Choosing the right LinkedIn subscription plan is a crucial question that many professionals ask themselves, and rightly so. Every business has specific needs, which means that one type of LinkedIn account may be more suitable than another. As a result, each premium subscription offers specific features that can optimize your sales efforts and lead generation, whether you’re recruiting or prospecting.
LinkedIn Subscriptions for Prospecting
At MirrorProfiles, we’ve found that the majority of our customers use our LinkedIn services primarily for prospecting and sales lead generation. Here’s an analysis of LinkedIn premium subscriptions specifically tailored for business prospecting:
- Free LinkedIn Account: This basic plan lets you create a LinkedIn profile, connect with other professionals, receive messages, apply for jobs, join groups, and view other users’ profiles. However, the free account comes with several limitations, such as a maximum of 1,000 search results per search and reduced access to advanced filtering options. These restrictions can hinder professionals who need to perform extensive searches for prospects or leads.
- LinkedIn Premium Career ($39.99/month): This premium plan is ideal for job seekers. It offers the ability to see who has viewed your profile, send direct messages (InMails) to people outside your network, and view job offers to which other candidates have applied. However, this plan is not recommended for lead generation or sales prospecting.
- LinkedIn Premium Business ($59.99/month): Aimed at business professionals, this plan offers tools to grow your network and business, such as company analytics, online learning courses, and the ability to contact people outside your network using InMails. However, it doesn’t include advanced search filters, limiting its effectiveness for targeted prospecting. Additionally, this plan provides access to detailed company insights, such as growth trends and key metrics, which can be helpful for understanding your target audience when engaging in business development or sales.
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator Professional ($99.99/month): Considered the best plan for sales professionals, Sales Navigator is a must-have prospecting tool. It provides lead recommendations, advanced search features, company information, and the ability to contact people outside your network via InMails. Indispensable for effective lead generation, Sales Navigator allows for up to 2,500 search results compared to 1,000 with the basic account, supporting more robust lead generation campaigns and sales strategies.
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator Team ($149.99/month): In addition to the features of the Professional plan, this team plan enables collaboration with team reports, synchronization with CRM systems, and lead tracking tools for multiple users, enhancing your sales teams’ effectiveness and lead management capabilities.
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator Enterprise (Custom Pricing): The most advanced plan for large companies, it includes all Team plan features, unlimited lead tracking, and advanced functionalities such as enhanced CRM integration and team insights, making it ideal for enterprise-level sales strategies and large sales teams.
The main advantage of Sales Navigator is the increased number of advanced search filters available. With this premium subscription, you gain access to sophisticated search techniques such as double filtering, which are essential for precise lead generation and sales prospecting. Without Sales Navigator, performing these advanced searches is impossible.
The double filter technique :
Double filtering is an advanced search technique enabled by the LinkedIn Sales Navigator premium subscription. It involves using combined search filters to refine your search results and more precisely target prospects or accounts that best match your qualification criteria, enhancing your lead generation and connection strategies.
For example, you can first filter search results by industry and company size, then apply a second filter to select only decision-makers within these companies. This process provides you with a highly relevant and qualified list of leads, optimizing your prospecting efforts and enhancing your business development strategies.
Without the Sales Navigator premium subscription, LinkedIn does not allow you to apply multiple filters simultaneously, which limits the precision of your lead generation searches. To gain better insights into this advanced technique, read this detailed article.
The importance of Effective Segmentation :
Effective segmentation is crucial to maximizing prospecting and marketing efforts on LinkedIn. This approach allows you to target potential customers more precisely by grouping them according to various criteria such as industry, company size, geographical location, and specific needs, enhancing your lead generation and business development strategies.
This helps personalize messages and offers for each segment, increasing the chances of success. Moreover, effective segmentation saves time and resources by concentrating efforts on the most promising and profitable segments. It’s also worth noting that using segmentation tools available in Sales Navigator, such as “Lead Recommendations,” can help uncover new potential leads based on their alignment with your target criteria. These insights integrate seamlessly with your CRM, enabling your sales teams to manage relationships more effectively.
It’s also worth noting that connection invitations without personalized notes are now limited to 120 per week, while those with notes are reduced to just 10 per month (with a free plan). These restrictions provide a strong incentive to opt for a LinkedIn Premium subscription, which offers higher limits and additional features like InMails to enhance your networking and connection strategies.
By using the Sales Navigator subscription, you’ll gain access to features such as integration with CRMs and ATSs. This integration enables you to optimize your workflow and improve collaboration with your sales or recruitment teams, which is essential for effective prospecting and lead management.
Finally, don’t underestimate the powerful impact of Insight Tags and lead generation forms included in the LinkedIn Premium Business plan. These tools provide you with detailed insights about your visitors and enable you to capture leads directly from your LinkedIn page. Additionally, features like “Smart Links” in Sales Navigator Advanced allow users to track interactions with shared sales materials, providing deeper insights into prospect behavior and improving your lead generation results.
In short, choosing the right LinkedIn premium subscription is crucial to aligning your tools with your sales prospecting and marketing objectives. For advanced prospecting, Sales Navigator remains the best option, while Premium Business can greatly help improve engagement and the quality of your professional network.
Subscriptions for recruitment
Some of our customers use MirrorProfiles LinkedIn accounts primarily for recruitment purposes. They’re not necessarily looking for a high volume of prospecting, but rather a way to secure their talent pool efficiently. When recruiters use their own LinkedIn premium account, they create a specialized network based on the positions they need to fill, enhancing their recruitment efforts and lead generation for job openings.
By using MirrorProfiles LinkedIn accounts, our customers can organize their professional networks according to business sectors (e.g., an account for developers, an account for salespeople, etc.) and secure their talent pool even if a recruiter leaves the company. This structured approach ensures consistent recruitment efforts across different teams and business areas.
The majority of our customers choose the Recruiter Lite subscription for several important reasons. Before detailing these reasons, it’s crucial to understand that, in the context of recruiting on LinkedIn, there are primarily two subscriptions to consider: Recruiter Lite and LinkedIn Recruiter. Selecting the right recruiter plan can significantly impact your lead generation and recruitment success.
The Premium Career subscription is often considered less suited to the needs of professional recruiters. While it offers some useful features for job seekers, such as the ability to see who has viewed their profile or to send direct messages (InMails) to people outside their network, it lacks the advanced tools needed for effective, targeted recruitment and lead generation.
On the other hand, Recruiter Lite is specially designed for recruitment professionals. It offers a range of advanced features that enable recruiters to search for and interact with potential candidates in a more efficient and organized way, enhancing lead generation and candidate management.
LinkedIn Recruiter Lite ($2,399/year): Aimed at recruiters, this premium subscription offers advanced tools for finding and contacting potential candidates, managing candidate relationships, and posting job openings. It lets you view the full profiles of candidates outside your network, send direct messages (InMails) to potential candidates, and manage your applications effectively, which is essential for successful recruitment and lead generation.
LinkedIn Recruiter (from $8,999/year): This is the most comprehensive recruiter premium subscription, featuring advanced candidate search and management tools, team collaboration features, and detailed analytics. It is designed for larger recruitment teams and businesses that require robust candidate management and in-depth insights to optimize their recruitment processes.
Here are some of the key features of the Recruiter Lite premium subscription that make it particularly attractive to recruiters:
Unlimited Profile Searches: This feature allows recruiters to search through the vast number of profiles available on LinkedIn without limitation. Unlimited searches are essential for identifying a wide range of potential candidates for recruitment and expanding your talent pool.
Advanced Search Filters: Recruiter Lite offers specific filters for recruitment, enabling recruiters to refine their searches and target candidates who precisely match the job criteria required for a given position. These advanced filters enhance lead generation and candidate targeting.
Create Candidate Lists: This function lets you create lists of candidates, called “projects” by LinkedIn, making it easier to manage and track potential candidates throughout the recruitment process. Effective candidate management streamlines your recruiting efforts.
Search for Similar Candidates: This feature enables you to find candidates with similar skills and experience to those already identified as potential candidates of interest for recruitment. It facilitates efficient lead generation by expanding your candidate search based on proven profiles.
At first glance, it might seem a good idea to opt for Sales Navigator, but Recruiter Lite’s advanced filters and recruitment tools are far more relevant when you have a clear idea of the candidate profiles you’re looking for. Choosing the right premium subscription can significantly enhance your recruitment effectiveness.
These and other features make Recruiter Lite a preferred choice for many professional recruiters. Additionally, the Recruiter Lite premium subscription is less expensive than the full Recruiter subscription, making it more affordable for small and medium-sized businesses or independent recruiters who need effective recruitment tools without the higher cost.
Here is a complete list of Recruiter Lite premium filters:
Thanks to these 5 LinkedIn accounts, with an acceptance rate of 20%, you’ve increased your connections from adding 400 people to 1,386. This represents 70% of your prospect file, compared with 20% previously! Of course, it all depends on your profile photo, title, and, above all, whether or not your logo and profile align with your target audience. Let’s take a concrete example:
Hivebrite has an alternating LinkedIn profile with a 25% acceptance rate, unlike David B., who has a 10% acceptance rate. In 1 month, Delphine will be transformed into a Business Developer profile and will be able to send InMails directly to her network, enhancing her lead generation and connection efforts.
By diversifying your LinkedIn approach, you maximize the chances of getting a positive response from your prospects. If your target audience is not receptive to a certain profile (e.g., a young Business Developer), perhaps they will respond to another profile (e.g., a Senior Sales Representative). The gender of the profile and the language spoken can also impact your connection success.
If you’re looking to automate part of the sourcing process, most of our customers are supported by a leading recruitment agency in this field, Stepward, which utilizes advanced LinkedIn tools and CRM integrations for efficient talent acquisition and lead generation.
Choosing the right LinkedIn subscription is essential to optimize your prospecting and recruiting efforts. For sales prospecting, Sales Navigator is clearly the most effective option, thanks to its advanced search capabilities and automatic lead generation features. For recruitment, Recruiter Lite is the preferred choice of the majority of our customers, as it offers features specifically designed for recruiters at a more affordable cost than the full Recruiter subscription. Selecting the appropriate subscription plan ensures that you have the right tools for both lead generation and recruitment success.
Automation is playing an increasingly important role in prospecting and recruiting on LinkedIn. Technologies like ChatGPT can help automate tasks such as the precise targeting of candidates or prospects. In addition, prospecting automation tools, such as those offered by Stepward, can help secure your talent pool and automate part of the sourcing process, which is crucial for optimizing both recruitment and sales processes.
Ultimately, the choice of LinkedIn subscription plan depends on your specific business needs and budget. We recommend that you carefully examine the features of each premium subscription and assess whether they align with your recruitment and prospecting requirements before making a decision.
If you are looking to automate part of your sourcing process, most of our customers are supported by one of the leading recruitment agencies in this field. Stepward, which utilizes advanced LinkedIn tools and CRM integrations, can enhance your sourcing and lead generation efforts.
If you are looking to automate part of your sourcing process, most of our customers are supported by one of the leading agencies in this field. Stepward.
FAQ
What are the different LinkedIn subscriptions?
LinkedIn offers several subscription types to suit different professional needs: Free Basic for networking; Premium Career ($29.99/month) for job seekers; Premium Business ($59.99/month) for professionals and small businesses; Sales Navigator Core ($99.99/month) for sales reps; Sales Navigator Advanced and Advanced Plus for sales teams; Recruiter Lite and Recruiter Corporate for recruiters; and LinkedIn Learning for skill development. Each plan varies in features, such as InMail credits, advanced search, and analytics.
Is it worth paying for premium LinkedIn?
Paying for LinkedIn Premium is worth it if you actively use features like InMails, enhanced job insights, salary data, and LinkedIn Learning (over 20,000 courses). It boosts profile visibility, helps stand out in job applications, and provides advanced search and competitive intelligence, especially useful for job seekers and B2B marketers.
How much is a LinkedIn subscription in the UK?
In the UK, LinkedIn Premium subscriptions vary: Premium Career is about £21-£29.99/month , Premium Business is £44.99/month , Sales Navigator Core is £69.99/month , and other plans like Recruiter Lite and Sales Navigator Advanced have higher fees.
How much are LinkedIn subscriptions?
LinkedIn subscriptions in 2025 vary by plan: Premium Career costs $29.99/month or $239/year, Premium Business is $59.99/month or $575.88/year, Sales Navigator Core costs $99.99/month, Recruiter Lite is $170/month, and LinkedIn Learning is $39.99/month. Some plans offer annual billing discounts and 30-day free trials.
