Publishing a Transactable SaaS Offer

Go through this guide to understand the different stages of publishing a transactable SaaS offer in the commercial marketplace.

Table of contents

  1. Overview
  2. Understanding the SaaS offer
    1. Pricing in Azure Marketplace
  3. Gathering Information
  4. Technical Requirements
  5. Publishing the Offer
  6. Offer Validation
  7. Go-live
  8. Additional Resources

Overview

Publishing a transactable offer in the Azure Marketplace is a multi-step process that involves planning, gathering information, and publishing the offer. The process can be outlined in the following stages:

Understanding the SaaS offer

The SaaS offer type in Azure Marketplace is meant for software publishers who want to offer their software as a service to customers. In this model, the publisher hosts the software and the customer accesses it over the internet. The customer pays a subscription fee to access the software which implicitly includes the cloud cost and the solution cost. The customer does not have to worry about the infrastructure or the software maintenance. The publisher is responsible for the software updates and the infrastructure maintenance as well as bearing the hosting costs.

Pricing in Azure Marketplace

Another important aspect that you need to understand is the transactional capabilities availble in Azure Marketplace. The transactable offers must include at least one plan. Following is a high-level overview of how you can transact through the Azure Marketplace:

Pricing model: The pricing model for SaaS offer can be either a flat rate or per-user basis:

  • Per-user pricing: When you select this pricing model, you can set the per user price for your plans. The customer will be billed based on the number of users they have subscribed for automatically by the Azure Marketplace.
  • Flat rate pricing: When you select this pricing model, you can set the flat rate price for your plans. This option is suitable for solutions that do not fit the per-user pricing model. Selecting this model also allows you to make use of the metered billing capabilities. You can add several custom dimensions to your plan to bill the customers on a more granular basis. Custom dimensions also allow you to bill the customers on frequencies other than monthly or yearly.

The SaaS Accelerator provides a reference integration with Metered Billing APIs to facilitate the metered billing capabilities. You can refer to the SaaS Accelerator on GitHub for more information.

Gathering Information

Before you start creating the offer in Partner Center, you need to gather the following information:

  • Name: The name of the offer that will be displayed in the Azure Marketplace and/or AppSource.

  • Search results summary: A one-liner summary of the solution. This is used in the commercial marketplace listing search results.

  • Description: The description should include a thorough value proposition, key benefits, intended user base, any category or industry associations, in-app purchase opportunities, any required disclosures, and links to learn more about the solution.

  • Getting Started instructions: This field is required for transactable offers in the Azure Marketplace.

  • Search keywords (optional): Provide up to three search keywords that customers can use to find your offer in the online stores.

  • Privacy policy link: The URL for your company’s privacy policy. You must provide a valid privacy policy and are responsible for ensuring your app complies with privacy laws and regulations.

  • Contact information: You must provide the following contacts from your organization:

    • Support contact: Provide the name, phone, and email for when your customers open tickets. You must also include the URL for your support website.
    • Engineering contact: Provide the name, phone, and email to use directly when there are problems with your offer. This contact information isn’t listed in the commercial marketplace.
    • CSP Program contact (optional): Provide the name, phone, and email if you opt in to the CSP program, so those partners can contact you with any questions. You can also include a URL to your marketing materials.
    • Useful links (optional): You can provide links to various resources for users of your offer. For example, forums, FAQs, and release notes.

  • Supporting documents: You can provide up to three customer-facing documents, such as whitepapers, brochures, checklists, or PowerPoint presentations.

  • Media
    • Logos: Provide a PNG file for the Large logo. Partner Center uses this file to create a Small and a Medium logo. You can optionally replace these images later.
      • Large (from 216 x 216 to 350 x 350 px, required)
      • Medium (90 x 90 px, optional)
      • Small (48 x 48 px, optional)
    • Screenshots: You must add at least one and up to five screenshots with the following requirements, that show how your offer works:
      • 1280 x 720 pixels
      • PNG file type
    • Videos (optional): You can add up to four videos with the following requirements, that demonstrate your offer:
      • Name.
      • URL: Must be hosted on YouTube or Vimeo only.
      • Thumbnail: 1280 x 720 PNG file.

  • Preview audience: You can add Microsoft Account (MSA) or Microsoft Entra ID email addresses to preview your offer before it goes live. You can add up to 10 email addresses.

  • Plan details: You must provide at least one plan for your offer. Each plan must include the following details:
    • Plan name: The name of the plan.
    • Description: A description of the plan.
    • Markets: Selection of markets where you want to make the plan available.
    • Pricing details: A choice between Flat rate and Per user pricing models. Additionally, you can add custom dimensions for metered billing.

Technical Requirements

Listing a transactable SaaS offer in the Azure Marketplace requires the following technical integrations:

  • Landing page - The landing page is the account configration page for customers after they purchase the offer. The landing page is a web page that is hosted by the publisher and is used to configure the customer’s account. The landing page is a mandatory requirement for SaaS offers. This page should display the information about the purchase and request activation of the offer.

  • Single sign-on (SSO) - The landing page is required to have multi-tenant single sign-on (SSO) integration with Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) for customer authentication. The user authentication used by the SaaS solution can be anything.

  • API integration - The offer should have the Marketplace fulfillment APIs and the Billing APIs to manage the offer lifecycle and billing, respectively.

Publishing the Offer

Once you gathered the details, you can proceed with creating the offer in Partner Center. At any point of time, you can click on Review and publish button to understand what details are missing or need to be updated.

If all the page on review screen are green, you can click on Publish button to submit the offer for validation.

Offer Validation

After submitting the offer, it will go through the automated validation process and will be available in Preview stage. During this stage, only the users added in the Preview Audience list, will be able to see this offer in the Azure Marketplace and/or AppSource and will be able to test the end-to-end flow.

We recommend creating a test offer with test plans to go through the entire process of creation and validation with 0 (zero) cost. Once the validation is completed, you can create the actual offer with the actual pricing.

Go-live

After the offer has been tested and validated, you can click the Go Live button to make the offer available to all the customers in the Azure Marketplace and/or AppSource.

Offers that include custom billing dimensions will only listed on the Azure Marketplace and not on AppSource.

A live offer will look like as following in the Partner Center > Marketplace Offers > Your Offer page:

Published SaaS Offer: Published SaaS Offer

Additional Resources