Tips for Choosing the Right Cloud Marketplace
During the COVID-19 pandemic, online marketplaces, which had been on the rise for a while, really ballooned as consumers were prevented from shopping in brick-and-mortar stores. Now, years later, these same cloud marketplaces are just as popular as ever, and their numbers seem to multiply daily.
A handful of these marketplaces, including Amazon, Alibaba, eBay, Walmart.com, and Shopify, hold a significant share of the e-commerce market, but the market is very crowded. Current estimates put the number of e-commerce sites, including both individual online stores and larger marketplaces, worldwide at more than 30.7 million, up 25 percent from the roughly 24 million in 2022, according to SEO.ai. The number was 27 million at the end of 2023, the same research found.
What’s more, current estimates put the number of online retailers at 9.8 million globally and at 2.8 million in the United States alone.
For those buying off these marketplaces, the web application frameworks enable self-service transactions, allowing users to easily navigate, select, and purchase products and services without having to get off their couches. Robust databases are in place for efficient data management, ensuring that all transaction and user data is securely stored and easily accessible when needed. The marketplaces also provide tools to track and manage purchases, offering complete visibility into spending, and even enable automatic replenishments before supplies completely run out.
However, choosing the optimal cloud marketplace(s) for a product or service involves careful consideration of several factors.
“Choosing the right cloud marketplace is important for SaaS vendors looking to expand beyond direct sales. Think of it like selecting the right fishing spot. The first step is to deeply understand your target audience by asking where and how your ideal client profile likes to transact. Don’t just cast your net in the biggest lake; analyze what kind of customers you want to attract, what transaction experience they prefer, and where they’re most likely to look for solutions,” advises John Pettit, chief technology officer of Promveo, a Google Cloud partner.
If a company’s ideal customers are heavily invested in Google Cloud, for example the GCP Marketplace might offer a significant advantage, allowing a customer to use their existing enterprise agreement and cloud commitment, according to Pettit.
“Choosing the right cloud marketplace for your products or services is crucial for maximizing visibility, scaling efficiently, and reaching the right audience/customers,” agrees Suhaib Zaheer, senior vice president of managed hosting at Digital Ocean and general manager of Cloudways. “To make the best choice, start by clearly identifying your target audience and understanding where they prefer to shop. Research marketplaces that align with your industry, customer base, and product type.”
Zaheer recommends that companies start with an evaluation of each marketplace’s reach and reputation. “Established platforms like AWS Marketplace, Microsoft Azure Marketplace, and Google Cloud Marketplace offer broad visibility, but niche marketplaces might offer more focused audiences. Consider the technical integration requirements too by ensuring the marketplace you select supports your product architecture and provides a smooth onboarding process.”
Companies should evaluate the unique strengths of each marketplace, Pettit adds. Companies should consider them as departments in a shopping mall. AWS Marketplace is like the general store with a wide variety of shoppers, ideal for broad reach, while Google Cloud Marketplace is like a specialized tech store, attracting companies focused on data analytics and AI/machine learning, he states.
“We’ve seen that listing our solutions on specialized marketplaces like Salesforce AppExchange (vs. generic cloud app stores) dramatically increased adoption,” says Sunil Dua, director of client success at 108 Ideaspace, a Toronto-based business management consultant. “It met users exactly where they were already operating. It offered easy deployment with a few clicks.”
In contrast, placing the same solution on AWS Marketplace created much lower traction, not because AWS lacked traffic, but because buyer intent was different, Dua adds. Customers visiting AWS were typically focused on infrastructure tools, not prepackaged products like engagement platforms or CRM tools.
Before identifying the right marketplace, companies also need to consider the type of products they sell and the specific industries that make up their client rosters, says Harun Biswas, founder and CEO of UltraSoft Technologies. “For example, if you’re providing CRM solutions to a specific vertical, like construction or property management, that will influence where and how you should go.”
Look at the industries an enterprise is servicing, then determine where those companies search for CRM solutions, Biswas recommends.
Money Matters
As with so many other business decisions these days, cost has to be another major consideration when selecting an online marketplace, experts agree.
Companies need to recognize the importance of marketplace fees and commissions and their impact on profitability, Pettit says. Fees can vary across marketplaces, with some charging high initial fees that decrease with sales volume, while others, like Apple’s App Store, have tiered fees based on sales milestones, he explains.
When Google initiated its Google Cloud Marketplace, fees were very high, though the company has trimmed it down to about 3 percent, according to Pettit, who notes that other providers have a wide variety of pricing models.
There can be hidden costs, so carefully examine contracts, adds Jon Lucas, cofounder and director of Hyve Managed Hosting. “Cost is, of course, a key driver, but it’s important to look beyond the headline figures. Hidden fees, premium support charges, and scalability costs can quickly erode apparent savings. Transparency in pricing and a clear path to scale are crucial for long-term budgeting and flexibility.”
Cost considerations go in other directions, too.
“Does the pricing strategy make sense for your product? If you can succeed on direct sales and you don’t need to amplify what you’re doing, you may be paying fees that don’t amplify, but instead take away from, your profit,” Pettit says.
For companies that do their own marketing and search engine optimization or have partners that will, marketplaces might not be worth the investment, he adds.
Likewise, a marketplace might not be necessary for companies that supply products and services with limited customer bases, Pettit contends, noting that “if you’re a startup and you have no eyeballs and you are enrolled in a program where you’re going to get good traction, then the marketplace could be a good spot for you.”
While the cost of the cloud marketplace is certainly a major consideration, it shouldn’t be the only one, experts agree.
Among these other concerns has to be the stability of the platform.
“Cost always looks important at the beginning, but if the platform lets you down when traffic spikes or there’s a glitch, then it doesn’t matter what you paid,” says Ashley Medway, chief technology officer of CherryTree Technology. “What usually gets missed is the cost of people’s time. If your team is spending days working around gaps in the platform or fixing odd behavior, that’s money, whether it shows up on the invoice or not.”
A lot of the larger and more well-known and respected marketplaces, like those from AWS, Microsoft, and Google Cloud, put listings through rigorous screenings, which businesses can then advertise to build trust with their customers, adds Hosting Advice senior analyst Joe Warnimont.
Evaluate the provider’s service level agreements (SLAs) carefully, Lucas recommends. “Uptime guarantees, response times, and compensation terms must be clearly defined.”
Going hand in hand with reliability is technical support, Lucas says. “When issues arise, access to fast, 24/7 multilingual support is essential to maintaining operational continuity, especially for global businesses with distributed teams.”
Carefully evaluate if the cloud marketplace can keep up when business accelerates, recommends Greg Davis, CEO of Bigleaf Networks, a cloud-based internet redundancy and optimization services provider.
“I’ve seen companies spend months setting up their storefront perfectly, only to have the whole experience fall apart when traffic spikes,” Davis explains. “Launch day, promo events, and high-traffic moments are times when you can’t afford mistakes; it could cost you big in sales. Without smart traffic routing and automatic fail-over built into the marketplace’s network, customers hit slow pages, error messages, and downtime. It’s often difficult to retain traffic or come back after that experience.”
How traffic is handled across regions can make a huge difference for you and your potential customers, Davis adds. “Good marketplaces don’t push everyone through one crowded server. Instead, they spread the load using regional nodes, so customers get a clean connection wherever they are. At the end of the day, picking a marketplace isn’t just about setting up shop. It’s also creating and protecting your reputation as a company. Look for one that gives you clear insights (i.e., analytics, uptime promises) and has a network strong enough to back you up when it counts.”
Privacy Is Paramount
Security should also be an essential element in any e-commerce discussion, especially when interactions involve personally identifiable information (PII), financial account details, medical data, or other sensitive details.
That was the case for Allan Bruun, cofounder and director of business development at SimplerQMS, a company that offers validated quality management software for the life sciences industry.
“Our hosting solution had to deal with three aspects: data residency, validation documentation, and auditability,” Bruun says. “The biggest factor was ensuring that our cloud infrastructure hosted on secure, ISO 27001-certified environments would be capable of producing the proper validation evidence for regulatory bodies and our customers. We didn’t just need uptime, we needed written evidence that uptime, backups, data integrity checks, and system security controls were constantly being monitored and would be capable of withstanding [regulatory] audits.”
So SimplerQMS’ cloud provider had to have strict adherence to privacy standards like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), strong service-level-agreement guarantees, and the ability to trace cloud operations with logs for installations, updates, and system changes, Bruun explains. “Every cloud partner decision we made followed one maxim: If we can’t show it in an audit, we can’t depend on it.”
“Regulatory compliance and service reliability should be non-negotiable,” Lucas cautions. “Look for providers with proven certifications, such as ISO, GDPR, or the [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)], which demonstrate their commitment to meeting industry and legal standards.”
Never discount the value of integration capabilities either, Warnimont says. “It’s easy to get distracted by flashy pricing or unique cloud marketplace features, but at the end of the day, your offerings must combine together for your clients to construct complex solutions with multiple components.”
A marketplace that offers seamless, low-friction deployment (such as prebuilt integrations, automated provisioning, or clear sandbox environments to test things out) has a direct impact on early adoption, 108 Ideaspace’s Dua says. “One enterprise client abandoned an AI-driven member analytics solution after struggling with complex setup requirements through a generic marketplace while a plug-and-play deployment model such as Salesforce could have avoided that challenge completely.”
Location, Location, Location
Data center location is also another critical consideration, one that is often overlooked, according to Lucas. “Where your data resides affects not only performance and latency but also data sovereignty and redundancy. Proximity can matter, especially for compliance or low-latency use cases.”
And finally, marketplace seekers should look for synergies in marketing, Digital Ocean’s Zaheer recommends. “Evaluate the marketing and promotional support offered by each. Some platforms significantly boost exposure by actively promoting products through co-marketing opportunities, events, or preferred listings.”
Along the same lines, explore co-selling and partner programs, Pettit recommends. “These include marketing support, technical enablement, and sales access. Also, assess integration requirements and pricing models. Once integrated, actively market, monitor, and optimize. It’s not a set-it-and-forget-it solution, but managed well, it can amplify growth.”
Gartner offers the following advice to expand the product growth opportunities that go beyond the selection of a cloud marketplace:
- Link to digital marketplaces through product websites.
- Promote your company’s inclusion in curated and distributor marketplaces.
- More effectively sell solutions, not just products, through marketplaces by collaborating with partners to create listings that combine products and professional services to meet complex customer needs.
- Generate sales by enriching marketplace listings with AI-based sales agents, recommendations, and product comparisons.
But in the end, the prevailing thought is that marketplaces offer immense growth potential for businesses looking to sell their products and services online. By adopting a marketplace model, companies can scale operations much faster while reducing risk, but it’s not an action that should be done in haste.
Phillip Britt is a freelance writer based in the Chicago area. He can be reached at spenterprises1@comcast.net.