.95 per month.
- Premium Career in Chinese – Chinese language version of Premium Career for 79 RMB per month.
- Talent Insights – Advanced talent analytics platform for recruiters and HR priced by data volume.
- Lead Gen Forms – Tools for generating leads from the LinkedIn audience via customized forms.
So in some cases, LinkedIn also charges for more tailored solutions based on specific professional needs around online learning, market analytics, lead generation and Chinese language access.
What the Free LinkedIn Includes
It’s also useful to summarize what features you still get for free with the standard LinkedIn account:
- Profile, experience and education information
- 100 profile skill endorsements
- Up to 500 connections
- Joining groups and following companies
- Seeing 3rd degree connections
- Searching profiles and jobs
- Posting and applying for jobs
- Share updates, articles, and links
- Basic profile analytics
So the core professional networking platform and opportunity to build an online resume and presence is still free. Premium subscriptions focus more on visibility, outreach, data insights and tools tailored to specific use cases.
LinkedIn Advertising Costs
In addition to premium subscriptions, LinkedIn also generates revenue through advertising. Advertisers can pay to promote content and amplify their reach to LinkedIn members.
Some key LinkedIn advertising options include:
- Sponsored Content – Pay to promote organic posts.
- Sponsored InMail – Send a targeted InMail ad to members.
- Text Ads – Pay per click text ads.
- Dynamic Ads – Highly targeted ads based on member data.
- Conversation Ads – Promoted messages in the LinkedIn messaging inbox.
Pricing models include cost per click (CPC), cost per impression (CPM), and cost per InMail. Minimum monthly budgets for advertising start at around $50 but most advertisers spend much more, typically from hundreds to thousands of dollars per month.
So in summary, while premium subscriptions unlock features, advertising on LinkedIn focuses more on promoting content, messaging and brand visibility to the LinkedIn audience. The costs and formats are similar to other major digital advertising platforms.
Payment Options
LinkedIn provides a few different options to pay for their various premium services:
- Monthly subscription – Automatic recurring monthly payment, can cancel at any time.
- Annual subscription – Single annual payment gets a discount of around 17% compared to monthly price.
- Multi-year subscription – Pay upfront for a 2 or 3 year premium subscription for biggest discount.
- Credit card – Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover cards accepted.
- PayPal – Pay via your PayPal account.
- Invoice – Request invoice to pay by bank transfer, mainly for corporate packages.
Subscriptions auto-renew by default but you can opt to cancel renewal at any time from account settings. For advertisers, LinkedIn advertising credits are prepaid and top up automatically once your balance drops below a threshold.
Is LinkedIn Worth the Money?
Whether paying for LinkedIn premium services is worth it depends on your specific needs and how you use the platform:
- For most individuals, the free account provides plenty of value in networking and finding opportunities.
- Premium can be worth it for salespeople wanting advanced relationship management capabilities.
- Recruiters and talent teams can achieve ROI from Recruiter with the time saved sourcing and engaging talent.
- Premium is less useful for junior professionals with smaller networks and fewer connections.
- Premium mainly offers more convenience and time savings vs core new capabilities.
- For businesses, premium accounts for employees can aid sales, recruiting and branding efforts.
- Advertising is worth it if you have a defined audience and goals to reach via LinkedIn.
As with most premium services, the value depends entirely on the extent to which you’re able to utilize the additional features based on your professional context.
How to Reduce LinkedIn Costs
If you want to trim your LinkedIn costs, some strategies include:
- Make use of the free account features if you can.
- Get an annual subscription vs monthly to save 17%.
- Buy the premium plan with only the features you need.
- Set a conservative daily advertising budget and start small.
- Only advertise when you have an active campaign or clear goal.
- Review analytics and optimize ads to increase ROI.
- Cancel subscription during inactive periods or when not recruiting.
- Use free alternative tools for prospects research and outreach.
- Negotiate discounted enterprise packages if buying multiple premium seats.
With LinkedIn now incorporating more premium features, it does take some deliberate effort to keep costs down if you want to avoid paying for an upgraded experience. But with the above tactics, you can absolutely use LinkedIn’s core networking platform and opportunities for free or on a budget.
Conclusion
LinkedIn offers a range of premium subscription packages and add-ons that provide additional functionality and insights beyond the core free platform. This includes more profile views, advanced networking tools, job and talent management capabilities, and advertising options. However, the free account still offers substantial value, so premium services are mainly beneficial for salespeople, recruiters, and other power users. Individuals can often get excellent utility from the free features, while businesses with recruitment and sales objectives may find the premium and advertising products generate clear ROI. With the right promotional strategies and subscriber targeting, LinkedIn’s paid tiers and ad products offer important visibility and relationship management capabilities, but require deliberate effort to maximize value.