LinkedIn Premium - Is it worth the subscription?

LinkedIn Premium Account Benefits – Why it’s Not Worth it


Abhinav Girdhar
By Abhinav Girdhar | Last Updated on February 2nd, 2024 10:06 am | 5-min read

When so many hiring professionals and recruiters are using LinkedIn to locate potential candidates, everyone wants to make their LinkedIn profile look fully optimized. You must be deliberating on upgrading to the premium version of LinkedIn. In our blog we will talk about the features LinkedIn Premium offers and how they are useful for different users. Depending on what you are looking at LinkedIn Premium could exactly be what you want. After reading the blog you will know what is in store for you with Premium membership and it will help you take the right decision.

What is LinkedIn Premium?

LinkedIn is a US business and an employment-focused service that functions through websites and mobile apps. It was founded on December 28, 2002, and introduced to users on May 5, 2003. LinkedIn is used by professionals for networking, employers posting jobs and job seekers posting their CVs.LinkedIn Premium - Is it worth the subscriptionLinkedIn offers Premium account options for job seekers, sales and talent professionals, Businessmen and general professionals who want to get more out of LinkedIn. If you have a Basic LinkedIn account, you must be wondering whether upgrading to LinkedIn Premium with extra features will be worth or not. If all the extra features you get are helping you in your goals then using LinkedIn Premium will be value for money, but before upgrading you should ask yourself a few things:
  • Do you want to message people you are not connected to?
  • Do you want to see all the people who have viewed your profile?
  • Do you want to perform more specific searches and get specific search results?
  • Will you be able to use more detailed information about people or companies?
  • Do you plan to use LinkedIn as your main tool for job hunting, networking or recruiting?
If the answer to all the above listed questions is yes, then updating to LinkedIn Premium is the right decision.  LinkedIn Premium acts as a sort of exclusive club for job seekers and recruiters. Premium feature helps you make connections and find a job and that’s what makes LinkedIn Premium worth it. It offers four different premium plans, each of which is tailored to a specific profession. The type of plan you choose depends on your professional goals and how you plan to use LinkedIn. The four premium plans are:
  1. Premium Career - For job seekers

  2. LinkedIn Premium for Job Seekers starts at about USD 30 per month. These plans include the ability to zero in on USD 100K plus jobs with detailed salary information, ability to move up to the top of the list as a featured applicant and access to job seeker community. If you are serious about your job search, LinkedIn's Career plan can help you improve your ability to make connections with the right recruiters—just by looking at who has viewed your profile and how many searches your profile is showing up in. InMail messages (not available with a Basic account) also gives you the opportunity to reach out to people you are not connected to, which could potentially lead to a job interview.  If you are searching for a job, Premium Career’s InMail credits, give you an insight into who looked at your profile, and this additional information is very useful for job seekers.
  3. Premium Business - For growing your network

  4. LinkedIn Premium for General Business Users starts at about USD 60 per month. This plan includes special features like InMail, seeing more number of profiles when you search, ability to view expanded profiles on LinkedIn, access to premium search filters, and more. LinkedIn's Business plan is appropriate if you need to run searches for people or want to message them often. If you are looking to grow your network, the Business plan help you by not letting you waste less time connecting to the wrong people. With unlimited people searches and 10 InMail credits, you can contact more people.LinkedIn Premium Features
  5. Sales Navigator - For prospecting and sales

  6. LinkedIn Premium for Sales Professionals starts at about USD 80 per month. This plan includes a Lead Builder organizer. It also includes introductions to companies you are targeting. The Sales Navigator Professional plan like the Business plan allows you to perform an unlimited number of people searches. If your goal is to sell to people, you can use the sales tools that come with this plan to target the right customers and make more sales. This feature helps you attach notes to individual user profiles. See what's working by accessing your sales insights so you can learn more about your target customer and how they buy, plus make use of double the number of InMail credits as the Business plan to reach out to potential customers or even potential business partners who can help you sell more.
  7. Recruiter Lite - For finding and hiring the right talent

  8. LinkedIn Premium for Recruiters starts at about USD 120 per month. These plans include saved searches with alerts for new candidates who meet your criteria, talent-finding filters, reference search, and more. If you are the one who is hiring, you can certainly cut down time of sifting through a large number of applications and the uncertainty of potential candidates being a fit by upgrading to the Recruiter Lite plan. Although it is the most expensive of all four premium plans, it is most extensive in terms of design and features. You can take advantage of number of recruiter-specific search filters to find top talent and reach out to as many as 30 of them in a single month with InMail credits. To keep track of potential candidates, create Projects and make use of tools that remind you to follow up, save profiles that you're interested in.

LinkedIn Premium Bonus: LinkedIn Learning and LinkedIn Salary

Other than the four premium plans LinkedIn Learning and LinkedIn Salary is a bonus service launched in by the company in November 2016 to track and analyze salaries of candidates globally. It is now included with all four versions of LinkedIn Premium. Job seekers can also see how they stand against other potential applicants using LinkedIn Salary. Professionals are offered the facility to view specific businesses, geographic expansion, headcount trends, employee turnover and information useful for competitive analysis. You can have an access to salary insights to see salary information while searching for jobs.

LinkedIn Premium Account Features:

We have listed premium account features and how you can make them work for your networking:

#1 InMail

InMail is a great tool for networking. It lets you reach out to the people who work at different companies you are interested in without trying to connect with them first. InMail allows you to send messages to members you are not connected with. InMail is basically a private e-mail message that enables you to reach other members, but it protects the privacy and e-mail address of the member. If the message you sent is accepted, you will receive a message in your LinkedIn Inbox with the other party’s name and e-mail address, and you can communicate further. It's easy to start using InMail on LinkedIn. Then you need to decide on which premium LinkedIn plan you want and this depends on the number of monthly InMail messages you want to send. You will have control over who can message you on LinkedIn. If you do not want to receive any InMail messages at all, you can opt out of it.

#2 See more profiles when you search

Search results also vary according to the type of LinkedIn account. Your basic account search will include full profiles with names within your network and basic research filters however, Premium account search results include increased people searches for Premium Business Plan and above.  Each premium account type except for Job Seekers includes about 300 search results.

#3 Premium Search Filters

There are different levels of search filters. This feature allows you to apply additional advanced search filters to find candidates on LinkedIn. Each premium account type except for Job Seekers includes basic Premium Filters like seniority level, company size, years of experience, when a user joined, interests, recommendations and many more. However, as part of the new design, premium search filters are no longer available, with the exceptions of LinkedIn Recruiter and Sales Navigator.

#4 See expanded profile views

Limited profile views will only show you the very basics about a person and their profile summary if they are out of your network. Premium Account Expanded Profile views will allow you to see the user’s first name, photo, job details, educational background, skills, recommendations, and any other information or applications they have added to their profiles.LinkedIn Premium account features

#5 See who has viewed your profile

See how many people have viewed your profile and how many searches have you appeared in.  LinkedIn allows you to see who has viewed your profile helps you understand who has been looking at your LinkedIn profile recently and how many times you have shown up in search results. With a premium account, you can see that information without putting on stake your own viewing privacy. Also more than just seeing who viewed your profile, you will also get to see which keywords were used and searched to get to your profile. However, upgrading to a Premium account won't show you additional information about your profile viewer if they have chosen - remain anonymous feature in their privacy settings.

#6 Saved Search Alerts

With LinkedIn Premium Saved Search Alerts, you can get weekly or monthly emails with a list of all new people in your network that meet your search criteria. With the premium account, you can perform a search, save it, and receive alerts when new results come in. Once you have a few searches saved, you can click Manage to view your notification settings for each search. This feature provides you with Additional information on posted jobs.

#7 Reference Search

Want to get more references on a person other than just their recommendations on LinkedIn? You can use the Reference Search feature to look for people who have worked with another user to contact them about their performance. If you have a premium account, you will be able to see a list of people in a name or job title search who worked at the designated company in that time frame, and you will have the ability to contact them easily.

#8 Get introduced

If you want to connect with someone who is a 2nd or 3rd degree connection and you don’t have any InMails, you can do so with Introductions. One of the most powerful features of LinkedIn is the ability to request introductions to connections of your connections. This feature is of relevance when you are applying for a new job or you are seeking advice or insight on a company or an industry where you don't have much experience.  Also when you wish to connect to someone, and there is a good possibility they won't accept a direct invitation this feature comes handy.

#9 OpenLink

The OpenLink Premium feature allows anyone on LinkedIn to contact a Premium member for free, even if they are not in the sender's network. With help of OpenLink any LinkedIn member can message you without using InMails or introductions. If you have enabled Open Profile all LinkedIn members can see your full profile. This might open doors to more messages that you aren’t interested in, but it will make sure you are always open to messages you will be interested in.

#10 Premium Education

LinkedIn isn’t just a platform to connect with others and find jobs; it also is an excellent place to learn. People share professional advice based on their experience via curated content like articles, videos, eBooks. This gives the user an insight of important aspects of industries roles and professionalism. It can be difficult to extract specific information that may be applicable to your current career as after all the content people are sharing is not tailored for you. A feature called LinkedIn Learning helps you learn specific things based on your career, skills, and goals through content created by experts. As you learn new things, go for on-demand courses, you can add new skills to your profile to help you accelerate your career and increase chances of landing an interview for a particular job. This further helps you enhance your ability to continuously learn and improve.

Conclusion

If you feel like you can manage without any of the above features or others offered for Recruiters, Job Seekers, and Sales Professionals, then you have an option to try LinkedIn Premium for a month to see what you can get out of them. LinkedIn offers a one-month free trial of Premium to see if it fits your goals. It’s the perfect amount of time for a trial period to determine if LinkedIn Career, Premium Business, Sales Navigator or Recruiter Lite have the features which will help you excel. If you don’t think it is working for you then you can revert back to your regular, free account. It is ok to give it a try - one month could make a world of difference! An important aspect to keep in mind is it that upgrading and paying for LinkedIn Premium will not do wonders overnight and change your outcomes automatically.  These are technical tools, which you have to learn to use well. However, once you do so, there are good chances that you will see a difference in result. We are sure it is worth a try to check free features before you pay for LinkedIn Premium. To further drive up the impact, you can add mobility and exclusivity to your LinkedIn marketing efforts and convert your LinkedIn Company Page into an iOS or Android app with the help of Appy Pie's no code app builder in minutes. What's stopping you now, go ahead and give it a try!

You May Also Like:

Take a deeper dive into the digital ecosystem and start expanding your business with these helpful resources:

Related Articles

Abhinav Girdhar

Founder and CEO of Appy Pie