AWS Marketplace provides ways to list and sell all types of cloud solutions including SaaS products, Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), machine learning products, data products, container images, professional services, and more! The Forrester Wave Q4 2023 report lists the AWS marketplace as a leader in SaaS Marketplaces. With 3500+ SaaS listings across 70+ categories, there is potential for every B2B SaaS business looking to provide solutions to their customers using AWS.
Apart from the ability to make your solution more visible to AWS buyers, listing your B2B SaaS solution on AWS provides other benefits as well such as easy billing, seller reports, bigger deal sizes, flexible selling, and faster acquisition. This blog walks you through key steps to consider before your first AWS listing and recommendations for long-term success.
If you’re still unsure about the benefits of listing on the marketplace, check out our blog on what makes Marketplaces a game-changer for B2B SaaS.
Pre-listing checklist
Understanding the below items helps you succeed as you prepare to list your SaaS solution on the AWS marketplace. Refer to the included link in each section to learn more about the options available from the official AWS documentation.
Pricing model
You can choose to offer your customers different pricing models to suit their needs such as bandwidth, seats, size, usage, or other dimensions (up to 24). These different pricing plans can be made available at the same time to provide more choices to the buyer.
To list on the marketplace, you need to decide between the two options:
- Pay-as-you-go where the customer is charged based on consumption (SaaS Subscription)
- Paying for usage upfront (SaaS Contracts) where the AWS Marketplace Entitlement Service verifies the usage
Both of them have the option for you to add a free trial to the customer. Free trials are a great way to allow the user to get a sense of the value addition your product provides and for them to estimate how much to purchase.
Useful links: SaaS Pricing models | Creating SaaS free trials
Billing integration
Integrating your billing with the AWS billing is one of the key advantages of using the AWS marketplace. By doing so, buyers can easily purchase your solution to meet their unused spending commitments with AWS. This is also an advantage for companies who do not yet have a payment portal set up.
To leverage AWS Marketplace benefits, integrate with the AWS Marketplace Metering Service or the AWS Marketplace Entitlement Service, depending on your pricing model, to ensure accurate billing and usage reporting.
Before making your product publicly available, conduct integration testing by publishing it in a limited state, allowing the use of test accounts to verify proper configuration and functionality without public accessibility.
Useful links: SaaS integration metering APIs | Integration of your SaaS subscription product
Delivery method
Now that you have pricing decided and billing configured, it is time to figure out the delivery method, which decides how the user can access and use your product. There are three ways to do this.
AWS’s Quick Launch is a new offering that makes it safe and easy for buyers to get started by using step-by-step instructions and pre-configured Cloudformation templates.
- Quick Launch Deployment: Use Quick Launch to streamline the configuration, deployment, and launch of your product, minimizing the number of sites buyers need to visit in the process.
- AWS PrivateLink Access: Enable AWS PrivateLink to set up your service as an Amazon VPC endpoint, allowing customers to securely access your SaaS product within the AWS Cloud virtual network or provide access through a connection to your website over the internet.
- Own Website Access: Host your SaaS product in your environment, accessible over the internet through a public endpoint managed on your website, where customers can register, sign in, and access support for the product.
Useful links: Guide to configuring AWS Marketplace Quick Launch | Setting up PrivateLink Access
Notifications and updates
Setting up notifications helps you keep track of changes to customers’ subscriptions and contract entitlements in your AWS Marketplace listing is crucial as it empowers you to promptly and accurately manage access for specific customers. This ensures timely actions such as providing or revoking access, enhancing the overall customer experience, and adherence to contractual agreements.
Useful links: Amazon SNS notification for your SaaS product | Email notifications for marketplace events
Product information
Each marketplace listing requires general product information that has to be provided at the time of your initial listing. These can later be updated through the AWS Marketplace Management Portal (AMMP) as well.
Entering this information accurately is important and further using this space to reach the right audience by mentioning the right categories, updating title and description with target keywords, etc. are crucial to improved discoverability.
Useful links: General product information | AWS Marketplace Management Portal
Marketing planning
Before launching, think about the right marketing activities to drive initial traffic to your marketplace listing. Driving awareness among your existing customers and brand followers about your marketplace listing should be a top priority. This can be done by announcements through your social channels, and press releases, to name a few.
Tap into other AWS marketplace channels like authoring a blog for the AWS Marketplace blog. Join the AWS Partner Network and consider co-selling by participating in the APN Customer Engagement (ACE) Program.
Useful links: Best practices to drive traffic to your marketplace listing | Leverage Marketplace Led Growth (MLG) as your cloud GTM strategy
More useful links pre-listing
Final SaaS Product Integration checklist
Code examples for SaaS product integration
After marketplace launch
Once your SaaS solution is live on the marketplace, there is still more work to be done to ensure the product listing is successful and is visible to more buyers. It is also a channel to showcase the new features and capabilities of your product.
Using reports you get from the AWS marketplace, you may also choose to provide additional offerings or pricing models that better buyer needs and can help you grow faster. This section will explore the ongoing activities involved once a product is launched into the AWS marketplace.
Upgrades and renewals
For SaaS contracts and SaaS contracts with consumption products, the AWS Marketplace provides the flexibility to offer upgrades and renewals through private offers on active agreements. These offers allow sellers, including independent software vendors (ISVs) and channel partners, to grant new entitlements, provide pricing discounts, adjust payment schedules, or modify end-user license agreement (EULA) terms.
Sellers can also modify the number of units, and payment schedules, and add custom end dates through this feature. However, it’s important to note that amendments cannot specify a different seller of record from the original agreement, and users must have the necessary permissions to access the Agreements tab in the AWS Marketplace Management Portal.
Useful links: Submission process for PO upgrades and renewals | Permissions for AWS Marketplace Sellers
Offer free trials
Free trials are a good way for companies to attract new users to try out their products. During the trial period, the buyer can either sign up for the public offer or talk to the seller for a private deal. If they try a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product during its free trial and decide it’s not what you need, they don’t have to worry about it automatically becoming a paid subscription – they can just let the trial expire.
Free trials can be offered for both SaaS Contracts as well as for usage-based products. Products with free trials feature a “Free trial” badge next to the logo. The product procurement page provides details on trial duration and the amount of included free software usage.
Useful links: Creating a free trial offer for your SaaS contract product | AWS free trial for all product types
Seller reports
The AWS marketplace offers comprehensive seller reports for all registered sellers on the Marketplace. These reports encompass product usage, buyer details, billing, and payment information. These reports are generated daily, weekly, or monthly, starting at 00:00 UTC and covering the previous day through 24:00 UTC.
The reports are provided in .csv file format. Additionally, sellers have the option to configure Amazon SNS to receive notifications when data is delivered to their encrypted S3 bucket, along with notifications sent to the associated email address linked to the AWS account used for Marketplace registration.
Reports can further be configured using an API or using the reports dashboard in the AWS Marketplace Management Portal (AMMP). Access to these reports can be controlled by AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) permissions.
Useful links: Reports on AWS Marketplace Management Portal (AMMP) | API Guide for Seller Reports
Purchase Order management
Purchase Order Management for SaaS Contracts streamlines the procurement process by allowing users to add PO numbers during the normal transaction flow in AWS Marketplace. This eliminates the need for separate attribution in the AWS Purchase Order Management Console. This not only reduces administrative overhead but also enhances tracking and management, ensuring accurate reflection of PO numbers on AWS invoices for easy chargeback calculations and future reference in the Purchase Order Management Console.
Useful links: Purchase orders dashboard | Troubleshooting purchase orders
Building customer trust
Managing communication effectively is one way to build trust with your existing customers. However, showcasing this level of trust to other potential buyers through product ratings, reviews, testimonials, success stories, and case studies can be even more beneficial for growing the business.
Useful links: Understanding product reviews | Guide to marketing your product
Vendor Insights
Buyers evaluating products on the AWS Marketplace Vendor Insights dashboard can assess the security profile based on 10 categories, including “Access management” and “Data security and privacy.” These categories provide insights into how well the product addresses access controls and safeguards sensitive data to meet the buyers’ security requirements.
AWS Marketplace Vendor Insights simplifies software risk assessment for buyers by offering snapshots of a product’s security posture over time, facilitating comparisons. Sellers can utilize this feature to assess security postures at different times, aid decision-making, and access detailed snapshot information in the AWS Marketplace console.
Useful links: Guide to vendor Insights profile | Understanding snapshots
In conclusion, listing your B2B SaaS solution on the AWS Marketplace is just the start of the journey to your cloud marketplace success. Following these well-defined processes before and after a listing is key to ensuring your SaaS product’s success in the cloud marketplace. By utilizing all of the AWS-provided features, you can maximize your solution’s discoverability and unleash a new channel for growth. Though they require significant effort from your marketing, technical, and business teams, the overall benefits drastically outweigh the costs.
By following these steps, your SaaS solution can become one of the top bought solutions on the AWS marketplace and it can become a big new channel to grow your revenues.
As a trusted AWS partner, Labra.io has facilitated over 100 companies in establishing and scaling their cloud marketplace and co-sell operations. Sign up for a free demo and discover how we can empower you on your cloud success journey.
