Azure Marketplace purchasing

Article
01/20/2023
4 minutes to read

Azure Marketplace has numerous tools and features that simplify and streamline the process of purchasing, invoicing, and managing purchasing policy.

Simplified procurement

Azure Marketplace helps you simplify the procurement process through different purchasing options. If you purchase products using a credit card associated with your Azure account, all purchases will be consolidated on a single invoice and billed to the credit card of choice. If you are a large customer, you can purchase using an Enterprise Agreement. With an EA, any software purchases are automatically included in your Azure invoice. Your invoice will contain Azure usage charges first, followed by Azure Marketplace charges.

When you purchase through Azure Marketplace, you eliminate the complexity of managing individual vendor relationships and invoices. You get a single, consolidated monthly bill from Microsoft that includes both your Azure Marketplace purchases and your Azure charges.

Permission to purchase

After you've found the right software application, completing the purchase is simple. You will, however, need suitable permissions within the Azure subscription. Since Azure operates on a Role Based Access Control (RBAC) model, your account needs subscription owner or contributor permissions to make a purchase. To learn how to assign roles, see Assign Azure roles using the Azure portal.

Before completing a purchase, make sure the user has the correct configuration in the Azure tenant. This will help prevent errors during purchase.

In the Azure Marketplace experience in the Azure portal, find the application you want to buy and select Create or Set up + subscribe. You'll be prompted to complete some information before being able to use your new solution.

Caution

Approval into Private Marketplace does not indicate procurement of a solution.

If you want to deploy a solution from the Azure Marketplace online store, select Get it now on the product description page and then sign in with your Azure account credentials.

Once you sign in, you will be redirected to the product in the Azure portal to complete your purchase.

Purchase policy management

Microsoft lets you manage user purchases through your billing profile as the Azure subscription administrator. Choose from three options:

Free + Paid – Allows users to acquire any Azure Marketplace software application.
Free – Allows users to deploy only free software from Azure Marketplace.
No – Prevents users from deploying any software from Azure Marketplace.

These settings apply to all users with access to your Azure subscription, which gives you the capability to control IT procurement through the Azure portal.

Cost management

As you purchase products from Azure Marketplace, you want to get insights that help you manage costs. Microsoft Cost Management is a free tool for viewing information on the products you've purchased. You can use Cost Management to see details of what services you're spending money on over time and how those costs track against the budgets you've set. In addition to setting budgets, you can schedule reports and analyze subscription costs. Learn more about Microsoft Cost Management by completing the Learn module on Analyze costs and create budgets with Microsoft Cost Management.

You can view your Azure Marketplace charges and invoices on the cost analysis tool under Microsoft Cost Management.

Purchase validation checks

Purchasing an offer through Azure Marketplace can fail for different reasons. Using the command-line interface (CLI) for a purchase is more likely to cause errors since you may be trying to purchase an offer that is not available or visible in Azure Marketplace. Following are the checks that can cause a purchase to fail:

The subscription belongs to an Enterprise Agreement (EA) and the EA admin disabled Azure Marketplace purchases.
The EA admin has enabled purchases only for free offers and the offer is a paid offer.
The offer is not found in the marketplace.
The independent software vendor (ISV) stopped selling the offer, at least in your region.
The subscription you are using belongs to a billing account in a region where the offer is not available.
The subscription/billing account is not associated with a valid payment instrument (such as a valid credit card).
The subscription belongs to a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) and the ISV declined to sell through a CSP.
Private Marketplace is enabled for the subscription and the offer is not in the list of allowed offers.
The offer is Private/Preview for specific customers and the subscription is not in the list of allowed customers.

Note

Purchasing marketplace offers might fail if it conflicts with the Azure Policy defined by the Azure administrator in your organization. For example, you can't purchase Microsoft. SaaS if it isn't in your organization's allowed list. For details, see Azure Policy documentation.