Plan your SaaS product - AWS Marketplace
Plan your pricingPlan your billing integrationPlan your Amazon SNS integrationPlan how customers will access your product

Plan your SaaS product

Before you add your software as a service (SaaS) product to AWS Marketplace, you must first do some planning. This step is critical to the success of your product. A lack of planning can result in billing issues or you might have to re-create your product in AWS Marketplace.

Important

Most of your product's settings can’t be changed after you've configured them. If you need to change them after the product is created in AWS Marketplace, you probably need to create a new product with the correct settings.

Plan your pricing

There are three pricing models for SaaS products on AWS Marketplace. Choosing the right pricing model for your product is the most important decision you'll make as you plan your product. Choosing the wrong pricing model can set you back by weeks. The pricing model determines the payment options for your customers and the billing integration code that you need to write, test, and deploy. For information about the different types of pricing models, see SaaS product pricing.

Note

All SaaS pricing models support free trials. For more information, see SaaS free trials.

Plan your billing integration

One of the benefits of having a SaaS product on AWS Marketplace is consolidating billing. In order to take advantage of this benefit, you must integrate with the AWS Marketplace Metering Service or the AWS Marketplace Entitlement Service, depending on your chosen pricing model. These two services help you ensure that your billing and usage reporting is accurate.

After you plan your integration, you must test the integration with your product before it goes live. For more information about integration and testing, see Accessing the AWS Marketplace Metering and Entitlement Service APIs.

Plan your Amazon SNS integration

There are two Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topics that you can subscribe to for your SaaS product. For more information, see SaaS notifications. These messages can help you programmatically handle changes to subscriptions and contracts initiated by AWS or by your customers. Amazon SNS notifications can be programmatic triggers enabling customers to register for a new account on your product registration website. They can also deny customers with expired subscriptions from accessing your product. You have options for how your customers receive notifications depending on how you program the handling of these notifications.

Plan how customers will access your product

This section describes how to make your product accessible to buyers.

Plan your SaaS product registration website

Customers who buy your SaaS product need access to it. You must plan and implement how you want your customers to access the product. SaaS products support the following access options:

  • Quick Launch

  • AWS PrivateLink

  • Your own product website

To validate AWS Marketplace customers using your registration website, see SaaS customer onboarding.

Using Quick Launch for customers to access your product

Use the Quick Launch deployment option to reduce the time and resources that are required for buyers to configure, deploy, and launch your products. Quick Launch reduces the number of sites that buyers must visit during the process. For more information, see Configure Quick Launch.

You can use Using AWS PrivateLink with AWS Marketplace to configure your service as an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) endpoint service. Your customers can create a VPC endpoint and access your software across the AWS Cloud virtual network. Alternatively, you can provide access to your software product through a website you own and maintain, with customers creating a connection across the internet.

Using your own website

Your SaaS product is hosted in your environment and it must be accessed over the internet through a public endpoint that you manage and maintain, like a website. Typically, you have a website that customers use to register for your product, sign in to use the product, and access support for your product.