The Complete Playbook for Google Cloud Marketplace Listings

Google Cloud Marketplace provides Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and solution providers with a platform to reach thousands of Google Cloud customers worldwide. By listing your product on the marketplace, you can simplify procurement for customers, increase product visibility, and leverage Google's ecosystem to accelerate business growth.

However, successfully publishing a product on Google Cloud Marketplace requires careful planning, compliance with Google's requirements, and adherence to operational best practices. This guide walks through the key requirements, transaction models, onboarding process, and best practices to help you prepare your product for marketplace success.

Before You Begin: Here's What's in it for you

The strategic steps matter, but so does the big picture. Here's what you stand to gain by listing on Google Cloud Marketplace:

• Simplified procurement - Users can discover, purchase, and deploy your solution without leaving the Google Cloud Console.
• Increased visibility - Your product gets in front of a global audience already invested in the Google Cloud ecosystem.
• Revenue acceleration - Leverage Google's extensive customer network and integrated billing infrastructure to reduce sales friction, streamline procurement, and accelerate revenue growth.
• Credibility - Being listed signals that your product meets Google's enterprise-grade standards.

Step 1. Choose Your Business Model

Google Cloud Marketplace supports the following two transaction models:

• The agency model: Under the agency model, Google acts as an agent for you as you offer your product through Cloud Marketplace. Google facilitates and processes the transaction, but you're the Merchant of Record. Your customers receive two invoices: one for their purchases of Cloud Marketplace products offered by independent software vendors (ISVs), and one for their purchases of first-party Google products and usage of Google Cloud services.
• The Merchant of Record model: Google acts as the Merchant of Record for the transaction. This means Google sells your product directly to your customers.

Step 2. Meet Google's Marketplace Requirements

2.1 Get Your Organization Marketplace Ready

• Your organization must join Partner Advantage and remain in good standing.
  Note: If you aren't yet a Google partner, learn more and sign up at the Join Google Cloud Partner Advantage page. For guidance, refer to this document: Enrolling in the Partner Advantage program
• After your organization has joined Partner Advantage, you get access to Partner Hub.
• Your organization must be incorporated in one of the supported regions.
• Your organization must have a Cloud Marketplace vendor account and payment profile in good standing.

2.2 Make Your Product Marketplace Ready

Your product must be production-ready (not alpha or beta) to be publicly listed and sold through Cloud Marketplace.

Your product must be enterprise-ready, including a professional online presence, a defined sales motion, customer support, and adherence to strong security best practices.

Your product must not include any known vulnerabilities, viruses, spyware, Trojan horses, or other malicious code.

You must verify with Google Cloud Platform, through an onboarding approval process, that you primarily host your software product on Google Cloud. The following patterns are common approved use cases:

• Pattern 1: Entire product and all support components run entirely on Google Cloud.
• Pattern 2: Compute or data plane runs on Google Cloud; smaller control plane/support infra may be on-premises or other cloud, provided Google Cloud consumption grows fastest.
• Pattern 3: Storage/backup/replication/DR product replicates all data to Google Cloud; control plane may run elsewhere.
• Pattern 4: Migration tooling whose destination is only Google Cloud; source may be on-prem or other cloud.
• Pattern 5: Compute/data plane on Google Cloud; monitoring/security agents may run on-prem or in other clouds but must send data to a Google Cloud-hosted environment.
• Pattern 6: Product is a dataset hosted on and delivered through Google Cloud.
• Pattern 7: VM or Kubernetes Engine product deployed on devices connected to Google Distributed Cloud (with possible internet connection).

You must ensure that your products on Cloud Marketplace have the same capabilities and features as any versions of those products that you offer outside of Cloud Marketplace.

You must ensure that your data products don't contain any "personally identifiable sensitive information" as defined in the Protecting Americans' Data from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024.

2.3 Meet the Operational Standards for Your Product Type

If you want to offer products on Google Cloud Marketplace, then in addition to meeting the listing requirements for Cloud Marketplace, you must also maintain the following operational best practices, which depend on the types of products that you're offering:

• Operational requirements for Kubernetes apps
• Operational requirements for VM products
• Operational requirements for SaaS products
• Operational requirements for container image products
• Operational requirements for data products
• To use Private Offers to send custom offers for products, you must ensure that your offers meet the operational requirements for private offers

2.4 Finalize the Business Setup

• You must accept the Marketplace Vendor Agreement.
• The agreement sets out eligibility, product listing, submission & review process, and obligations for re-approval of product changes.

Commercial/Revenue terms: If the product meets requirements and passes the business case review, Google offers a standard revenue share.

2.5 Choose the Right Pricing Model

If you're selling commercial software, you must choose a pricing model. Review the pricing options for different types of software:

• Pricing for Kubernetes apps
• Pricing for VM products
• Pricing for SaaS products
• Pricing for Data products
• Pricing for AI Agents

2.6 Set Up Your Marketplace Environment

1. After your vendor agreement is finalized, you receive instructions to complete the following steps:

Create a Google Cloud project to host all the components of your products. Depending on what you're offering, follow the guidelines in these sections:

• Set up your environment for Kubernetes apps
• Set up your environment for VM images
• Set up your environment for SaaS products
• Set up your environment for container image products
• Set up your environment for dataset products

2. Complete a Project Info form provided by the Cloud Marketplace team. This enables access to the Producer Portal, where you create and manage your product listing.
3. Sign up to receive payments from Cloud Marketplace.
4. Configure access controls for your team members who use the Producer Portal.
5. Add your pricing model in the Producer Portal. Pricing models take up to four business days to review. You can continue integrating your product while the pricing model is reviewed.

Step 3. Submit Your Product for Review

3.1 Complete Your Pre-Submission Checklist

• Make sure that you have reviewed and met all the requirements for listing your product.
• Make sure that you have reviewed and met all the requirements for packaging your product.
• Configure payments so that you can be paid for your product's usage.
• Test your product end-to-end.

3.2 Submit Every Component for Review

Before publishing your product, you must submit all of its components for review. When you submit your product, the Cloud Marketplace team reviews your product

Note: Cloud Marketplace automatically performs the required steps to validate your deployment package after you upload it and each time that you make a subsequent update to the package. After the Cloud Marketplace successfully validates your package, it marks this review as complete in the Producer Portal. To ensure successful deployment for your customers, we recommend thoroughly testing your product after validation is complete before submitting it for publication.

3.3 Validate with a Private Release First

After Google has approved your product's component reviews, you must publish your product privately for final testing and review.

To publish your product privately, complete the following steps:

• Go to your product's Overview page in Producer Portal.
• Click Publish. This notifies Google that your product is ready for final review before publication.

3.4 Launch Your Product Publicly

After all reviews have been approved, you can launch your product publicly within a few minutes by completing the following steps:

• Go to your product's Overview page in Producer Portal.
• Click Enable public display.
• Click Make public.

3.5 Maintain and Update Your Marketplace Listing

After making your product public, any updates will require repeated submissions and reviews. For further information, please refer to the following: Maintenance Document