About this Guide
This guide pairs with the Vendor Onboarding Guide. Together these guides support a Project dashboard that will be shared with you detailing every step necessary for releasing a Product or Service to the Vendasta Marketplace. This Project is a shared checklist that facilitates collaboration with the Vendasta Solution Architecture team through Vendasta’s Task Manager system. Each task in the Project corresponds to specific sections in these guides, but we would encourage you to review the guide contents in their entirety from the outset of your Marketplace journey. After signing your Vendor distribution agreement, you will be emailed the link to your project, but can navigate back to it any time via Partner Center>Tasks>Projects.
Payment & Contact Information
First things first, we want to be able to pay you! Vendasta consolidates all of the sales from each Reseller each month into a single remittance statement.
Vendasta will send payment via ACH. Please submit your payment details via this form.
Payment Ecosystem
Prior to creating, and starting to configure the pricing of your skus, you should understand the flow of Payments in the Vendasta ecosystem. There are four main players: The Vendor, Vendasta, the Channel Partner (Reseller), and the SMB/Client.
Resellers purchase products and services from the Vendasta Marketplace for a reduced wholesale price, as set by the Vendor. The Reseller then resells the product/service to their client for a profit. Vendors are then paid their share of the Wholesale Price.
Vendor Payment Schedule
Example:
Purchase: November 22nd (month 1)
Remittance Statement: December 2nd (month 2)
Payment: December 15th (month 2)
Renewal or Deactivation: December 21st
NOTE:
Billing start dates and renewal dates are affected by activations during certain dates and times which may impact your remittance statement.
Example: If an activation occurs (monthly frequency) on the last day of the month (month 1) and there are fewer days in the following month (month 2), the renewal period is moved to the first day of the following month (month 3).
Billing dates follow the UTC Standard Time Zone. If a purchase occurs in a -GMT Time Zone, within the offset of your timezone from 00:00 UTC, then the billing date will be on the next day.
Product & Service Structure Guidelines
We want you to mirror the structure of your current product or service as closely as possible within Vendasta. You have the following options for how to structure your offerings in Vendasta.
SKU Types
Items you add in Vendor Center, whether they are digital products, services, or physical products are represented by a Product in the Vendasta Marketplace. Each product can have multiple plans or service levels, referred to as Editions. A product may also have multiple Add-ons, which belong to a single parent product, and have no relation to the product's Editions.
Product
This section will introduce you to the concept of a base offering, which can be a digital product, a service, or a physical product.
Product Creation
Utilize the button in the top right to create product
Pending activation workflow
Hold activations in a pending state until you resolve them. They can be resolved manually via the Vendor Center UI, or via API.
Product Info→ Integration → Integration Settings
Multi-purchase
Products can be purchased multiple times for the same Account. However, a product cannot be purchased multiple times within the same Order, unlike Add-ons. If you enable multi-purchasing for your product, Add-on support is disabled.
Product Info-->Advanced Settings dropdown
Trials
You are able to enable a timed trial for your Product. Note that you are responsible for in-product behaviour after the trial expires, and there is no email or webhook triggered at time of trial expiration.
Configure in: Product Info-->Pricing & trials
It is suggested that you leverage the Activity Stream to encourage upgrades during the trial period.
Trials may be reactivated after being deactivated(an action only a Reseller user can make). This is a feature that allows a Reseller to 'restart' a trial that their end user may not have taken advantage of. You may choose to restrict this, and reject subsequent trial activations on a per Account basis, or instigate a 'trial activation limit' to avoid an 'infinite trial loop'(this would require using the pending activation workflow if not utilising webhooks).
Edition
If your base offering has multiple plans or versions, you can set up various Editions to represent all product variations.
Tips:
- If you have a Freemium option for your offering, you can make it the first Edition. The nomenclature most commonly used for Freemium offerings in the Marketplace is Express
- The offering name as displayed will be [Product Name] | [Edition Name]. Please keep this format in mind when naming your Editions
Please note: Due to current system limitations, changes to editions should NOT be rejected.
Add-on
Add-ons are offerings that cannot stand alone and are designed to complement a product. They can be straightforward, serving merely as a billing mechanism, or have a detailed marketing page like a Product.
Common uses for Add-ons:
- Services linked to a specific Product
- À la carte features that enhance an app, independent of its editions.
- Hardware purchases. For these, you can use the order form to gather shipping details.
Using Add-ons to help fill out your billing model:
- User Seats - Utilize the 'End User' field on the Order From
- Purchase of Credits - Credits usage is managed by Vendor, and displayed in your product's dashboard
Multi-purchase
Unlike Products, multiple Add-ons can be purchased within the same order.
For multi-purchasable Add-ons that include an Order Form, you can configure the form to appear once or require it to be filled out for every Add-on purchase instance.
Please Note:
- An Add-on cannot be linked to more than one product. If you need the same Add-on for multiple products, you'll need to create a copy for each product.
- Add-ons cannot be linked to specific editions. If an Add-on is activated for an edition that doesn't support it, you'll need to reject the activation and provide a clear error message.
- Apart from activation, all other integrated features are configured on the parent product even if some are specific to an Add-on. This includes trials, reporting, Single Sign-On (SSO), and the Activity Stream.
Product Structure Use Cases
Digital Advertising
The base product represents a monthly frequency for the variable advertising spend, management fee, and a one-time setup fee all in one transaction.
The Add-on represents a one-time frequency to increase the campaign budget immediately.
Per User Pricing
For One Plan
The base product represents a single user or an Admin user, and the add-on represents the ability to purchase additional users.
For Multiple Plans
The base product can represent one plan or multiple plans which also represent groups of users. This structure eliminates the need for creating add-ons to represent additional users at different prices since Add-ons cannot be dependent on a specific Edition ID.
A La Carte or Catalogue
An a la carte or catalogue is usually a range of similar one-time services that can be purchased:
a) Together or separate
b) Multiple times
The base product represents a $0 fixed price or Contact Sales, so as many add-ons as you need can be created.
Monthly Services that require add-ons should be structured as individual products.
Quoting
If your current model is a quoted offering, or if you don’t see any value to creating an offering with fixed pricing, variable pricing can be used to achieve a model that allows you to quote each service.
With this structure, the workflow entails a requirement to initiate contact with you first (preferably through Inbox) to provide the quote. Then, waiting for the confirmation that the order was placed at the quoted amount. This workflow should be very clearly outlined in the Partner Marketing Description. And if the Reseller would like to repurchase your one-time quoted service, the instructions must also be clear that the add-on needs to be deactivated before making another purchase.
We recommend using Proposal Builder to provide the details surrounding your quote!
Selecting Your Pricing Model
The pricing model and structure of your skus should reflect how you currently sell directly to agencies or SMBs.
If your direct pricing model differs from what you enter into Vendasta, or if your solution is exclusive to Vendasta, it is a requirement that the difference is clearly communicated in your marketing. The pricing model and structure of your product ultimately sets the initial Reseller purchasing experience and and influences Vendor payments.
Price Changes after the Marketplace Release
Any price changes after the initial Marketplace release require 90 days notice to facilitate communications and the change itself. To initiate a price adjustment, please reach out to your point of contact with the SKUs affected, the new price, and the reason for the increase.
Where do I add pricing?
Vendor Center > (Product or Add-on) > Product Info tab > Pricing section
The wholesale price must be lower than the suggested retail price. The wholesale price is reduced to represent the margin that Resellers will profit from when they resell your product or service to their customer(s).
The suggested retail price must be the same as the price on your public domain. As a Vendor, you determine the profit that a Channel Partner makes from the sale to their SMB client when you establish a discounted wholesale price.
The only time the suggested retail price may differ, is if the offering (product features or service) is exclusive to the Vendasta Marketplace - Then it must be exceptionally clear what the difference is within your marketing material.
Pricing Models
Contact Information Requirements
There are two required places to input your contact information in Vendor Center:
1. Inbox Messaging Contact: Resellers will want to communicate with you through the Platform via Inbox Messaging. To access your messages, navigate to the top left corner of Partner Center, and within the navigation bar, click Messages.
Partner Center Admins will only receive notifications for Inbox messages, so you may want to add multiple Team Members or add a group email address monitored by any member of your team who is responsible for responding to these inbound messages. Please refer to the Adding your Team Members section if you require assistance with the setup.
Notification preferences are also set per Team Member within Partner Center. For additional information about Reseller Notifications, please refer to this guide.
2. Contact Us (Vendor Center > Marketing > Partner Marketing): This area is dedicated to support. It’s best practice to include a phone and email address for product support. If support is provided in any time zone outside of ET, CT, MT, or PT zones, it should be noted in this section. It is also a requirement to indicate a service level agreement for response times.
If you have resources for sales support, we recommend as many avenues as possible for Resellers including a booking link for meetings. Vendors have access to a free meeting scheduler in the Vendasta platform.
3. Fulfillment contact information - Order Form configuration
If you require contact information to facilitate the delivery of a service or simply want to onboard the new account, please refer to the Order Form guide. Contact Information must be requested in the form of a Form Field which is required and hidden from end users. DO NOT use the Primary Contact checkboxes.
Service Level Agreement Requirements
NOTE: Your product type (product or service) determines what is required for an SLA.
Product Requirements
A product’s service level agreement is only necessary if your technical integration uses the pending activation workflow. A service level agreement is required to outline the timeframe it will take to take the product or add-on from a pending state to an active state within the:
Your FAQ should be both End User and Partner facing. Example:
Q: What Happens After the Sale?
A: The dashboard will be available for your clients 2 business days after activation (or once we complete your setup).
Service Requirements
A service’s service level agreement is mandatory and will outline what steps a Reseller should expect to occur between purchase and service delivery in as much detail as possible. Service Vendors are required to provide transparency as service level agreement within the:
- Order Form Footer
- Activation Message
- Partner Facing FAQs
Depending on who you will be communicating with, the FAQ should be placed in certain areas of the marketing:
- If you will only be communicating with the Reseller, this FAQ should ONLY be placed in the Partner Marketing.
- If you may be communicating with the End User, you should not be implying that you will be communicating with them. Any mention of communication should be removed from your What Happens After the Sale FAQ.
-
Timelines and detail are important and most importantly, a requirement.
Example:
Q: What Happens After the Sale?
A: After the purchase is processed and the order form has been completed, we will reach out to you within [x] business days.
We will provide [Insert Deliverable] within 5 business days for approval via [Insert communication method].
If further revisions are required, they will be completed within [x] business days.
Once all revisions are approved, we will notify you via [Insert communication method].
Glossary
Product
An app that is listed in the Vendasta Marketplace. Products are defined by the fact that they have a deep technical integration into the Vendasta Platform.
Service
A listing in the Marketplace that refers to fulfillment work that is completed for or on behalf of a client.
Vendor Center
Vendor Center is the area of the platform where Vendors can go to build out their Marketplace offering and connect with Resellers.
Wholesale Price
The wholesale price is the price of the product or service that the Channel Partner pays out to Vendasta.
Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price (MSRP)
The MSRP is the suggested retail price that is set by the Vendor. The MSRP needs to be equal to the price of the product when purchasing directly from the Vendor. The only time the MSRP will differ is if the offering is exclusive to the Vendasta Marketplace - Then it must be exceptionally clear what the difference is within your marketing material.
Activation
Activation refers to a product being made available to use on an account. An activation means the purchase is successful and the product is in an active state or a pending state depending on the specific purchase workflow for the product.
Product Type
Product or Service