Can You Message Someone On LinkedIn Without Premium?

The short answer is no.

You cannot message someone on LinkedIn without a Premium (paid) account.

However, LinkedIn does allow you to message people on their Basic (free) account in certain circumstances.

In this article, I’ll help you understand the following:

- Do you need LinkedIn Premium to message people?
- Can you send a message to someone on LinkedIn if you are not connected?
- Can you message someone on LinkedIn without needing to connect?
- What is the best way to message someone on LinkedIn?

Do you need LinkedIn Premium to message people?

Yes, you need to upgrade to a paid LinkedIn Premium account to message people who you have not already connected with.

If you are using a Basic (free) LinkedIn account, then you can only message people that you are already connected with.

The problem with LinkedIn Premium is that you can only message 15 people per month.

Even with LinkedIn Sales Navigator (higher tier plan), you are limited to 50 messages per month.

If you plan to send lots of connection requests, and then message people for free after they have accepted your connection request, then I have some bad news: LinkedIn limits the number of connection requests that you can send.

You can learn more about LinkedIn’s limitations in my article LinkedIn Limits: How Many Connection Requests & Messages?

If you want to learn how to bypass these limitations and message an unlimited number of people on LinkedIn, then check out my article How To Reach Out To People On LinkedIn.

Can you send a message to someone on LinkedIn if you are not connected?

If you are using a Basic (free) LinkedIn account, then you cannot send a message to someone if you are not already connected.

The only way to send messages to people on LinkedIn without first being connected is by upgrading to a paid account.

LinkedIn has different types of paid accounts, such as Premium and Sales Navigator.

Using a paid account, you can send direct messages (InMail) to almost anyone on LinkedIn, without needing to connect first.

If you are confused about the difference between an InMail message and a regular message, then check out my article Linkedin Inmail vs Message: What Is the Difference?

Can you message someone on LinkedIn without needing to connect?

Yes, it is possible to send a message to someone on LinkedIn without needing to connect.

However, you need to upgrade to a paid account to do this (Premium or Sales Navigator).

What is the best way to message someone on LinkedIn?

The best way to message someone on LinkedIn is by extracting leads from LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and then sending personalized cold emails.

This allows you to bypass LinkedIn's InMail limits (50 messages per month).

You can reach out to an unlimited number of people on LinkedIn if you follow the below steps:

1. Sign up for LinkedIn Sales Navigator (they have a 14-day free trial)
   
2. Search for leads on LinkedIn Sales Navigator
   
3. Extract these leads with their emails using Emailchaser's Lead Finder extension.
   
4. Upload leads to a campaign in Emailchaser

You can learn how to do this in my article How To Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator To Generate Leads.

Final thoughts

You cannot send an InMail message on LinkedIn without a Premium (paid) account.

If you are using a Basic (free) LinkedIn account, then you can only message people that you are already connected with.

The only way to message someone on LinkedIn without first being connected with them is to upgrade to a paid account (Premium or Sales Navigator).

If you want to learn how you can message an unlimited number of people on LinkedIn via cold email, then check out my article How To Reach Out To People On LinkedIn.