How to Retire a Marketplace Listing, Plan or Dimension

Retiring a marketplace listing means stopping new sales of a published product, plan or pricing dimension. What the buyers already on it keep, and for how long, is set per cloud, per product type and per object retired, and AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud share no single rule.

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Listings get retired for ordinary reasons: a plan that no longer fits the packaging, a product at end of life, a relaunch on a new listing. The question is always the same: what happens to the customers already on it, and what do we still owe them?

Two answers get repeated, and neither holds as a general rule. “They keep it until their contract ends” is close to AWS’s wording for a Restricted SaaS product; on Microsoft, SaaS customers can keep renewing after you stop distribution. “We owe them 90 days” comes from AWS’s page for AMI products and Microsoft’s schedule for virtual machine offers; Google wants a deprecation date at least 180 days out, and Microsoft states no notice period for stopping a SaaS offer.

The answer depends on the cloud, the product type and what exactly you retire, so this post takes them one row at a time. (The other end of the lifecycle, getting a product accepted in the first place, is in our listing readiness checklist.)

What does it mean to retire a marketplace listing?

Retiring a marketplace listing is stopping new purchases of a published product, or of one plan or pricing dimension within it, through the provider’s own request, while existing buyers keep whatever that provider’s rule for that object leaves them. AWS moves a product to Restricted. Microsoft uses Stop distribution for most offers and deprecation for virtual machines. Google deprecates a product and then deletes its listing.

What you retire changes the request as much as the cloud does:

What you retire	AWS	Microsoft	Google Cloud
The whole listing	A product	An offer	A product
One plan, tier or meter	A pricing dimension (SaaS) or an instance type (AMI)	A plan	A pricing plan

Two adjacent requests are not retirements. Hiding a listing only reduces discovery: Google reviews requests to take a product out of search individually and recommends against them, and Microsoft suggests hiding a heavily used virtual machine plan or offer before you deprecate it. And a different price on the same listing is a repricing; changing your marketplace price after launch covers what each cloud lets you edit.

What happens to existing buyers when you retire an AWS listing?

It depends on the product type. A Restricted SaaS product keeps existing subscribers “until their subscription or contract ends.” A removed AMI product keeps them “until they cancel their subscription,” and AWS requires you to support them for at least 90 days. A pricing dimension comes off a live product only if AWS Marketplace Seller Operations agrees to remove it.

Product type · what you retire	Ticket or form	New sales	Existing access	Renewals
SaaS · whole product	Update visibility change request to Restricted, with an optional replacement product ID; Seller Operations reviews it manually	Stop: “no new subscribers can be added”	Continues “until their subscription or contract ends”	Not stated on AWS’s SaaS pages
SaaS · pricing dimension	Restrict pricing dimensions, which for Limited and Public products sends you to a Seller Operations contact form	The dimension comes off the listing, if Seller Operations can do it	Not stated for a live product; AWS’s “doesn’t affect any active offer or customers” line covers the Catalog API route, which works only on drafts	Not stated
AMI · whole product	Under Server products, Update product visibility to Restricted, with a reason and an optional replacement product ID	Stop: “new customers can’t subscribe”	Continues “until they cancel their subscription”; you support them for at least 90 days, and AWS emails them	Not stated
AMI · instance type	Restrict instance change request under Server products	New buyers can’t use that instance type	Continues “for the length of their subscriptions”	Not stated

Four details change what you can promise:

• The removal page everyone quotes is the AMI page. “Removing a product from AWS Marketplace” sits under AMI-based products and starts from Server products; its 90-day support minimum, its email to buyers and “until they cancel” belong to that row. AWS’s SaaS lifecycle and settings pages state no support period, and the AMI page points to the seller terms for continuing-support requirements, so read yours before you set a SaaS date.
• Restricted stops new subscriptions; it doesn’t end existing ones. A SaaS subscription ends when the customer unsubscribes, so a pay-as-you-go subscriber on a Restricted product stays, and you keep metering them, until they do. Whether a contract’s automatic renewal still runs on a Restricted product, AWS’s SaaS pages don’t say: confirm with Seller Operations before you tell a customer either way.
• The replacement has to exist first. The replacement product ID “must belong to an existing Limited or Public product,” and AWS uses it “to notify current subscribers about the product restriction.” The visibility change “can take up to 37 days to complete,” with 24 hours to cancel before Seller Operations begins its audit.
• A dimension request is only a request. AWS’s own caveat: “Operations may not always be able to restrict pricing dimensions.” The Catalog API route works only on a draft product, and never on the last active Entitled dimension.

What happens to existing buyers when you retire a Microsoft Marketplace offer?

SaaS customers keep using an offer or plan you stop distributing, and can keep renewing it. Virtual machine offers retire by deprecation instead, on a dated schedule that leaves running VMs alone. Taking an offer away from customers who already bought it is a separate support request that needs their consent.

Product type · what you retire	Ticket or form	New sales	Existing access	Renewals
SaaS · whole offer	Stop distribution on the Offer overview page in Partner Center	Gone from the marketplace “within a few hours” of your confirmation	Customers “can still use it”	Customers can renew through Edit recurring billing and change to another live plan
SaaS · one plan	Stop distribution on the Plan overview page, then republish the offer; offered only when the offer has more than one plan	Stops once you republish	Customers “can still use it”	As for the whole offer: renew, or change to another live plan
VM · whole offer	Deprecate offer, confirming the offer ID; scheduled 90 days out on confirmation, and customers are notified	Out of search as soon as it’s scheduled; new deployments until the date, none after	Running VMs unaffected; scale sets can’t scale out after the date	Not stated
VM · plan or image version	Deprecate plan, or Deprecate on one image (each plan keeps at least one active image), then publish; a plan with reservation pricing can be deprecated only after one or three years	New deployments until the date; a plan’s free trials stop as soon as it’s scheduled	Running VMs unaffected; scale sets can’t scale out after the date	Not stated
Any offer · existing customers’ access	Support request under Microsoft Marketplace > Offer or App Delisting, Removal, or Termination	Not applicable	Removed only with partner and customer consent, naming the refund amount	Not applicable

• Stopping a SaaS plan doesn’t stop its revenue. Customers who previously acquired it “can renew their subscription using Edit recurring billing,” so moving them onto another plan is a conversation with each customer, not a setting.
• Other offer types that aren’t virtual machines use the same Stop distribution control, under Microsoft’s general rule that existing customers “can still use it but they can’t re-download or redeploy.” Stopped offers and plans stay in Partner Center as Not available and can be listed again.
• Check usage before you schedule a VM deprecation. Microsoft advises reviewing the Usage dashboard in marketplace analytics first; either way, new deployments continue until the date.
• Removal from existing customers is the consent route. The request needs “the offer name, offer ID, customer name, asset ID, and refund amount (in the customer’s currency)”; a screenshot of the customer’s agreeing email will do. When you initiate it, “the publisher owns communication of the removal to the customer.”

What happens to existing buyers when you retire a Google Cloud Marketplace product?

Google retires a whole product through a deprecation request dated at least 180 days after you file it. Once the product is deprecated its listing is permanently deleted, and running VM and Kubernetes deployments keep working. A SaaS pricing plan that anyone has ever bought can’t be deleted on your own.

Product type · what you retire	Ticket or form	New sales	Existing access	Renewals
SaaS · whole product	Deprecate product form in Producer Portal: a date at least 180 days after the request, a reason, and the listing ID to confirm; Google reviews it in up to five business days	None once deprecated: the listing is permanently deleted	Not stated on Google’s page	Not stated
VM or Kubernetes · whole product	The same Deprecate product form	None once deprecated: no purchases or new deployments	Active deployments keep running; customers can’t update them	Not stated
SaaS · pricing plan	Delete in Producer Portal, possible only if the plan has no entitlements, active or cancelled; otherwise, your Google Partner Engineer	The plan is gone	Not stated; any past buyer puts the deletion in the Partner Engineer’s hands	Not stated

• 180 days is a floor, not a default. The date “must be at least 180 days after the date that you fill out the form.” The reason you give is private (“Your customers don’t see what you input here”), so the customer notice is still yours to write.
• The page is titled “Delete a product” for a reason. After deprecation, “customers can’t purchase, subscribe to, or deploy the product.” Its only stated protection for existing customers covers VM and Kubernetes deployments, which “aren’t affected by the deletion.” It says nothing about active SaaS subscriptions, so ask your Partner Engineer what happens to them before you choose the date.
• A plan with any history can’t be self-deleted. Producer Portal deletes a pricing plan only if “it has no entitlements associated with it, including both active and cancelled entitlements.” Bought once, even by a customer who later cancelled, it goes through your Partner Engineer.

What should you check before you retire anything?

Who still holds the object, which private offers touch it, where its buyers go next, who tells them, and whether you can undo it. Work through those before the provider’s form, which is the last step, not the first.

1. Name the object and the product type. “Retiring a plan” means restricting a pricing dimension on AWS SaaS, stopping or deprecating a plan on Microsoft, and deleting one on Google Cloud. The row it lands on decides the rest.
2. List who still holds it: every active entitlement on that listing, plan or dimension, per cloud, with its end date and renewal setting. On Google Cloud, include cancelled entitlements; they’re what blocks deleting a plan.
3. Find the private offers that touch it. On AWS, “no new subscribers can be added” to a Restricted product, and the SaaS pages name no exception for an offer that hasn’t been accepted yet: close out open offers first, or ask Seller Operations. On Microsoft, a private offer falls back to its selected public offer term “when the private offer is no longer available”; if that term sits on the plan you’re stopping, ask Microsoft where those renewals land.
4. Stand up the replacement first. AWS accepts only an existing Limited or Public product as the replacement, and Microsoft SaaS customers move by changing to another live plan.
5. Decide who sends the notice. AWS emails current buyers of a removed AMI product, and Microsoft notifies VM customers with active deployments when a deprecation is scheduled. Where no page says the provider notifies anyone, including any removal you initiate on Microsoft, plan to write the notice yourself.
6. Know what you can undo. Microsoft’s stopped offers and plans can be listed again, and deprecated VM images, plans and offers restored, images only within a limited window. A restricted AMI instance type can be added back, but after an AMI product’s removal you can’t edit it or submit another sunset request. Google’s deletion is permanent.
7. Set the date from the row. Line up each clock that applies (Google’s 180-day minimum, Microsoft’s 90-day VM offer schedule, up to 37 days for an AWS visibility change) against the contract end dates from step 2, and plan to the longest.

Steps 2 and 3 are where the time goes, because each console answers them separately. In Suger, every entitlement is linked to its product, private offer, buyer account and CRM opportunity, and a workflow can list entitlements and offers by product, so “who is still on this listing?” is one query per product, asked the same way on every marketplace you’ve connected, rather than an export from each console.

When relisting is the reason you’re retiring

If you’re retiring an older AWS SaaS listing because you’re replacing it, AWS has already described the shape. Its guide to Concurrent Agreements, which SaaS listings created before June 1, 2026 get only by opting in, offers relisting as the alternative: “create a new Concurrent Agreements enabled listing, restrict the legacy one, and facilitate customer migration as contracts renew.”

The old listing is then the SaaS · whole product row above: Restricted, with the new listing as its replacement product ID, and customers moved as their contracts come up. Whether to relist at all is a separate decision with its own integration work, covered in opting an older AWS listing into Concurrent Agreements or relisting it.

Frequently asked questions

What happens to existing customers when you retire a marketplace listing?

It depends on the cloud, the product type and what you retire. A Restricted AWS SaaS product keeps subscribers until their subscription or contract ends. Microsoft SaaS customers can keep renewing after you stop distribution. On Google Cloud, running VM and Kubernetes deployments are unaffected by deletion.

Is there a standard notice period for retiring a marketplace listing?

No. Each rule covers one case: AWS’s 90-day support minimum is for removed AMI products, Microsoft schedules a VM offer’s deprecation 90 days out, and Google wants a deprecation date at least 180 days away. Neither AWS’s SaaS pages nor Microsoft’s stop-distribution steps set one.

Can you remove a pricing dimension from a live AWS Marketplace SaaS product?

Only by asking. For Limited and Public products, the Restrict pricing dimensions request sends you to an AWS Marketplace Seller Operations form, and AWS warns that “Operations may not always be able to restrict pricing dimensions.” The Catalog API route works only while a product is a draft.

Can you remove a Microsoft Marketplace offer from customers who already bought it?

Yes, through a support request, and only with consent from both you and the customer. The consent names the offer, offer ID, customer, asset ID and refund amount in the customer’s currency, and when you initiate the removal, telling the customer is your job.

Can you delete a Google Cloud Marketplace pricing plan that customers bought?

Not on your own. Producer Portal deletes a pricing plan only when it has no entitlements, active or cancelled, so a plan anyone has ever purchased needs your Google Partner Engineer.

What should you check before retiring a marketplace plan?

Who still holds it, which private offers reference it, where its buyers move, who sends the notice, and whether the change can be undone. On Google Cloud, count cancelled entitlements too; they block deleting a plan.

Takeaways

• Name the object before you file. A whole listing, a plan and a pricing dimension are different requests, and the product type changes the rule again.
• There is no universal notice period. AWS’s 90-day support minimum is for removed AMI products, Microsoft’s 90-day schedule is for VM offers, and Google’s floor is 180 days.
• Term-end access is one row, not a rule. AWS applies it to a Restricted SaaS product’s contracts; Microsoft SaaS customers can keep renewing after you stop distribution.
• Taking access away from existing buyers is its own request: consent and a refund amount on Microsoft, your Partner Engineer on Google Cloud.
• List the holders and the open private offers, stand up the replacement, then file.

Retiring a SKU on more than one marketplace means running these checks in each console. See how Suger manages marketplace listings and every change to them across clouds from one place.