Choosing an Automate tier when you recruit in one specialism

You pay once for a tier and then run your sourcing inside accounts you already hold. That matters when your searches come in bursts: a quiet fortnight costs you nothing extra, and a busy one does not add a line to a monthly bill. The tiers differ by volume and by whether you bring your own model key, not by a menu of separate features.

Compare that with the subscription habit most recruiters know. A monthly tool charges whether you search or not, and the charge rises as your seat count does. Here the decision happens at purchase, which suits a solo specialism where you are the only person drawing on it. You weigh the tier once and then get on with the shortlist.

Read the published tiers as three answers to one question: how much work will pass through the platform. Starter and Growth sit on the platform's own setup, while the third tier hands model usage to your own key. Which one fits depends on your search rhythm, so note how often you run a sourcing sequence before you choose.

Each tier opens the same working surface: one screen where you connect the apps you already use, and a place for work to run inside those accounts. What changes between tiers is volume and, on the top tier, who supplies the model key. That keeps the choice simple, because you are not comparing feature lists but matching a tier to your workload.

Day to day this looks like a role and location search that reaches into the tools you already pay for rather than a database that ages between visits. You set a sequence, the platform runs it in your accounts, and the activity log shows what happened. Guided setup carries you through the first connection, which helps if you have never wired two tools together.

Volume is the lever you should think about most. A recruiter working one specialism runs fewer sequences than an agency desk covering several, so a lower tier often covers a full week of searching. If you already hold a model key and prefer to manage that side yourself, the unlimited tier is the one built around that arrangement.

Your objection is fair: a database that is stale by the time you search it wastes the fee you paid. The answer here is that the platform does not ship a candidate list of its own. It works through the accounts you connect, so the records you search are the ones your own tools hold and keep current.

That changes what you are buying. You are paying for a connection layer and a place for automated work to run, not for a static pool of names. When a candidate updates a record in a connected tool, your next sequence sees that change because it reads the same account. Nothing is copied into a separate store that drifts.

The doubt does not vanish entirely, and you should test it. Connect one account, run a search for a role and location you know well, and check the activity log against what you expected. If the results match the records you can see by hand, the staleness worry is answered for your own setup rather than on trust.

Set the three tiers beside your actual week. Count how many sourcing sequences you run, how many apps you connect, and whether you already hold a model key. A recruiter placing a handful of roles a month usually lands on the lower tier, while steady daily searching across several tools points higher. Write the count down before you look at the tiers again.

Then weigh the work you would otherwise do by hand: opening each app, copying a role and location between them, checking whether a record moved. The platform absorbs that repetition, and the activity log gives you a record of it. That time is the real comparison, not a feature grid, because the tiers share the same surface.

Finally, decide who carries model usage. If you would rather manage that through your own key, the unlimited tier matches; if not, the platform-side tiers keep it simpler. Either way the purchase is lifetime, so a wrong guess is a wrong purchase rather than a month you can cancel. Take the smallest tier that covers your count.