Public vs Private Cloud Marketplace Offers: Which Should You Use?

What is a public marketplace offer?

A public offer is a product listing in a cloud marketplace catalogue. Any eligible customer can find it by search or browsing, review the pricing and licence terms and, for transactable listings, subscribe without speaking to the seller. Every buyer in a given market sees the same public plans, list pricing and standard terms.

Not every public listing is transactable. On Microsoft Marketplace, for example, a Contact Me listing only lets customers ask the seller to get in touch, and with bring your own licence (BYOL) the customer buys the software licence from the seller outside the marketplace.

Public offers suit products with standard packaging, such as a usage-billed virtual machine image, a container app or a SaaS plan with fixed tiers. They also set the reference point for private deals, which Microsoft describes as off-list pricing from publicly available offers.

What is a private offer?

A private offer is a set of negotiated commercial terms for a marketplace product, extended to one specific customer. It can carry a custom price or discount, custom licence terms, a defined contract duration and an agreed payment schedule. Only the customer accounts or billing account it is addressed to can view and accept it.

In most cases the software itself does not change: the customer deploys the same image, container or SaaS product that public buyers get, and only the price, terms and billing schedule differ. Some products, such as professional services on Azure, are sold only through private offers.

How do private offers work on Azure, AWS and Google Cloud?

The pattern is the same on all three clouds: the seller builds the offer against a specific customer identifier, an authorised user on the customer side accepts it, and the purchase is billed through the cloud provider. The identifiers, acceptance roles and channel variants differ.

Microsoft Marketplace does not currently display private offers; authorised users view, accept and purchase them through Private Offer Management in the Azure portal. Azure also has private plans, which can offer special technical configurations but lack some important private offer capabilities.

How are marketplace purchases billed?

Transactable public purchases and accepted private offers are both billed through the customer's existing cloud billing relationship. On AWS, an accepted private offer becomes an agreement and is invoiced with the same tools used for all AWS Marketplace transactions. On Google Cloud, the offer is tied to a Cloud Billing account and charged upfront or monthly depending on the payment schedule. On Azure, the offer is accepted against the customer's billing account and purchased with Azure subscriptions.

This keeps software spend under the same billing controls as infrastructure spend. Microsoft, for example, separates the right to accept a private offer, held by billing roles, from the right to purchase it, held by subscription roles.

Do marketplace purchases count towards cloud spend commitments?

On Azure, Microsoft states that 100% of the pre-tax purchase amount of Azure benefit-eligible offers counts towards a Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC), and this applies to private offers. The conditions matter: the purchase must go through the marketplace in the Azure portal using a subscription tied to the organisation's agreement, card purchases made directly on the Microsoft Marketplace website do not count, purchases using Azure prepayment are not eligible, and the licence must be used exclusively in Azure.

AWS documentation on Multi-Product Solutions, which are sold through private offers, says AWS committed spend (EDP or PPA) can be used where the products are eligible for committed-spend drawdown, with eligibility determined for each product. Google Cloud states that spend on Google Cloud Marketplace services may count towards commitment obligations, with exclusions that include services not running on Google Cloud and professional services; the list can change, so confirm eligibility for a specific purchase with your account team.

On Google Cloud, private offer custom discounts also do not stack with Flexible Savings Plan discounts; usage is billed at the lowest effective rate.

How do you choose between a public and a private offer?

Many products benefit from both: a public listing for discovery and self-serve adoption, and private offers for deals that need negotiation. Work through these questions in order.

1. 1Identify the buyer: teams that expect to subscribe without a sales conversation need a transactable public offer.
2. 2Check whether the deal needs a custom price, discount, contract length or licence terms; if so, it needs a private offer.
3. 3Ask whether the customer wants the purchase to count towards a cloud commitment, and confirm eligibility on that cloud before quoting.
4. 4Confirm the pricing model is supported for private offers on that cloud; for example, AWS private offers do not support BYOL.
5. 5Collect the customer's billing identifier and confirm who can accept and purchase the offer.
6. 6Decide whether a reseller is involved, and use the cloud's channel variant if so.
7. 7Agree the payment schedule, start date and acceptance deadline, and plan the renewal before the term ends.

How WIEWAVE can help

WIEWAVE is a cloud, DevOps and AI company serving clients worldwide, and has published 3,500+ products across Azure Marketplace, AWS Marketplace and Google Cloud Marketplace combined. We can help you decide which offer types a product needs, prepare listings for each marketplace's review, and structure private offer terms and payment schedules for each cloud.