The AWS Marketplace has been around since 2012, but this year Amazon launched the new SaaS Contracts capability. The SaaS Marketplace has supported metered listings for a while, but the new Contracts capability allows vendors to sell their products based on entitlement instead.
To promote this new functionality AWS is doing a couple things you need to know about leading up to re:Invent. First, they are offering a promotion to give away free AWS credits to companies who complete a listing before November 18th (find out how to qualify below). Second, they are planning to include qualifying products in re:Invent promotional materials and will create a special landing page featuring new listings on the AWS site!
This promotion sounds great, but there are a couple big issues that might make it problematic for your company: you might not have the development resources to complete a full AWS integration before November 18th, or you might not even have a SaaS product. The good news is that either way Tackle can still help if you act quickly.
Listing the Hard Way
You’re probably thinking that the only way to list your product in the AWS Marketplace is to do a complete technical integration between AWS and their SaaS product – otherwise known as the hard way. Here is a high level overview of what that process looks like:
The first step to completing your listing is to register as a seller in the AWS Marketplace Management Portal. AWS will typically approve this request in 1 or 2 weeks.
Next, you’ll need to start an internal development project to integrate your product with the AWS APIs. This 21 page PDF describe this process. The time the integration takes will depend on the complexity of your product and the number of engineering resources you are willing to dedicate, but I would conservatively estimate it between 4-6 weeks.
Not so fast though. To test your integration, you will probably need to submit a test listing to the Marketplace. This is a listing that will only be visible to your internal development team with a $0 price. This will allow your engineers to verify that their integration works as expected and to create a test suite. Approval of this listing will take about 2 weeks.
Once all of the above is finished you’ll be able to submit your real listing for approval. AWS will test your listing more thoroughly at this point, so this process will take between 2-5 weeks.
Even in the best case scenario, finishing the listing before November 18th is pretty unlikely.
Tackle Upstream – The Easy Button
Tackle recently launched our new Upstream product that makes listing in the AWS Marketplace using the SaaS Contracts method quick and painless. Think of Tackle as your AWS Concierge, guiding you the process. We’ll gather all the information needed from your team and take care of the tedious submission process for you.
Using our Upstream software, you wont even have to do a technical integration to get started. Going through the full integration process is still an option down the road, but we’ll allow you to “get your feet wet” with a SaaS Contract listing to see if it’s a good fit for your product.
Some of the benefits of using Upstream to list your product include:
- You don’t need to have a SaaS product to get started
- No changes to your product are required
- We wont distract your development team
- Tackle will help you navigate the AWS listing process
Best of all, we’ll get your listing done before re:Invent.
How To Qualify for Promotional Credit
To qualify for $10,000 in the AWS Credit you need to have an existing “redirect” or “informational” listing. This means that you have a listing that simply points to your main site without giving customers the ability to make a purchase directly through the Marketplace.
Here is an example of an informational listing. Note the “Visit Site” button simply links to the vendor’s website instead of allowing customers to buy the product.
Note that AWS is likely to phase out all Informational listings over the next 12 months.
Event if you don’t qualify for this promotion, Tackle’s flexible pricing structure still makes it very cost effective to list in the marketplace.
Conclusion
Listing your product in the AWS SaaS Marketplace before November 18th can get your company some very valuable free publicity leading up to AWS re:Invent 2017. In some cases you might even qualify for $10,000 in additional AWS credit! Using Tackle, you can easily complete your listing before the deadline without involving your engineering team.
Contact our sales team at sales@tackle.io to learn more!
