Choose individual Sales Navigator Core subscriptions if each seller can find and manage their own prospects. Evaluate Advanced if sellers need to maintain a shared list or share saved searches inside Sales Navigator. The deciding question is not how many people are on the team; it is whether their prospecting work needs to be shared in the product. Make the outreach-tool decision separately.
What changes when prospecting becomes shared?
LinkedIn’s plan comparison describes Core as a single-user subscription and Advanced as a multiple-user subscription. Both provide advanced search, custom lists, saved leads and accounts, and alerts. Advanced adds team-sharing features; it is not simply a larger allowance for individual searches.
For a shared custom list, the distinction is operational: collaborators can receive View or Edit access. LinkedIn says Edit access permits adding or removing leads or accounts and changing the list name or description. Give Edit access to someone who will maintain the list; View is more appropriate when a colleague only needs to consult it.
| Criterion | Core | Advanced |
|---|---|---|
| Individual prospecting | Advanced search, custom lists and alerts | The same individual tools |
| Team sharing | No sharing of custom lists or saved searches with teammates | Sharing of custom lists and saved searches |
| Other team features | No TeamLink or detailed usage reporting | TeamLink and detailed usage reporting |
Decide with the account list two sellers actually use
Consider a hypothetical team with two sellers, Maya and Leo. They cover different accounts, choose their own contacts and keep separate prospecting lists. Neither needs to edit the other’s work in Sales Navigator. Give each seller a Core subscription for this workflow; buying a collaboration feature they will not use does not improve their individual search or lists. They can still coordinate account ownership outside Sales Navigator if that arrangement works for them.
Now change one input: Maya and Leo jointly cover the same named accounts. Maya curates a custom account list, and Leo must add newly assigned accounts and remove those they have ruled out. Advanced’s shared-list capability addresses that specific need. LinkedIn says an Advanced or Advanced Plus user can share a custom account list they created (not a system-generated list) with Sales Navigator users at their company who share their Sales Navigator contract. Its permission settings let Maya grant Leo Edit rather than View access.
The resulting action is to evaluate Advanced for the seller creating the shared list, then confirm with LinkedIn that the proposed licenses and company contract let both sellers use it as intended. Do not assume two separately purchased subscriptions form a shareable company contract, or that both sellers must buy the same tier without checking their arrangement. If list sharing is the reason to upgrade, test that Maya can invite Leo and that Leo has the required access before committing. Compare current LinkedIn quotes only after establishing which configuration works.
If the team instead needs Sales Navigator data flowing into or out of its CRM, neither Core nor Advanced solves that particular requirement: LinkedIn assigns those CRM data flows to Advanced Plus. Treat it as a separate buying decision rather than upgrading to Advanced and expecting CRM sync.
Choose the outreach workflow after choosing the audience
A Sales Navigator subscription helps the team identify and organize prospects; it is not an outreach-automation plan. Once Maya and Leo have agreed whom to contact, they can build and review a search audience using our Sales Navigator prospect-list guide. ZenMode says it accepts a Sales Navigator search URL as a campaign input and resolves contacts to standard LinkedIn profiles before taking action. That documented handoff is a search URL, not a direct import of the jointly maintained account list. Check the search results against the approved accounts and contacts rather than assuming the list and campaign audience match.
Count LinkedIn accounts that will send outreach separately from people who collaborate on prospecting. On ZenMode’s US-dollar monthly pricing checked October 20, 2026, Practitioner lists Sales Navigator support and one LinkedIn account at $49/month; Master lists three accounts at $99/month and includes Practitioner features. If both sellers will send through their own LinkedIn accounts, one Practitioner plan does not cover that two-account requirement; Master has sufficient listed account capacity. That capacity choice does not change which Sales Navigator subscription they need for shared prospecting.
Finally, decide whether automated outreach is appropriate for the team’s accounts at all. ZenMode says campaign requests run within configured business hours, but it also says no tool can promise an account will never be restricted. Review the selected audience and messages before using a campaign; neither a shared Sales Navigator list nor an outreach plan makes every person in a search a suitable recipient.
