LinkedIn outreach without Sales Navigator

Do you need Sales Navigator for LinkedIn outreach?

Usually not. LinkPounce works with a free LinkedIn account, and our LinkPounce pricing page shows what that costs: from £49 a month plus VAT, with no Sales Navigator subscription on top.

It helps to be clear about what Sales Navigator is. LinkedIn's plan comparison page leads with more than 50 advanced search filters, lead and account lists, InMail credits and, on the top plan, CRM integrations. Those are tools for finding and researching people. They do not make a connection request more welcome or a message more relevant.

Outreach that works on LinkedIn is mostly about two things: contacting people who have a real link to what you do, and saying something that shows you noticed. A free account can do both. Where it falls short is volume of searching, a few messaging extras and the handful of personalised notes you get each month, covered below.

What a free LinkedIn account can and cannot do

These are the rules that matter for outreach, taken from LinkedIn's own Help pages.

The note limit is the one people notice first. With only three a month, most of your requests go out without a note, so your profile and the relevance of the person you invite have to do the work. Our guide to the LinkedIn connection request limit covers the invitation rules in more detail.

How LinkPounce works on a free account

LinkPounce was built for people who sell on LinkedIn without a sales team or a Sales Navigator budget. If you do have Premium or Sales Navigator, it uses their extras too, but nothing depends on them.

It finds a reason before anyone is contacted

For each person, LinkPounce reads their LinkedIn profile and recent posts and scores the reason to get in touch from 1 to 10. Without a good reason, nobody is contacted. That is the part Sales Navigator filters cannot do for you: a job title tells you who someone is, not whether they would want to hear from you this week.

It writes in your voice, and you approve it

It learns how you write from your own LinkedIn posts and comments, and every draft waits in the Review queue for you to approve, edit or ask for another version. Any reply stops all follow-ups to that person across every campaign.

It keeps the pace low

Every account has a sending pace, from Very careful (8 invites a day, 40 a week) to Faster (25 a day, 100 a week), with a slow warm-up and a hard limit of 25 a day and 100 a week that no setting can raise. It works on weekdays inside office hours, leaves random gaps and pauses itself if LinkedIn shows a warning.

That keeps the risk low, not at zero. LinkedIn's rules on prohibited software and extensions do not allow third-party automation tools, and that includes LinkPounce. Our safety page explains what we can and cannot promise.

When Sales Navigator is worth paying for

Sales Navigator is a good product. It is just aimed at a different problem. It tends to earn its cost when:

• Finding people is the hard part. You sell into a broad market and need filters such as company size, seniority, or recent job changes to build lists every week.
• You need to reach people outside your network. InMail credits let you message people who have not accepted a request.
• A team shares accounts and a CRM. Shared lists and CRM sync matter more as the team grows.
• You keep hitting the search limit. If LinkedIn keeps warning you about commercial use, a paid plan removes that friction.

It is usually not worth it when you sell into a niche you already know, run one to five LinkedIn accounts, or your real gap is writing messages people reply to. In those cases, spend the time on fewer, better conversations instead.

What each option costs in pounds

Sales Navigator prices are from LinkedIn's UK plan page, checked 4 November 2026. LinkedIn calls them estimates and says they may not include VAT. LinkPounce prices are our founding pilot prices.

Put plainly: running LinkPounce Solo on a free account costs £49 a month plus VAT. Adding Sales Navigator Core on monthly billing would take that to £143.99 a month before VAT. Start without it, and add it later only if finding people becomes the thing holding you back.

Questions people ask