New capability: Auto activation for SaaS in Microsoft Marketplace
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With auto activation, billing begins as soon as a customer buys your SaaS offer in Microsoft Marketplace, even if product activation happens later.
- Impacted audience
- Partners who have SaaS solutions published in Microsoft Marketplace.
We’re introducing auto activation, an optional setting that simplifies activation of SaaS products sold in Microsoft Marketplace without compromising governance. Customer subscriptions and billing begin immediately; decoupling billing from fulfillment, for the SaaS solutions you sell in Marketplace.
What’s changing
When a customer completes a transaction for your SaaS offer, billing and activation now start immediately. In parallel, Marketplace sends you a real-time webhook notification confirming the completed purchase, giving you a signal to launch your onboarding flows.
Previously, without a real-time signal that a purchase completed, customer outreach often served as the first indication. Billing and activation were then dependent on the partner issuing the activation API call.
Default behavior
- Existing plans: Auto activation is OFF by default. You'll still manually activate SaaS purchases unless you republish your offer and change the setting.
- New plans: Auto activation is ON by default, with the option to turn it off during offer publication if you prefer to manage manually.
Private offers
Auto activation is also applicable for private offers.
- By default, the private offer uses the auto activation setting of the public offer.
- Price adjustments to your SaaS plan won't affect the activation status of your private offer.
- If you create a new SaaS plan with a unique plan ID for your private offer, you can explicitly turn auto activation ON or OFF.
Next steps
- Review your SaaS offers to determine where immediate activation aligns with your customer experience and operational workflow.
- Using auto activation when removing billing dependencies improves the experience.
- Continue manual activation when the onboarding or governance model requires it.
Before turning on auto activation, make sure your customer messaging, documentation, and internal sales guidance reflect the updated experience.