Changing prices in active commercial marketplace offers
Article
The price change feature allows publishers to change the prices of marketplace offers transacted through Microsoft. This article describes how to change the price of an offer.
Publishers can update the prices of previously published plans and publish the price changes to the marketplace. Microsoft schedules price changes in the future to align with future billing cycles.
If the price of an offer increased, existing customers of the offer receive an email notification prior to the increase becoming effective. The product listing page on Microsoft AppSource and Azure Marketplace will start displaying a notice of the upcoming increased price.
Once the price change becomes effective, customers will be billed at the new price. If locked into a contract, they'll continue to receive the contract price for the length of the contract term. Contract renewals will receive the new price.
The price change experience for publishers and customers:
Feature benefits
The price change feature provides the following benefits:
Easy to change prices – Publishers can increase or decrease the prices of offers without having to create a new plan with the new price and retire the previous plan, including offers published solely to the preview phase.
Automatic billing of the new price – Once the price change becomes effective, existing customers will automatically be billed the new price without any action needed on their part.
Customer notifications – Customers will be notified of price increases through email and on the product listing page of the marketplace.
Sample scenarios
The price change feature supports the following scenarios:
Price changes on plans available in Azure Government cloud.
Price increase and decrease on the same plan. To make both changes, first schedule the price decrease. Once it becomes effective, publish the price increase. See Plan for a price change below.
Changing prices from free or $0 to paid.
Changing prices via APIs.
Price changes will go through full certification. To avoid delays in scheduling it, don't make other changes to the offer along with the price change.
Plan a price change
When planning a price change, consider the following:
Consideration
Impact
Behavior
Type of price change
This dictates how far into the future the price will be scheduled.
- Price decreases are scheduled for the first of the next month. - Price increases are scheduled for the first of a future month, at least 90 days after the price change is published.
Offer type
This dictates when you need to publish the price change via Partner Center.
Price changes must be published before the cut-off times below to be scheduled for the next month (based on type of price change): - Software as a service offer: Four days before the end of the month. - Virtual machine offer: Six days before the end of the month. - Azure application offer: 14 days before the end of the month.
Examples
For a price decrease to a Software as a service offer to take effect on the first of the next month, publish the price change at least four days before the end of the current month.
For a price increase to a Software as a service offer to take effect on the first of a future month, 90 days out, publish the price change at least four days before the end of the current month.
Note
Offers will be billed to customers in the customers’ agreement currency, using the local market price that was published at the time the offer was created. The amount that customers pay, and that ISVs are paid, depends on the Foreign Exchange rates at the time the customer transacts the offer. Learn more on "How we convert currency?".
Changing the flat fee of a SaaS or Azure app offer
To update the monthly or yearly price of a SaaS or Azure app offer:
Review the offer preview once it's available and select Go-live to publish the new prices.
Once publishing is complete, you will receive an email with the effective date of the new price.
How this price change affects customers
Existing customers maintain their contract price for the length of the term. If a customer adds or removes a user while in the contract, the new seat number will use the contract price. A contract renewal receives the new price in effect at that time.
New customers are billed the price in effect when they purchase.
Changing the meter dimension of a SaaS or Azure app offer
To update the price per unit of a meter dimension of a SaaS or Azure app offer:
Review the offer preview once it's available and select Go-live to publish the new prices.
Once publishing is complete, you will receive an email with the effective date of the new price.
How this price change affects customers
Customers are billed the new price for consumption of the resource that happens after the new price is in effect.
Canceling or modifying a price change
For a price change that has not yet taken effect, submit a support request that includes the Plan ID, price, and the market (if the change was market specific) in the request.
Cancellation requests must be submitted at least 4 days prior to the scheduled effective date.
The Microsoft commercial marketplace is a catalog of cloud applications and services that contains offerings from Microsoft and thousands of partners. In this learning path, you'll be introduced to concepts that will help your organization get ready to sell your cloud products and services through the commercial marketplace.