Forum Discussion
How to sell to small business without a business email?
We are just starting with the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace as a new ISV. We sell to small businesses (2-5 employees). About half of these businesses don't have a business email, but use a personal hotmail, yahoo, or gmail account. For example business xyz may use xyz(@)gmail.com. Can we still sell to these businesses through the marketplace? From what I have seen the marketplace allows them to register these email addresses as a Microsoft account, but won't let them purchase anything. Any suggestions on how these businesses can purchase from the commercial marketplace?
Hi Jake,
The Microsoft Commercial Marketplace operates on 2 storefronts: Azure Marketplace and AppSource. So the offers you list on the Commercial Marketplace will be shown on either one of those or both.
The basic premise for 'Azure' Marketplace is that customers buy though their Azure account - so for anyone to be able to purchase off of Azure Marketplace they need to have an Azure account configured - You can still create an Azure Tenant with your @gmail account (I have that and do demos for partners all the time) but if the customer does not use Azure for anything else, there is no benefit for them to create an Azure Account just to buy a 3rd party solution.
Similar story for App Source - if the customer already buys any type of Microsoft Product (M365, D365, Teams, etc...) they can add your solution on that "account". They would still need to have an account with Microsoft and purchase some 1st party product for this to work and make sense.
Long story short, the customer must already have some sort of relationship with Microsoft (either Azure or other 1st party product) and have an account set up with us in order to be able to make purchases from the Commercial Marketplace (either Azure Marketplace or AppSource) otherwise it does not make sense for them to create this just to purchase a SaaS offer.
Hope this helps.
5 Replies
- justinroyal
Microsoft
thank you alexdrenea-ms ! Let us know if that answers your question here Jake_Johnson
Yes, justinroyal that answered my question. Thanks
alexdrenea-msHi Jake,
The Microsoft Commercial Marketplace operates on 2 storefronts: Azure Marketplace and AppSource. So the offers you list on the Commercial Marketplace will be shown on either one of those or both.
The basic premise for 'Azure' Marketplace is that customers buy though their Azure account - so for anyone to be able to purchase off of Azure Marketplace they need to have an Azure account configured - You can still create an Azure Tenant with your @gmail account (I have that and do demos for partners all the time) but if the customer does not use Azure for anything else, there is no benefit for them to create an Azure Account just to buy a 3rd party solution.
Similar story for App Source - if the customer already buys any type of Microsoft Product (M365, D365, Teams, etc...) they can add your solution on that "account". They would still need to have an account with Microsoft and purchase some 1st party product for this to work and make sense.
Long story short, the customer must already have some sort of relationship with Microsoft (either Azure or other 1st party product) and have an account set up with us in order to be able to make purchases from the Commercial Marketplace (either Azure Marketplace or AppSource) otherwise it does not make sense for them to create this just to purchase a SaaS offer.
Hope this helps.Hi alexdrenea-ms, Yes, that helps. Thank you.
- justinroyal
Jake_Johnson I also just sent you a message on the community site to try to get some more information about this - can you please check your inbox?
