LinkedIn Premium: Is It Worth The Investment?
Everyone likes free, but is it worth the extra $30+ to jump to LinkedIn Premium? VPS.NET investigates.
Since its founding in 2002, the professional social network LinkedIn has asserted itself as the leader in professional networking online, amassing more than 400 million users. Like many tech companies in the digital age, LinkedIn has thus far operated on a freemium model. This means that users can set up an account and reap the benefits the network offers without paying, but they can’t access the full functionality that the network has to offer without signing up for a paid subscription.
Weighing The Pros and Cons
LinkedIn is somewhat unique, though, in that unlike other freemium services such as Spotify, it doesn’t simply offer one subscription level. There are various memberships levels that LinkedIn users can sign up for, starting from $30 per month. Depending on if you are a job seeker, running a business or a recruiter, the functionality of these membership levels varies, and can offer tools that don’t exist anywhere else online with such a broad user-base to connect with. That is, after all, LinkedIn’s main unique selling point: it is where nearly everyone exists in a professional context, so it might be worth paying a bit more to find them.
However, with such a steep price tag for the upper membership levels, it’s worth asking if a premium membership on LinkedIn is actually worth the investment. Depending on what your goals are, you might be best served by simply using what the network offers for free. Unlike Spotify—which has made its free version nearly unbearable thanks to incessant advertising—LInkedIn has generally maintained pretty decent functionality in the free version, which suits most users’ needs just fine. But it’s always worth considering what you could get out of it. Here’s a look at the three different membership levels and why you might consider paying for them:
Jobseeker Plus:
The lowest membership tier, LinkedIn Premium, is for casual users of the service who perhaps want to take things to the next level in their job search or networking. It prioritizes you in search results, provides more insight into who is looking at your profile, and gives the opportunity to send and receive three inMail messages (which are messages that can be sent to any LinkedIn user, with no prior connection necessary). If you have previously used LinkedIn casually but are in job search mode, the price tag of about $20 per month may be worthwhile. But once you find a job and are happy with your placement, you might have little need for this expanded functionality.
Business Plus features:
If you run your own business and want to use LInkedIn both to find new talent and to show off your own achievements, the Business Plus plan might be a good fit. It allows you unlimited profile searches, 15 InMail messages, and advanced search functionality. With a starting rate of $30 per month, this could well be a worthwhile cost for a business owner. But if you’re not actively looking to recruit people to help your business grow, you might be better off with a standard profile.
Sales Navigator:
For a more serious user, who’s looking not only to attract talent but also to find sales leads for their business, this membership tier offers real-time sales intelligence, unlimited search, lead recommendations and saved leads so you can keep track of who might be interested in your business in the future, and advanced search filters so you can target the decision makers within companies who are most likely to result in conversions. With 15 InMail messages a month, you can also reach out to prospects who you aren’t yet connected to. At about $60 per month, you’d have to be willing to really commit to using this to make it worthwhile, but if you’re interesting in finding and nurturing new business leads, it could be a great tool.