How to Sell on Cloud Marketplaces: A Step-by-Step Guide

To sell on cloud marketplaces, you need to list your product on AWS Marketplace, Azure Marketplace, or Google Cloud Marketplace, configure your pricing model, set up billing and metering, and activate co-sell with cloud provider sales teams. Most ISVs can go live in 2-6 weeks with the right tooling.

Cloud marketplaces have become the fastest-growing B2B software distribution channel. Forrester projects that marketplace transactions will exceed $10 billion annually by 2028, driven by enterprise buyers who want to consolidate procurement, draw down committed cloud spend, and simplify vendor management. For ISVs (independent software vendors), selling through marketplaces unlocks access to millions of cloud buyers, streamlined procurement, and co-sell support from cloud provider sales teams.

This guide walks you through the eight steps to start selling on cloud marketplaces, from choosing where to list to measuring and optimizing your marketplace revenue.

Step 1: Choose your cloud marketplaces

The first decision is where to list. AWS Marketplace, Azure Marketplace, and Google Cloud Marketplace each serve different buyer populations, charge different fees, and offer distinct co-sell programs. Most ISVs start with one marketplace and expand to multi-cloud within 6-12 months.

Here is a comparison of the three major cloud marketplaces:

Factor	AWS Marketplace	Azure Marketplace	Google Cloud Marketplace
Listing fee	No upfront fee	No upfront fee	No upfront fee
Transaction fee	3% standard (reduced rates for ISV Accelerate participants)	3% standard (reduced for IP co-sell eligible offers)	3% standard
Buyer base	Largest install base; strong in startups, mid-market, and enterprise	Dominant in enterprise; strong Microsoft ecosystem overlap	Growing fast; strong in data/AI workloads
Listing types	SaaS, AMI, Container, Professional Services, Data	SaaS, Virtual Machine, Container, Managed App, Consulting	SaaS, VM, Kubernetes
Co-sell program	AWS ACE (APN Customer Engagements)	Microsoft Partner Center referrals	Google Cloud Partner Advantage
Buyer incentive	Draws down AWS commit (EDP)	Draws down Azure commit (MACC)	Draws down Google Cloud commit (CUD)

Snowflake Marketplace is also emerging as a distribution channel for data and AI products. If your product involves data sharing, analytics, or AI/ML models, consider listing there as well.

Recommendation: List on multiple marketplaces to maximize buyer reach. Buyers purchase where they have committed cloud spend, so being available on AWS, Azure, and GCP ensures you never lose a deal because of procurement constraints. A platform like Suger lets you manage listings across all three marketplaces from a single dashboard, eliminating the need to maintain separate workflows for each cloud.

Step 2: Prepare your product listing

Your product listing is the storefront that cloud marketplace buyers see when evaluating your software. Each marketplace has specific requirements, and getting your listing right is critical for approval and discoverability.

What you need to prepare:

• Product name and description: A clear, keyword-rich product name and a detailed description that explains what your software does, who it is for, and what problems it solves. Each marketplace has character limits and formatting rules.
• Pricing information: Your pricing model and specific pricing tiers (covered in Step 3).
• Logo and media: A high-resolution product logo that meets each marketplace’s size and format requirements. Some marketplaces also accept screenshots and demo videos.
• EULA or standard contract: Your end-user license agreement or, on AWS, the option to use the Standard Contract for AWS Marketplace (SCMP). Azure and GCP have their own standard contract options.
• Support information: A support URL, support email, and documentation links.
• Technical configuration: For SaaS products, you need a registration URL and fulfillment endpoint. For AMI/VM products, you need to configure the machine image.

Compliance requirements differ by marketplace. AWS requires FTR (Foundational Technical Review) for certain listing types. Azure requires co-sell readiness validation through Microsoft Partner Center. GCP requires an ISV Partner designation for certain benefits.

Preparing listings manually for each marketplace is time-consuming and error-prone. Suger automates listing creation and formatting across AWS, Azure, and GCP, ensuring compliance with each marketplace’s requirements and reducing time-to-list from weeks to days.

Step 3: Configure your pricing model

Pricing flexibility is critical for winning enterprise deals on cloud marketplaces. Each marketplace supports multiple pricing models, and the right choice depends on your product, your buyers, and your sales motion.

SaaS subscriptions: Fixed monthly or annual pricing tiers. Buyers select a plan and are billed automatically through the marketplace. This is the simplest model and works well for products with predictable usage patterns.

Usage-based (pay-as-you-go): Buyers pay based on consumption metrics like API calls, data processed, storage used, or active users. This model requires metering integration (covered in Step 4) and appeals to buyers who want to start small and scale.

Contract-based: Buyers commit to a fixed payment schedule, often with custom terms negotiated through private offers. This is the dominant model for enterprise deals and allows for annual or multi-year commitments with upfront or scheduled payments.

Free trials: All three marketplaces support free trial periods that convert to paid subscriptions. Free trials lower the barrier to adoption and are a powerful tool for product-led growth on marketplaces.

BYOL (Bring Your Own License): Buyers who already have a license can activate it through the marketplace to draw down their cloud commit. This is useful for transitioning existing customers to marketplace billing.

For enterprise deals, you will frequently need to offer custom pricing through private offers (Step 5). The ability to quickly configure and adjust pricing models across marketplaces is a competitive advantage. Suger supports all pricing models across AWS, Azure, and GCP and lets your sales team configure pricing without engineering involvement.

Step 4: Set up billing and metering

Marketplace billing is one of the biggest operational advantages of selling through cloud marketplaces. The cloud provider handles invoicing, payment collection, and revenue disbursement, which means buyers can use their existing cloud procurement process and draw down committed spend.

How marketplace billing works:

1. A buyer purchases your product through the marketplace (either through a public listing or a private offer).
2. The cloud provider adds the charge to the buyer’s existing cloud bill.
3. The cloud provider collects payment from the buyer.
4. The cloud provider disburses revenue to you (minus the marketplace fee), typically on a monthly cycle.

Usage metering for consumption models: If you offer usage-based pricing, you must integrate with each marketplace’s metering API to report consumption data. AWS uses the Marketplace Metering Service, Azure uses the Marketplace Metered Billing API, and GCP uses the Procurement API with usage reporting. Metering must be accurate, timely, and resilient to failures, because any missed usage data means lost revenue.

Revenue reconciliation: You need to reconcile marketplace disbursements against your internal records. This includes tracking gross revenue, marketplace fees, refunds, and net disbursements. Without automation, reconciliation across multiple marketplaces becomes a significant operational burden.

Suger handles billing integration and usage metering across all three marketplaces through a unified API. You instrument your metering once, and Suger routes usage data to the correct marketplace API, handles retries and error recovery, and provides a single view of revenue across all channels.

Step 5: Create private offers for enterprise deals

A private offer is a custom pricing agreement between a seller and a specific buyer on a cloud marketplace. Private offers are the standard mechanism for closing enterprise deals through marketplaces, because they allow you to negotiate terms that go beyond your public listing pricing.

Why private offers matter:

• Custom pricing: Offer volume discounts, enterprise tiers, or negotiated rates that differ from your public listing.
• Custom terms: Set contract duration, payment schedules (upfront, monthly, annual, or custom installments), and renewal terms.
• Custom EULAs: Attach negotiated legal terms specific to the buyer.
• Draw down committed spend: Enterprise buyers are motivated to route purchases through marketplaces to consume their committed cloud spend (EDP on AWS, MACC on Azure, CUD on GCP).

How private offers work:

1. Your sales team negotiates pricing and terms with the buyer.
2. You create a private offer in the marketplace seller portal (or through an automation tool) with the agreed terms.
3. The buyer receives a unique link to accept the offer.
4. Once accepted, billing begins according to the agreed schedule.

Approval workflows: For many ISVs, private offers require internal approvals from deal desk, finance, or legal before they can be extended to buyers. Managing these approvals through email or spreadsheets introduces delays that can stall deals.

Suger streamlines private offer creation with built-in approval workflows, templates, and multi-marketplace support. Your sales team can create, route for approval, and send private offers across AWS, Azure, and GCP from a single interface, reducing offer creation time from days to minutes.

Step 6: Activate co-sell with cloud providers

Co-sell is the process of collaborating with cloud provider sales teams to jointly sell to customers. When done well, co-sell gives you access to the cloud provider’s sales force, deal registration, and pipeline acceleration. Co-sell-driven deals close faster and at higher values than marketplace-only deals.

Co-sell programs by cloud provider:

• AWS ACE (APN Customer Engagements): Register opportunities in AWS Partner Central. AWS sales reps can accept, reject, or add their own opportunities. Successful co-sell earns ISV Accelerate benefits including reduced marketplace fees.
• Azure Partner Center: Submit referrals through Microsoft Partner Center. IP co-sell eligible offers earn MACC eligibility for buyers and reduced marketplace fees for sellers. Microsoft sales reps actively share referrals with partners who have achieved IP co-sell status.
• Google Cloud Partner Advantage: Register deals through the Partner Advantage portal. GCP is investing heavily in partner-led sales, making this a high-growth co-sell channel.

How co-sell works in practice:

1. Register referrals: Your sales team submits a deal registration when they identify an opportunity involving a cloud provider’s customer.
2. Accept inbound referrals: Cloud provider sales reps send you referrals when their customers express interest in your category.
3. Track pipeline: Monitor the status of co-sell opportunities from registration through close.
4. Report wins: When a deal closes, report the win to earn co-sell credit and unlock additional benefits.

The operational challenge is that each cloud provider has a different portal, different data fields, and different approval workflows. Managing co-sell across AWS, Azure, and GCP manually means logging into three separate portals and maintaining three separate pipelines.

Suger unifies co-sell management across all three cloud providers. Submit referrals, accept inbound leads, and track pipeline from a single dashboard. Suger also automates referral submission by syncing opportunity data from your CRM, eliminating manual data entry and reducing submission errors.

Step 7: Integrate with your CRM

Your CRM is the system of record for your sales pipeline, and cloud marketplace deals need to flow through the same pipeline as your direct sales deals. Without CRM integration, your sales team ends up managing marketplace opportunities in a separate system, leading to data silos, missed handoffs, and inaccurate forecasting.

Why CRM integration matters:

• Single pipeline view: Sales reps see marketplace deals alongside direct deals in Salesforce or HubSpot.
• Automated opportunity creation: When a private offer is accepted or a co-sell referral is received, an opportunity is automatically created or updated in your CRM.
• Bidirectional sync: Changes in your CRM (deal stage updates, close dates, amounts) sync back to the marketplace tools, and marketplace events (offer accepted, subscription activated) sync to your CRM.
• Accurate reporting: Finance and sales leadership get a unified view of revenue across all channels.

Suger integrates natively with Salesforce and HubSpot, providing bidirectional sync between your CRM and cloud marketplace operations. Marketplace events automatically update CRM records, and CRM data flows into co-sell submissions and private offer workflows. This eliminates duplicate data entry and ensures your CRM reflects the full picture of your marketplace business.

Step 8: Measure and optimize

Once you are live on cloud marketplaces, the next step is measuring performance and optimizing your marketplace go-to-market motion. Without visibility into key metrics, you cannot identify bottlenecks or demonstrate marketplace ROI to leadership.

Key metrics to track:

• Offer acceptance rate: What percentage of private offers sent are accepted by buyers? Low acceptance rates may indicate pricing issues, slow approval workflows, or poor buyer experience.
• Time to close: How long does it take from private offer creation to buyer acceptance? Faster cycle times mean faster revenue recognition.
• Marketplace revenue by cloud: Revenue broken down by AWS, Azure, and GCP, so you can allocate resources to the highest-performing channels.
• Co-sell pipeline: Number of referrals submitted, referrals accepted, and co-sell-influenced revenue. This demonstrates the value of your cloud partnerships.
• Buyer conversion rate: For public listings with free trials, what percentage of trial users convert to paid subscriptions?
• Metering accuracy: For usage-based products, how closely does reported usage match actual consumption? Discrepancies indicate metering issues that cost you revenue.

Reporting dashboards: Each marketplace has its own reporting tools, but consolidating data across AWS, Azure, and GCP into a single view is essential for decision-making.

Suger provides unified reporting and analytics across all marketplaces. Track revenue, offers, co-sell pipeline, and buyer activity from a single dashboard. Export data to your BI tools or share reports with leadership to demonstrate marketplace ROI.

Frequently asked questions

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Get started with cloud marketplace selling

Selling on cloud marketplaces is no longer optional for B2B SaaS companies. Buyers expect to find and purchase software through their cloud provider, and ISVs that are not listed are losing deals to competitors who are.

The eight steps in this guide cover everything you need to go from zero to live on AWS, Azure, and GCP marketplaces. The challenge is not any single step, but managing the complexity of multiple marketplaces, pricing models, billing systems, co-sell programs, and CRM integrations simultaneously.

Suger automates the entire cloud go-to-market workflow. From listing creation to billing, private offers, co-sell, CRM integration, and reporting, Suger gives your team a single platform to manage marketplace operations across all clouds.

Schedule a demo to see how Suger can get you selling on cloud marketplaces in weeks, not months.