aws-marketplace-playbook · v1.0.0 · 2026-10-31 · sha256 5c4e266e065cdd92
aws-marketplace-playbook v1.0.0A
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--- name: aws-marketplace-playbook description: "Takes a B2B SaaS vendor onto AWS Marketplace as the ISV seller - whether to list, irreversible account and pricing model choices, going public, private offers, CPPO resale authorizations, EDP/PPA commit drawdown, and co-selling through ACE and ISV Accelerate. Use whenever a vendor mentions AWS Marketplace, a private offer, CPPO, burning a customer's AWS commit, the Deployed on AWS badge, or ACE, ISV Accelerate or FTR for its listing, even if they only ask how to sell through AWS. ISV side only: not buyers, not resellers. Do NOT use for listing copy or search rank (use samber/developer-platform-skills@integration-listing-optimization), for your own marketplace's billing (use samber/developer-platform-skills@app-marketplace-monetization-model), or for metering code." license: MIT metadata: author: Samuel Berthe version: "1.0.0" --- # AWS Marketplace playbook You take a SaaS product onto AWS Marketplace as the ISV seller. The listing is a procurement rail, not a demand channel: revenue comes from private offers to buyers who already spend on AWS. ## Commitments you cannot undo - **Seller account**: the AWS account you register becomes seller of record and cannot change once a product is listed. Use a fresh standalone account, or an organization whose accounts all share your legal entity: with tax inheritance, a member account takes the management account's legal entity. - **SaaS pricing model** (subscription, contract, contract with consumption, free) is fixed once the product is published to Limited. The wrong model means a new product. - **Dimension API names** never change; custom dimensions added for offers cannot be removed. - **Public price increases** freeze every further pricing update for at least 90 days† and reach existing subscribers only after AWS notifies them. Lower prices first, then raise. - **Selling authorizations** to resellers cannot be edited or extended once published; only deactivated. - **Seller opt-out of an auto-renewal** cannot be reversed; the buyer then needs a new offer. Signed payment schedules and net terms are frozen on the accepted offer; changing them takes a replacement offer the buyer must accept. | Rationalization | Why it fails | | -------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | "Register with our main production account." | It becomes seller of record forever and mixes Marketplace finance with infrastructure billing. | | "Start with pay-as-you-go, switch to contracts later." | SaaS pricing models never switch. Pick the model your sales team actually closes. | | "List it and AWS buyers will find us." | Public listings draw little inbound. Plan for private offers on deals you source. | | "Buyers can burn their AWS commit with us." | Only products holding the Deployed on AWS badge may still count, inside a share set in each buyer's private AWS contract. AWS must review your architecture first. | | "We'll test with private offers on the Limited listing." | Your seller account needs at least one public listing priced above zero before any private offer. A first product cannot carry one while Limited. | ## Interview Ask one question at a time; skip what the request answers. When you cannot ask, state an assumption per gap and flag it: 1. Where do the application plane, control plane and any third-party service touching customer data run: fully on AWS, partly, elsewhere? 2. Who buys: enterprise accounts with an AWS commitment, mid-market on card, self-serve? 3. How do you sell today: annual or multi-year contracts, seats or tiers, usage, overage? Typical deal size? 4. Stage: not registered, registered, integrating, Limited, Public, first offer sent, co-selling? Any other public paid product? 5. Any reseller or distributor a buyer insists on? Company country and buyer countries? 6. Target date for the first Marketplace deal, engineering weeks available, owner for offers. Re-rank the menus below against answers 1, 2 and 6, and say which answer moved which option. ## Fit verdict first | Verdict | When | Do differently | | ------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Transact with commit** | Answer 1 fully on AWS, answer 2 enterprise buyers holding AWS commitments | Earn the badge before the first offer; sell "burn your commit" with the buyer's AWS team confirming | | **Transact, no commit** | Off-AWS hosting, or buyers wanting AWS billing for vendor consolidation or procurement speed | No commit language in decks or offers; pitch one invoice and pre-approved terms; weigh a fully-on-AWS edition | | **Skip for now** | Self-serve or card buyers, no AWS-committed accounts in the pipeline, no one to own offers | Revisit when a named deal asks for it | ## Choose the listing type and pricing model Default rung: **SaaS contract** (public terms of 1, 12, 24 or 36 months†; custom lengths in private offers), because it maps to enterprise contracts and private offers. Move to contract with consumption when overage is part of your price book; to subscription only when the product is billed purely by metered usage. | Model | Fits | Your product must | | ------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------- | | SaaS contract | annual or multi-year seats, tiers; installments and auto-renewal need a contract model | check entitlements on every customer change | | SaaS contract with consumption | commit plus overage | check entitlements and meter overage hourly | | SaaS subscription | pure usage, monthly bills | meter every customer every hour | | SaaS free | lead capture | all dimensions at zero | - Every SaaS model supports a Marketplace free trial (7-90 days†); trials hosted off Marketplace may not be advertised. - Bill everything through listed dimensions: no card capture, no links to other clouds. - AMI, container and ML listings run in the buyer's account and pay a 20% public fee†. This skill treats them only as bring-your-own-license add-ons to a SaaS listing; their packaging and scanning rules sit in AWS's seller guide. - Professional services list separately and pair well with a SaaS private offer. ## Path to the first deal Run registration and engineering in parallel; the slowest step is rarely AWS review. 1. Create the seller account, then register: tax interview, bank account, a USD disbursement method (mandatory outside India), bank verification, and KYC when you sell into EMEA or use a UK bank. Practitioners report up to two weeks for KYC; editing details after approval restarts it. 2. Build the integration and test it against the review list in [references/private-offer-desk.md](references/private-offer-desk.md). 3. Publish to **Limited** at a reduced test price, allowlist test accounts, cancel every test subscription. 4. Request **Public** with the real price: Seller Operations reviews in 7-10 business days† from the request, longer on errors. Plan 3-6 weeks† from registration to Public. For a first product, no private offer goes out before this step passes. 5. Submit the architecture diagram for the Deployed on AWS badge when answer 1 qualifies. Link your AWS Partner Central and AWS Marketplace seller accounts, so offers attach to co-sell opportunities. 6. Send the first private offer to a deal already late-stage outside Marketplace, after the buyer pre-check in the reference. When a renewal date falls before Public can realistically pass, extend the customer briefly on your own paper; at the next renewal, set the renewal flag below. Never promise a Marketplace signature date earlier than review allows. ## Private offers - Keep the public price at list and discount in private offers. To show no public price at all, use the Request private offer button (a preview feature†): it needs ACE eligibility, linked Partner Central and seller accounts, a contract-based listing and zero active subscriptions, test ones included. - Flag existing customers moving their renewal onto Marketplace as **Existing Customer Moving to AWS Marketplace**: renewals pay 1.5%† instead of 3%†. Set the same renewal flag on a reseller's selling authorization. - Re-include unbilled installments when replacing an agreement: the replacement cancels the old pending payments. - For a buyer's chosen reseller, issue a CPPO selling authorization with a wholesale price. The extra 0.5%† fee comes out of your payout, computed on the wholesale price: price it into the partner discount. The reseller becomes seller of record for that deal's refunds and cancellations. Expiry, installments, net terms, future-dated renewals, geo-targeting, Private Marketplace approval and acceptance blockers live in [references/private-offer-desk.md](references/private-offer-desk.md). Read it before drafting any offer. ## Co-sell with AWS Ranked by deals unblocked per hour of effort: answer AWS-referred opportunities within 5 business days > submit your own opportunities to ACE with real AWS consumption > Foundational Technical Review (FTR) > ISV Accelerate > promotion credits on a closing deal. | Rung | You get | You owe | | ------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | ACE opportunities | AWS sees and validates your deal | net-new AWS usage; "for visibility only" entries count toward no threshold | | FTR | Validated status | an architecture and security review, roughly 2-4 weeks | | ISV Accelerate | AWS account managers paid incentives on your private offers; funding access | GA listing, Validated status, Payee Central account, 5 launched and 15 qualified opportunities in 12 months, one trained seller, $2,000† AWS revenue; AWS invites you once you qualify | | Promotion credits (MPOPP) | AWS credits to the buyer after acceptance | a request to your AWS partner team before the buyer accepts† | - Default rung: ACE from the first deal. ISV Accelerate arrives by invitation once the pipeline already meets the thresholds; never plan around applying early. - AWS sellers do not prospect for an unknown ISV. Expect field engagement 6-12 months after listing. ## Money and the sales team - Fees†, on pre-tax total contract value whatever the payment schedule: 3% SaaS public; new private offers 3% under $1M, 2% to $10M, 1.5% above; every renewal 1.5% at any size; CPPO +0.5%; South Korea buyers +1%; professional services 0.5%, 0% inside a qualifying multi-product offer set. - AWS invoices the buyer and, where marketplace-facilitator law applies, collects and remits the tax. Finance tracks the order without sending its own customer invoice. - AWS pays only after it collects, daily or monthly, so net terms move your cash by the same days; a buyer who never pays delays you, not AWS. - Pay reps the same commission and quota credit as direct, on acceptance. A fee deducted from commission routes deals around Marketplace. - Never inflate the public price to recover the fee. ## Output Key the answer on the stage. A single question gets a direct answer plus the rows it touches. A full plan contains: 1. Assumptions, one line per missing interview answer. 2. Fit verdict with the answer behind it. 3. Irreversible-choice register: seller account, pricing model, dimensions, reseller authorizations; owner and date each. 4. Timeline to the first deal, counted forward from today. 5. First-offer plan: buyer pre-check, fee tier, renewal flag, payment terms. 6. Co-sell rung for this quarter and the condition that moves up a rung. Mark every AWS figure (fees, durations, thresholds) with `†` and a footnote: verify against the current AWS Marketplace Seller Guide before quoting it. ## References - samber/developer-platform-skills@integration-listing-optimization - listing copy, media, search rank, reviews. - samber/developer-platform-skills@integration-partnership-strategy - whether AWS is the right partner to invest in. - samber/developer-platform-skills@salesforce-appexchange-playbook - the same job on Salesforce.