November 19, 2014
Over the last few days, I’ve been trading emails with LinkedIn Technical Support. It all has to do with their cheap, discounted premium plan, Spotlight (previously named Personal Plus).
You see, I am a huge proponent of paying for LinkedIn. I believe in what LinkedIn is doing, I understand the value, and I feel it’s important to support the company that allows us to network in our pajamas. (And if you are looking for more reasons to upgrade, click here)
In my blog, consulting with clients, and when I present on the topic of LinkedIn to groups across the country, I always recommended the Spotlight plan. The Spotlight plan was LinkedIn’s cheapest plan at 7.99/month when paid annually. This was an affordable option that allowed people to get some skin in the game and really start to use LinkedIn like a business and sales tool. The only issue is that this cheap plan wasn’t easy to find. LinkedIn hid the Spotlight plan from their homepage and only allowed access to it from the Who’s Viewed Your Profile screen.
Over the last few months, I began to get more and more emails and calls from people telling me that even after following my directions, the Spotlight plan was no longer accessible.
In it’s place, people were directed to a new screen that either promised them a free month of premium access or they saw different, higher priced plans.
What I found is that when Spotlight is not offered to you, you can contact LinkedIn’s Technical Support team and ask them to provide you access to the Spotlight Plan. Technical Support will say no but if you are persistent, they will give you the free month of premium access and then once the free month is over, they will downgrade you to Spotlight as a one time courtesy.
Although asking nicely works, it is a pain in the butt. Finally, I decided to contact LinkedIn and ask them the status of their Spotlight plan. The news I got is not good. LinkedIn has DISCONTINUED the Spotlight plan:
I didn’t stop there… I pressed for more information!
And so there you have it. It appears that LinkedIn has removed their cheap, discounted premium Spotlight plan from their subscription line up.
You can certainly attempt to contact LinkedIn’s Technical Support and try to schmooze them into giving you access to Spotlight, but I can’t say for certain this will work for much longer.
Here are the plans that are readily available:
The cheapest plans are Job Seeker Basic and Business. You can get a discount if you purchase a full year upfront.
If you are as sad as I am about the removal of the Spotlight plan, I suggest contacting LinkedIn and letting them know. There is a Send Feedback link at the bottom of most pages on LinkedIn.
Here’s what to type: BRING BACK THE 7.99/mo annual SPOTLIGHT PLAN!
Do you know any way to access the old Spotlight plan? If so, let me know in the comments. Also, tell me what you think about LinkedIn removing this cheap option.
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Did they really cancel the business plan too!? Now the cheapest annual plan is over $500 per year!
Doug
Hi Donna, as a current LinkedIn spotlight user, I have not found a way to access the $19.99 job seeker plan. The lowest cost plan I see offered to me is $29.99/month with no annual subscription discount available.
Im not a job seeker, but I’m not hung up on the premium membership titles.
Is the $19.99/month plan available through a method that I’ve not discovered or is it also gone?
Thanks for keeping us up to date on this. Perhaps you could offer some thoughts on Linkedin alternatives and taking a break from paid Linkedin once a job is landed?
Is it still possible to sign up for the Personal Plus account? https://www.linkedin.com/personalplus
I just got off chatting with customer support at Linkedin. I was told the spotlight plan is available once i take a free upgrade and then downgrade after 1 month. Perhaps this is new because of the backlash to their discontinuing of the cheaper plan.
All the “basic” paid plans seem to be gone. Now $30 for Job Seeker Premium seems to be the cheapest and the business plan they wanted me to go to is a minimum of $60. It seems that LinkedIn is doing a radical shift to raise revenue. Not a good sign about the company’s viability.
https://www.linkedin.com/mnyfe/subscriptionv2?displayProducts=&trk=acct_sub_2&pid=10001
Personal Plus for $7.99 per month on annual basis (or $9.99 per month) is now available. 8/22/2015
Hi Louise! Unfortunately, it’s not available. I contacted LinkedIn support and they said that although the page link to the Personal Plus plan is active– the plan is not. Such a shame! Hopefully LinkedIn will eventually realize there is a great need for a low cost premium plan.
As a sales guy who runs a marketing firm, I really, really, really want to like LinkedIn. I’ve spent probably $2k over the last 3-4 years dabbling with their premium plan, but I’ve never landed a single client. I’ve tried all sorts of things, but even then I’ve only ever had 2 In-Mails returned, (whether they were long, or short, or a quick pitch, or an offer to connect, etc). The insights are nice, but at the end of the day the most utility I ever got was using the service to decode email addresses and then just emailing the decision maker that way. And yes, the price hikes are dumb..