How Linked Helper 2 automates basic LinkedIn and Sales Navigator: The comparison 

Quick Takeaway

• Sales Navigator is a premium LinkedIn search and filtering product, not an automation tool. It still requires you to click every invite, message, and InMail by hand.
• Linked Helper adds the automation layer on top: it runs auto-drip campaigns, sends invites and personalized mass messages, scrapes leads, and exports to CSV, with or without a Sales Navigator subscription.
• Run both at once: use Sales Navigator’s advanced and exclusion filters to build a precise audience, then let Linked Helper process those leads through a basic LinkedIn account to save on seats.
• Linked Helper keeps a local copy of your leads, conversation history, and CRM data, so nothing disappears if you cancel Sales Navigator (LinkedIn deletes saved lists and SN chats on cancellation).
• One-click plan switching (Override plug-in) lets a single Sales Navigator seat collect and filter leads while free basic accounts handle outreach.

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social media platform that allows you to identify prospects, map buying committees, and monitor competitors at scale. With over 1.3 billion members and roughly 310 million monthly active users worldwide, it is the only professional network where Sales Navigator’s advanced filters and Linked Helper’s automation meaningfully compound each other. According to LinkedIn’s own 2025 product data, Sales Navigator users see a 45% average increase in deal size and a 29% lift in sales opportunities. Capturing those numbers consistently is exactly what automation is built to do — and that is what this comparison is about.

Key notes:

• You won’t notice a difference between the basic LinkedIn plan and Sales Navigator in terms of built-in activities with prospects (searching and core filtering, visits and views, inviting them to your network, messaging, sending InMails). These tasks will be offered as part of a normal subscription and in Sales Navigator.
• An important advantage of the Sales Navigator plan is improved filtering. Also, this solution has the ability to connect more team members who can use Sales Navigator as a common CRM for leads.
• Even though Sales Navigator (SN) is a paid and advanced plan, it lacks certain features of regular LinkedIn, which means it provides less opportunity to warm up your target audience. That’s why Linked Helper is smart enough to switch between solutions and use the best of both in combination for your growth. For example, you can use the SN solution for precisely parsing and filtering users, and the general account for putting likes on their content (the liking feature is not present in SN).
• Despite the fact that the Sales Navigator (SN) solution is aimed towards selling (as implied by the name), this product may be utilized for a variety of reasons. For instance, many headhunters favor SN over the Recruiter since the UI, the ability to configure filtering, and searching are smoother in SN.

12 Differences between LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Linked Helper

Compare these two images to identify the differences. Sales Navigator is a variant of the LinkedIn interface, whereas Linked Helper is a browser that allows you to view both versions and seamlessly switch between them.

Does Linked Helper replace LinkedIn Sales Navigator features?

No, Linked Helper does not replace LinkedIn Sales Navigator features. These are essentially different products with different purposes.

However, Sales Navigator can be connected to Linked Helper to work together. The difference is that Sales Navigator is an internal LinkedIn product. It offers a different interface with more filters and features for lead generation (detailed below).

Linked Helper, on the other hand, is independent software that helps automate LinkedIn marketing activities and serves as a CRM. It allows you to automate prospect acquisition and leverage the Sales Navigator service via Linked Helper.

Linked Helper can be used with a LinkedIn basic account, Sales Navigator, and other paid solutions, like Recruiter, which can give you more freedom in using the software.

Key Differences:

• Automation: Linked Helper automates various tasks, including gathering target audiences, creating auto-drip campaigns, visiting profiles, sending invites, and downloading leads, which Sales Navigator does not do automatically.
• Flexibility: Linked Helper allows you to switch seamlessly between basic LinkedIn service and Sales Navigator with a single click. This flexibility enables teams to save costs by processing leads through free basic LinkedIn accounts.
• Subscription: Linked Helper works regardless of your subscription status with Sales Navigator. It offers functionality both with and without a Sales Navigator subscription.
• Data Preservation: Linked Helper stores your data locally even if you cancel your Sales Navigator subscription. This ensures that your lead lists and message history remain accessible, providing continuity and convenience.
• Advanced Features: Linked Helper features a built-in email finder that allows you to search for emails both within and outside your network, enhancing your outreach capabilities.
• Backup Functionality: Linked Helper acts as a backup tool since it allows you to collect data and use it in campaigns, providing an additional layer of security and data retention.

#1 LinkedIn Sales Navigator is not a tool for automation

The key point is that Sales Navigator requires your hands to perform manual actions for routine tasks. Despite offering more invites and InMails, you still have to click buttons yourself. Linked Helper automates these actions.

Here’s what you can’t do in Sales Navigator but can in Linked Helper:

• Gather target audiences and keep them current with Auto-collect — the tool re-collects leads from saved Sales Navigator or LinkedIn search pages every X days without manual re-initialization.
• Create auto-drip campaigns for network expansion, messaging sequences, follow-ups, and InMail outreach.
• Visit profiles, send invites, follow, send mass messages, automate InMails, and boost posts.
• Generate AI-personalized messages with the built-in AI message generator (up to 30 unique messages per day, drafted from each lead’s profile data).
• Score leads against your ideal customer profile with AI ICP Detection, which evaluates collected SN leads and flags the best-fit prospects automatically.
• Find and enrich emails both within and outside your network — including verified business emails via Apollo.io integration.
• Download leads and message history in a CSV file.

#2 Interface

Linked Helper seamlessly integrates Sales Navigator into its interface, enabling users to effortlessly switch between the basic LinkedIn interface and Sales Navigator within the Linked Helper application window. One of the notable advantages of Linked Helper’s interface is the additional automation panel integrated into Sales Navigator, enhancing the platform’s overall functionality and user experience.

#3 Hyper-personalize Mass Messages

Linked Helper enables users to hyper-personalize mass messages using custom images, variable substitutions, and link previews. Beyond templates, the built-in AI message generator drafts up to 30 unique, context-aware messages per day based on each lead’s profile data — position, company, industry — without any manual copywriting. Sales Navigator messages offer no automation or AI writing assistance; without a third-party tool, every message is written and sent by hand. The only multi-person feature SN provides is group chats with up to 50 participants.

#4 Work According to Timing & Time Zones

Linked Helper offers the flexibility to operate during specific designated hours, initiate campaigns on specified dates, and schedule breaks between activities.

Two additional controls make automated outreach safe within LinkedIn’s limits:

• Smart daily limits automatically cap the number of actions per day, keeping your activity volume human-like and well within LinkedIn’s weekly invite thresholds.
• Start-time randomization varies when each automated session begins, so your outreach pattern never resembles a bot running on a fixed clock.

Together, these features replace the need for any undocumented workarounds and are the recommended way to run sustained campaigns without risking account restrictions. Sales Navigator has none of these controls. Users either act manually or rely on external scheduling tools that have no pacing or safety logic.

#5 Load Lead Lists on Any Plan

Unlike Sales Navigator, where only users on Advanced or Advanced Plus plans can upload lead lists in CSV format, Linked Helper allows CSV or leads’ URL uploads. It also automatically converts and reads data from Sales Navigator and Recruiter formats.

#6 No Built-in CRM in Sales Navigator

While both tools can be synced with external CRMs, Sales Navigator’s native integrations are limited to a handful of enterprise platforms (most notably Salesforce). Linked Helper connects to a broader set: HubSpot, Pipedrive, Close, and Salesforce via the “Send person to external CRM” action using webhooks — no enterprise contract required.

More importantly, Linked Helper includes a built-in CRM that works independently of any external tool. Users can categorize contacts with custom tags, leave notes, and view detailed lead profiles with data pulled directly from LinkedIn. This internal CRM stores everything locally, meaning your lead history and conversation notes survive even after a Sales Navigator cancellation — unlike SN’s own lead lists and saved searches, which LinkedIn deletes as soon as the subscription ends.

#7 LinkedIn Sales Navigator scraper: export to Excel

Linked Helper is an advanced scraper for leads and campaigns. It collects all data and makes it usable in campaigns even on a free LinkedIn profile — Sales Navigator offers no comparable CSV export for its lead lists.

A key recent addition is the Auto-collect action: instead of manually re-initializing a scrape each time, you configure Linked Helper to re-collect leads from a saved Sales Navigator or LinkedIn search page every X days automatically. This keeps your lead pool current without any manual work — and every contact gathered is stored locally in Linked Helper’s CRM, giving you a reliable backup of your prospecting data even if you later cancel Sales Navigator.

#8 Linked Helper Features a Built-in Email Finder

Linked Helper includes a built-in email finder across all paid plans:

• Standard subscription: 620 email-search credits per month.
• PRO subscription: 3,100 credits per month.

Beyond simple email lookup, the Data Enrichment action lets you enrich 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-degree connections — and out-of-network profiles — with emails, phone numbers, and LinkedIn badge data (Open Link status, Premium badge) without visiting each profile individually. This means you can identify which leads accept free InMails before reaching out, saving credits and manual time.

For verified business emails on 2nd/3rd-degree connections, Linked Helper also integrates with Apollo.io directly inside the Find Profile Emails and Visit & Extract actions — an additional enrichment path that Sales Navigator does not offer.

#9 Keep Data in Linked Helper After Sales Navigator Automation

If you cancel your Linkedin Sales Navigator subscription, your data and interface vanish, including lead lists and conversations with leads. So this can be one of the most vital hacks!

Therefore, a critical distinction is that by connecting Sales Navigator, your data is stored locally within Linked Helper. Even if you cancel the subscription, you can still access leads and message history.

#10 Price

The pricing of these tools varies based on their different features.

Linked Helper offers a free 14-day trial with no credit card required. After the trial:

Sales Navigator:

For a live breakdown of all Linked Helper plans and current pricing, see the Linked Helper pricing page.

Life without LinkedIn Recruiter: How to cut down hiring cost

#11 Switch Between Basic LinkedIn and Sales Navigator in Linked Helper

With a single click via the Override plug-in, you can switch between basic LinkedIn and Sales Navigator in Linked Helper, changing the platform used for any automated action on the fly.

This enables a powerful cost-saving team workflow: purchase one Sales Navigator seat to collect and filter leads using advanced criteria, then distribute those leads across multiple **free basic LinkedIn accounts** for outreach — paying for far fewer SN licenses than a full team would require.

Linked Helper’s Workspaces feature is built for exactly this setup. Team licenses, accounts, and email-search data credits are managed at the workspace level with configurable roles, so multiple team members can collaborate within a shared workspace — each using their own LinkedIn profile for outreach — while the team’s single SN seat handles filtering and lead collection.

#12 Linked Helper Works Regardless of Subscription

Unlike many services that exclusively support Sales Navigator automation, Linked Helper functions with or without a subscription to Sales Navigator (and other paid options like Recruiter). When you set up a LinkedIn account in Linked Helper, you can select your desired tariff in the settings.

Sales Navigator filters your audience. Linked Helper sends the outreach.

Sales Navigator never sends a single invite or follow-up for you. Linked Helper adds the missing automation layer on top — auto-drip campaigns, personalized mass messages, and lead collection from the exact lists you build in Sales Navigator — with or without an SN subscription.

Automate Sales Navigator free for 2 weeks →

LinkedIn automation with Linked Helper for Sales Navigator

Make a backup of your communications and browsing.

The benefit of working in Sales Navigator through Linked Helper is that the message history will be maintained in the CRM’s database. Following the social network’s policies, the archive of conversations with prospects will be deleted after you unsubscribe from the service. This could be useful information for businesses to keep.

If you used Linked Helper to deliver messages (or switched to basic for the mailing campaign in the software), the communication archive will be kept even if you unsubscribe. Previous correspondence that was conducted outside Linked Helper will not be saved, while those messages sent via LH will remain available in the LH database.

Furthermore, when you unsubscribe to Sales Navigator, your list of leads that were screened and stored will be lost. LinkedIn warns about this loss of data when deleting your Sales Navigator account in the help section.

To avoid this situation, we offer a solution that will allow you to store the data using Linked Helper. If you don’t want your research history to evaporate once you terminate your paying membership, you may preserve them in the CRM (or export the list as CSV from LH).

To use the features of both solutions effectively, you can use them both for different tasks. For example, use one solution for collecting data and saving it in the CRM, and another for likes.

For these activities, consider Sales Navigator:

• Searching and filtering leads
• Creating lists

Employ LinkedIn Basic for:

• Invitations
• Messaging

Note: paid InMails delivered under the Sales Navigator membership can be sent through Linked Helper only via a subscription. On our blog, you can discover the complete InMails guide.

Below you will learn the solution to easily and automatically send free InMails to any users with Open Link” status via Linked Helper.

All in all, for the basic account and SN, all activities in Linked Helper will be equally available. But executing in-depth research, the ability to sort leads in groups, and storing search queries, may open up more opportunities when you have Sales Navigator perks in Linked Helper.

What is special about using Sales Navigator?

Different chats.

For instance, if you text to your connections via SN, it will only be displayed in the Sales Navigator mailbox. These conversations will not be visible in your regular LinkedIn account, and vice versa.

In Linked Helper, you can select the platform and profile from which you wish to send invites or compose messages – it can be SN or any other LinkedIn solution, including conventional LinkedIn. Read the manual about switching between platforms in the software.

Sales Navigator has no commercial usage limitations.

The basic LinkedIn account has a monthly search query limitation. The developers of the social media platform do not restrict your searches in SN, which is useful for regular study of target groups.

When using SN to view accounts in LH, the tool can parse the Industry.

In practice, LinkedIn does not provide this information for most profiles. When extracting data using the basic platform, you may filter leads by industry and aggregate them in the Queue. However, the info about the industry will not be stored after the session in the database.

If you accomplish the same thing with the SN membership, then after visiting the pages, the industry can be parsed and will remain available in the database.

More filters are included in Sales Navigator.

Of these, the most significant for working through Linked Helper may be the following:

The ability to exclude unwanted people from the search and from the campaign.

In the advanced plan, when searching and parsing leads (for example, when adding them to the Linked Helper Campaign Queue), you can choose not to collect profiles from a specific industry/company. These settings will be available in the interface and therefore will affect further work with leads. For example, in your funnel, you can leave only a very specific audience, which will bring more efficiency, responses, and acceptances of invites.

Basic LinkedIn only has inclusive filters, so you will be limited to capturing leads from search pages. You can manually exclude leads from the campaign by downloading the lead file during parsing and sorting them and deleting unnecessary ones in Excel. Or you can exclude unnecessary leads from the pipeline manually in the software dashboard.

Sorting by groups

In LH, you can automatically communicate to group mates in personal messages. You can easily filter and search for people who are your intended audience using the Sales Navigator engine. This significantly streamlines lead generation and enables more customized bulk mailings. Because you are both participants of the exact same group, you may include this in your text, making it easier to start a conversation. Custom variables in auto-messages in Linked Helper can be defined so that the desired group name is included in the bulk mailing campaign.

Explore the guidelines for outreach to group participants sorted via advanced SN filtering.

Read more about how you can use group marketing and interact with the community before contacting them directly.

You can remove from the Queue those whom you have already visited or invited.

LinkedIn limits collection to roughly 1,000 profiles per search result page. If your query returns thousands of leads, the standard approach is to narrow the search with additional filters — geography, seniority, company size, years in role — to create multiple smaller segments, each under 1,000 profiles, and collect them in separate campaign runs.

By removing already-visited or already-invited profiles from the Queue, you avoid re-processing contacts across those segments and make better use of each collection run. LinkedIn also recommends keeping pending connection requests under approximately 1,500 at any given time to avoid account restrictions — another reason to pace collection and outreach with Smart daily limits rather than running everything at once.

Sales Navigator allows you to sort by role in the organization.

For example, you can select “Function,” “Job title,” “Seniority level,” or “Years in current company.”

For example, you may be faced with the task of using Linked Helper to collect users who are CEOs, founders, or owners in companies with less than 500 employees. The fact is that Linked Helper does not provide its own filtering beyond the options available through the LinkedIn search.

As a consequence, it is efficient to employ the Sales Navigator search parameters and easily gather clearly-specified individuals from the results page when dealing with such a task.

Other criteria may also help you refine your prospecting efforts. You may collect individuals using the SN interface by a phrase in their post, their postcode, and other factors.

Enhanced Sales Navigator functions are available.

As an example:

• Prospects in your super-specific search can be saved.
• Users can create lists with prospects and organizations.
• The ability to leave notes and comments can help you use the platform as a CRM.
• 50 InMails are included in your monthly package.

Personas

You have the ability to outline the qualities of your ‘perfect customer,’ and using these criteria, Sales Navigator will present you with relevant leads. Within Sales Navigator, user-defined personas assist in locating leads that match the preferred customer profile, simplifying the process of identifying potential clients.

Recent enhancements enable customization of Sales Navigator interactions based on specific traits of the desired individuals, thereby improving the efficiency and depth of sales engagements. Sales Insights Personas provide comprehensive information, assisting in crucial decisions related to staffing, expansion, and sales performance analysis

Alerts

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Alerts serve as your real-time notification system, ensuring you’re always in the loop about crucial activities concerning your saved leads and accounts. They play a vital role in fostering communication and responding promptly to updates related to your leads and accounts.

Even on a free account, you can follow people or company pages, staying informed about their activities. However, Sales Navigator takes it a step further by giving you the freedom to curate your alert preferences. You can handpick whose updates you receive, allowing you to prioritize the most relevant ones by bookmarking them.

What makes Sales Navigator truly valuable are its diverse alert types:

Account Risk Alerts:

• Layoffs: Notifies you when a saved account is undergoing significant layoffs.
• Slowing Growth: Alerts you when a saved account experiences a decline in employee growth over the past 90 days.

Account Activity Alerts:

• Shared Update: Informs you when a saved account shares a post, article, photo, or publishes new content.
• Account News: Keeps you updated when a saved account is mentioned in an article shared or published on LinkedIn.
• Buyer Intent: Recommends potential leads who have viewed your profile, especially those working at companies saved in your account.

In addition to these, Sales Navigator seamlessly integrates updates from CRM software, enhancing your workflow. Explore all alerts in the article.

Crucial info regarding InMails and LH:

When the robot collects accounts from a search page, it can retrieve whether they are “Open Link” or not. If you have Open Link status, then each user regardless of their LinkedIn subscription will be able to send you a free InMail. So many people are interested to set this option. To filter by this value we added a built-in item in Linked Helper.

You can study the details and advantages of the SN package compared to others on the official website of the social network in the form of a convenient spreadsheet.

Are there any drawbacks to utilizing Linked Helper with a premium plan?

Some activities are not provided by default in SN

This issue is frequently resolved by the ability to switch between plans in Linked Helper.

For instance, you can only follow users on your standard account. Nevertheless, Linked Helper enables the software to switch between solutions.

You can start a mass following or liking campaign in Linked Helper, and these actions can be part of your funnel. If you use your SN profile in the software, then the robot will perform these actions from your basic account because there is no such possibility in the premium plan. At the same time, when the time comes to do other actions, the robot will quickly switch, for example, to write a message or InMail. Therefore, working through the software, you can deftly maneuver between solutions and make better use of their capabilities. In this case, you will not need to make manual switches, because they are provided in the program.

No ability to bypass Sales Navigator limits through software

Linked Helper helps you work efficiently within LinkedIn’s limits rather than trying to circumvent them. The tool’s Smart daily limits cap actions at human-like volumes automatically, and start-time randomization varies when each automated session begins — so outreach patterns never resemble a fixed-schedule bot. This keeps your account safe while still enabling consistent, scalable lead generation.

One structural limitation remains: when working through a Sales Navigator profile, mass connection invites are not available — that action can only run through a standard LinkedIn account. This means a Sales Navigator subscription alone is not enough to run a full outreach campaign in Linked Helper. For core actions — invites, follows, likes, and comments — you also need a basic LinkedIn account connected. The Override plug-in handles the switch automatically: the robot selects the right account for each action without manual intervention.

Why should you use LinkedIn Sales Navigator automation tools?

All in all, the use of Linked Helper automation is possible both with the free LinkedIn and with Sales Navigator. The main convenience of this automation method is that you can switch between solutions for different tasks within the same campaign.

Here are the other benefits of using Linked Helper with your Sales Navigator and basic LinkedIn solutions:

• You will have a backup of your data when your SN subscription expires or you terminate it. This will greatly save your business data even if you decide to stop using a paid solution. Lead lists and message history will be uploaded to the CRM and you can download all the data in the form of a table. However, only the info that Linked Helper works with is saved. If you need to save a lead list, then it must be collected in a campaign. Only in this case, will it be saved in the software database.
• You save time by assigning routine tasks to the robot. Sending invites and messages or warming up the audience in the comments will take place without your participation. You set the exact targeting and the software does the work for you – all you need is an Internet connection.
• You accelerate sales and lead generation. The software can process hundreds of profiles in a short time. For example, visit landing pages and send invites. This will bring you new customers much faster.
• You can filter the target audience in more detail. With a subscription to Navigator along with Linked Helper, you can define your audience more precisely, for example, select a group on LinkedIn. The more precisely people are selected through the filter, the more effectively you will use automation (because there are limits for security reasons).
• Through the robot, you can build long-term relationships with the target audience. This means including actions in the funnel such as likes, comments, and invites before messages will help you gradually make contact. In addition, you can set up automatic follow-ups and everyone who answers you will be moved to a separate section in the software.
• You can unlock additional options for sending free InMails. Thanks to the fact that your leads can have profiles with the status of “Open link,” you will have a chance to write them a free InMail. The main difficulty lies in identifying such leads. But in Linked Helper, after collecting contacts in the Queue, you can set up sorting in the CRM and use free InMails outside of your subscriptions (50 in SN solutions). This will help you not only automate InMails, but also save credits without spending a lot of time manually identifying the status of the lead profile.

Thus, using the Sales Navigator and automation, you can solve business problems faster. And this is not only true for sales. Recruiters can also use these two tools for more effective hiring.

FAQ