Listing on cloud marketplaces: Overcoming the entry barrier

The world of software sales has changed. On the one hand, typical B2B sales cycles have increased. The typical B2B buying journey is now 211 days long. Forrester reported that 75% of B2B marketers say their prospects are taking longer to commit to purchases. 

On the other hand, Gartner research has found that 61% of B2B buyers are happier to use digital channels rather than speak to salespeople when doing their research. 

Pete Handerson, the Cloud Marketplace GTM Lead from Google Cloud, highlights the buyers' perspective in the SaaS commerce world. Buyers are increasingly moving towards an ecosystem where they can avoid lengthy contract negotiations and spend less time provisioning and more time utilizing and deriving value from the software.

In the context of all these developments, how can B2B SaaS businesses and GTM teams plan ahead? How can they reduce sales cycles and create seamless purchase experiences for the buyer?

Cloud marketplaces are the logical answer. In this blog, we’ll explore the nuances of getting listed as a seller and how you can make the process easier for your teams.

TL;DR

• Cloud marketplaces are rapidly becoming a preferred buying channel for SaaS, helping reduce sales cycles and unlock access to pre-committed cloud spend.
• For new sellers, listing on cloud marketplaces is often the biggest barrier to entry due to complex documentation, technical dependencies, and ongoing operational overhead.
• With the right approach (and platforms like Clazar) to simplify listing, pricing, and integrations, SaaS teams can overcome this entry barrier and turn marketplaces into a scalable growth channel. 

Cloud marketplace adoption is growing exponentially

The adoption of cloud marketplaces is on the rise. Our State of Marketplace and Co-sell report found that 89% of companies surveyed are already transacting on one or more hyperscaler marketplaces.

What are the driving forces behind the increased readiness for adoption?


1. You have to be where your customers are. With a massive $900 billion+ pre-committed cloud spend in 2026 (that can be earmarked to purchase third-party software), buyers are on cloud marketplaces, so sellers must be too.
2. Cloud marketplaces are more than a pretty front-end. They help overcome many of the traditional purchase blockers by offering product trials, promotional offers, pay-as-you-go pricing, simplified and consolidated billing, and more.
3. Sales-led, custom-negotiated deals are moving toward automation. The legal agreements called EULA (End-user license agreements) are now standardized online by hyperscalers for easy consumption. This, in turn, speeds up the sales process and saves months of time on agreement changes and legal team dependencies.

Why is cloud marketplace GTM useful for software sellers?

For software sellers, a cloud marketplace Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy isn't just a new "sales channel", but a way to profitable growth. 

On cloud marketplaces, sellers can avail the following benefits:

1. Expand your business to new markets, segments, and geographies. Marketplaces handle the complexities of international tax, currency conversion, and local compliance.
2. Generate new leads and sales opportunities. Sellers on AWS have reported winning 40% net new business through marketplace deals.
3. Upsell and cross-sell your solutions as your customers move their workloads to the cloud.
4. Market your solutions for specific industry workloads to reduce sales cycles, accelerate sales, and increase deal profitability. For example, being present on AWS Marketplace can help you close deals 50% faster. 
5. Get actionable insights on your performance and learn to maximize sales outcomes.

Did You Know: Selling on AWS Marketplace generates $2 million in efficiency savings for companies.

Watch Ben Anderson of Acryl Data talk about the state of cloud marketplaces and the need for GTM teams to adopt them.

With a pool of concrete benefits, cloud marketplaces are clear winners in democratizing software sales. The question is, how can I get started?

The challenge of marketplace listing

While GTM teams might realize the advantages of selling on cloud marketplaces, they often face what our CEO, Trunal Bhanse, calls a great entry barrier: the listing process. 

Listing requires the technical expertise of the engineering teams to configure and integrate cloud marketplaces flawlessly. This creates a dependency on internal teams for the GTM teams to start the journey. 

Here are the main and real challenges teams face when considering listing on a cloud marketplace: 

1. The Marketplace journey is not a one-time effort: Marketplaces are evolving daily, requiring the engineering team’s constant bandwidth to manage them and facilitate faster scaling for the GTM teams.
2. DIY is challenging: Integration and maintenance are arduous with even large engineering teams. As marketplaces are so dynamic, sales processes and GTM ops have to stay agile to match. Therefore, GTM teams will have to absorb changes at both ends and be on top of their game constantly. This can distract engineering teams from their core engineering goals.
3. List and forget is a big no: The biggest myth around marketplaces is that they generate revenue from day one. The ground reality is that, like any other GTM channel, marketplaces require time and effort to scale to success.

In this video, we unpack the strategic, technical, and operational nuances of getting listed on cloud marketplaces.

So, how can GTM teams triumph over the great entry barrier? Here’s the checklist to consider before listing on cloud marketplaces.

Three things to consider when getting listed

Getting listed on a cloud marketplace can be a complex process, but with the right approach, it can be a rewarding experience for your GTM teams. Aayush Bahuguna, CTO and co-founder of Clazar, underscores the importance of understanding the nuances of each marketplace, as the one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t yield positive results on marketplaces.

Here are three vital aspects to consider and prepare before starting your cloud marketplace listing process:

1. Start with (extensive) documentation

Irrespective of which cloud operator you choose (AWS, Azure, GCP), the hyperscaler documentation is over 450 pages long and detailed. 

Getting the hang of the extensive documentation takes months. It takes even more time to keep track of changes in the documentation. However, this is a non-negotiable step in your marketplace listing process. 

Fortunately, with a co-pilot like Clazar, this step becomes void, as our team of experts is well-versed in navigating the process and will handle it for you.

Also Read:How to list on AWS Marketplace

You must be mindful of the information you provide, as there is no page preview option if you decide to take the DIY route. You can avoid this by choosing platforms like Clazar that give you a listing preview option, so you can make changes immediately and accurately.

3. Map pricing and legal terms

Pricing

 When listing on marketplaces, you can select from flexible pricing options that include free trial, hourly, monthly, annual, multi-year, and Bring Your Own License model (BYOL), and be billed from one source. 

The marketplace handles billing and payments; charges appear on customers’ consolidated cloud bills.

SaaS sellers need to configure their pricing model for Marketplace listing. Typically, this involves:

1. The basic components they will charge their buyers for
2. Upfront prices and usage-based prices
3. Configuring this pricing model for different contract durations
4. If offering free trials, configuring its specifics in their MP listing pricing

The challenge businesses often face is mapping and matching their current pricing model with the hyperscalers’ pricing model. This requires deep expertise in the nuances of each marketplace and navigating through them.

Before mapping the pricing model, here are a few questions to consider:

1. How can I understand the building blocks of marketplace pricing?
2. Should I offer a free trial or a zero-dollar private offer?
3. How can I use the best permutations and combinations of pricing models?
4. How can I use usage-based billing on marketplaces?

“When starting to work with marketplaces, the financial side requires defining a lot of processes and handling data from very scattered sources. Clazar makes this much easier by providing visibility and simplifying data extraction, since each marketplace normally has information dispersed in ways that are not very accessible.”

Macarena P

Head of Finance | Tinybird

Legal

To simplify the procurement process, you can use standardized license terms for public product listings and private offers readily available on marketplaces. You can also choose a custom EULA for your contract that requires legal intervention.

Once these steps are completed, you can submit your listing to the marketplace and wait for the pages to go live. If done manually, this process can take anywhere between a couple of weeks and several months. 

At this stage, there is a fair amount of operational involvement between the seller and Marketplace solution engineers, who do in-depth integration testing of the listing and run it through multiple scenarios. Any single miss can easily delay the listing by like 10 days or so. 

For new sellers, what lies ahead in this stage is often unclear, so it's always better to have a concierge-like Clazar navigate it.

Facets picked Clazar to get listed and start selling on all three cloud marketplaces with white-glove implementation.  

“Clazar comes with deep expertise on all the three Hyperscalers and helped us get started quickly. It eased the day-to-day operations of managing these marketplaces by bringing them together on a centralized platform. ”

Pravanjan Choudhury

CEO | Facets.Cloud

The average listing time for marketplace sellers with Clazar as a co-pilot has been ten days. The fastest go-live time has been two days from the date of submission.

The next steps after getting listed 

Listing is just the beginning of the sales journey on cloud marketplaces. Once your product is live on a cloud marketplace, you must:

1. Drive traffic to the marketplace listing page
2. Align sales teams with marketplace selling
3. Create and send private offers
4. Drive new transactions
5. Expand horizons with co-selling

Each of these steps requires technical and operational expertise, making the DIY model an unscalable option.

Also Read: How to list on Google Cloud Marketplace

Make the wiser choice with Clazar

Technical expertise should never be a roadblock for GTM teams adopting promising GTM channels like cloud marketplaces. Your teams should be free to focus on sales without worrying about the operational complexities of the marketplace. 

Clazar has been a successful co-pilot in steering the marketplace journey for many GTM leaders, understanding their nuances and helping them get started and scale revenue. 

Our platform helps you to manage your listings, offers, contracts, and more across all cloud marketplaces in one place. With its user-friendly interface, teams can seamlessly go live and manage cloud marketplace listings without needing a dedicated sales or engineering team.

To learn how you can get started on your cloud marketplace journey, talk to an expert today.

Top FAQs

1. What is a cloud marketplace?

A cloud marketplace is an online platform operated by hyperscalers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, where businesses can buy, deploy, and manage third-party SaaS solutions using their existing cloud commitments.

2. Why are cloud marketplaces becoming popular in SaaS commerce?

Cloud marketplaces are growing because they help buyers procure software faster, leverage committed cloud spend, simplify contracts through standardized EULAs, and eliminate lengthy procurement cycles.

3. How do cloud marketplaces help reduce sales cycles?

Cloud marketplaces shorten sales cycles by enabling:

• Pre-approved procurement paths
• Standardized legal contracts
• Faster provisioning
• Ability to use existing cloud budgets
  Together, these eliminate procurement bottlenecks and accelerate deal closures.

4. Why is “DIY marketplace listing” risky?

The DIY approach is risky because:

1. Marketplaces evolve every few weeks
2. Engineering teams must constantly maintain integrations
3. GTM teams depend on technical teams to progress
4. Any small integration error can delay listing by weeks
5. Internal efforts cost more than expected due to continuous upkeep

5. How long does it take to get listed on marketplaces?

Listing can take weeks to several months if done manually. Testing, integration approvals, and iteration cycles often create delays. With expert support, the process can be reduced to days.

6. Can Clazar help me create and publish my cloud marketplace listing?

Yes. Clazar acts as a Cloud GTM co-pilot and builds your marketplace listing for you. You simply provide product and pricing information in Clazar’s UI, get a real-time preview of the final listing page, and Clazar handles end-to-end publishing.

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