Almost every working professional that I know uses the free version of LinkedIn – it’s a great social network for connecting with co-workers, sharing opinions about your job and industry, and potentially finding a new career. However, the free version isn’t the only one available, and many people wonder whether subscribing to one of the premium plans is worth it. In today’s article, we will be discussing whether you should cancel LinkedIn premium and just use the free version, or whether it’s truly worth the money, and you should continue paying in order to get more out of the platform.
What’s the Cost of LinkedIn Premium?
Currently, LinkedIn offers four different plans that come at four different price points. They are as follows:
- Premium Career: $29.99 per month
- Premium Business: $47.99 per month if you pay for the entire year
- Sales Navigator Professional: $64.99 per month, if you pay for a year
- Recruiter Lite: $99.59 per month, if you pay for the entire year
It’s also good to note that the price of LinkedIn does not include the sales tax, which is applicable in some places around the world. Also, if you choose not to pay for an entire year, the prices go up by at least 20%.
Of course, depending on what you’re paying for, you’re getting different features. Most LinkedIn users are interested in the Premium Career plan, but if you work as a recruiter or in sales, you might have more benefits from some of the other options the platform offers.
Regardless of what plan you want to use, LinkedIn gives users a one-month free trial. During that period, you will be able to gauge whether paying the price is worth it or not.
What Are You Getting If You Pay for LinkedIn Premium?
During the LinkedIn Premium free trial, you will be able to access all the key features it provides:
- Five InMail messages each month
- Being able to see the kind of searches you appeared in and how many people have viewed your profile in the last month
- Applicant insight
- Additional information on job postings and recommendations
- More information regarding salaries
- Access to learning videos and courses
- Interview preparation
While LinkedIn Premium has many features, perhaps the first two we listed are the main reason why people consider paying for it in the first place. Having the ability to message other users (that you’re not connected with) is a huge benefit that can help you land clients and a new job.
Additionally, let’s check out what you get if you decide to scale your plan and opt for one of the other options LinkedIn offers:
- Premium Business gives you more information about a particular company and the ability to search for an infinite number of people. Additionally, you get 15 InMail messages every month.
- Sales Navigator Pro gives you access to advanced search filters and 50 InMail messages. Along with that, you get to write notes on users’ profiles and access a few other useful sales tools.
- Recruiter Lite, the most expensive plan, gives you access to advanced search tools and other helpful features for recruiters. InMail messages come at 30 per month with this plan.
It’s vital to note that during your free trial, you can cancel your LinkedIn subscription at any time and without any additional cost, so if you quickly find that those extra features aren’t of help to you, you can quit quickly.
What Are the Main Benefits of LinkedIn Premium?
Is LinkedIn Premium worth it? It’s hard to give a one-sided yes or no answer, because it depends on what your needs are and what you hope to get out of the platform. In order to give you a proper picture, we will now take a look at all the benefits that come with paying for a LinkedIn premium account.
If we take the most popular plan, Premium Career, we have to evaluate it based on whether it can help you find a new job or not. Usually, the features people look at most are InMail credits and insight into who searched for you and looked at your profile. If used properly, that information, along with those credits, can definitely help you connect with recruiters and potentially find a new job.
Along with that, getting additional information about a job can be helpful when you’re scrolling past dozens of job listings. LinkedIn will make sure to tell you which positions you’re best suited for.
Having said that, Premium Career has its setbacks. If you look through a ton of profiles, at one point, LinkedIn will stop showing new results and will ask you to subscribe to Premium Business. If you’re using your InMail credits frequently, it will push you to upgrade as well.
That makes the benefits Premium Career offers very limited in scope and often not enough for people to use them in order to land a new job.
Is LinkedIn Premium Worth the Investment?
For people working in sales and for recruiters, LinkedIn’s more expensive plans might be helpful in finding new prospects or getting more people for jobs. However, as a person looking for a job, the LinkedIn Premium Career and Business won’t turn out to be life-changing. While they can help you get additional information on job listings and which positions you will be a good fit for, ultimately, they won’t be what lands you a new job. Additionally, the features that both plans offer are fairly limited and cannot really be used to their full potential unless you keep on upgrading to the point where you have to spend around $70 per month on LinkedIn.
Having said all that, we can safely conclude that LinkedIn Premium is worth it only for a short while and only for certain professionals. Otherwise, it’s money you could save to get something more useful.
If you want to learn how to get the maximum out of LinkedIn without paying for Premium, head on over to a blog where there are tons of helpful articles.