25% of B2B SaaS Sales Now Flow Through Cloud Marketplaces

01 /The Concept

Clazar built a platform that helps cloud B2B service developers sell subscriptions through cloud marketplaces – AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

With Clazar, a vendor can list their service on all the relevant marketplaces in a matter of weeks, with minimal engineering effort. Without it, the same process typically takes months of heavy lifting.

B2B deals with larger customers always involve negotiation, even for cloud services. Clazar lets vendors send customized offers to prospects who have shown interest on a cloud marketplace and to existing customers approaching renewal. All of this can flow directly from CRM systems like HubSpot and Salesforce through a Clazar integration, keeping the entire cloud sales motion inside a single workflow.

Clazar also integrates with billing and usage-metering systems, so the platform and the connected CRM provide a complete view of how customers are using their subscriptions and what they're paying. That data feeds a set of reporting tools that track how cloud marketplace sales are performing.

B2B services often move through channel partners – systems integrators, implementation consultants, resellers. Clazar supports partner-assisted sales through cloud marketplaces, automatically threading referral attribution between marketplace listings and CRM records in both directions.

Standard pricing runs from $499 to $2,999 per month depending on features and volume. Larger or more complex deployments can negotiate custom terms directly with the team.

Clazar was founded just last year, raising $4M at launch. In under twelve months it signed up over 100 customers – and has now closed a new $10M round on the back of that traction.

02 /Why It Matters

In consumer e-commerce, marketplaces account for 30–45% of all online retail sales. In the US, that's roughly 33.5% – about $384 billion – growing toward $603 billion by 2027 at a 34.8% share.

B2B cloud services are following the same trajectory. Cloud marketplaces already handled 25% of B2B SaaS revenue in 2020. Some analysts project that share could reach 75% within a few years.

The logic is straightforward: enterprises want to consolidate cloud spending in one place. Buying through AWS or Azure makes integration easier, simplifies procurement and finance workflows, and lets vendors tap into pre-committed cloud budgets. For vendors, that means deals close 62% faster and billing complexity drops by 64%.

The three major cloud platforms – AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud – already handle $340 billion in annual spend across their own services and the third-party products listed on them. Contracts closed through these marketplaces average 80% larger than those closed through other channels. For vendors who use them well, cloud marketplace revenue can represent 20% of total revenue.

In 2025, SaaS vendors are projected to collect $45 billion through cloud marketplaces – an 84% year-over-year increase, even though the forecast a year earlier was half that.

This kind of market doesn't go uncontested. Clazar appears to have modeled itself closely on Tackle, which raised $148.3M and isn't coasting on it. By Deloitte's 2023 Technology Fast 500 list, Tackle ranked 27th among the fastest-growing tech companies with revenue growth of 6,586% – yes, six thousand five hundred eighty-six percent.

03 /Opportunities

If you're building B2B SaaS, cloud marketplaces are a channel you need to be on – this much is obvious from Clazar's traction alone.

Less obvious is that there's still room to build Clazar- or Tackle-style infrastructure for cloud marketplace integration. Tackle dates to 2016; Clazar only launched last year and found its first hundred customers quickly. Different regions also have their own cloud platforms worth integrating with.

Equally viable, and further from the crowd: building your own cloud marketplace. The lowest-friction starting point is probably a marketplace for open-source LLM hosting and related AI services – a format that's multiplying fast as demand for AI infrastructure grows.

More sophisticated models are also possible. Vendasta, [covered previously](/review/shans-zanjat-vygodnoe-mesto-v-novoj-voronke-prodazh) last fall, built a marketplace where digital agencies serving small businesses can create their own branded software marketplaces and resell third-party online services to their clients. That was compelling enough to attract $185M in funding. And now, riding the AI wave, Vendasta is pushing a dedicated lane for reselling AI services under the same model.

Consumer e-commerce went through two waves: first, the proliferation of marketplaces of every size and shape; then, the proliferation of tools helping sellers operate effectively on those marketplaces. The same sequence is now playing out in B2B SaaS. The wave you want to catch – and how you want to ride it – is the decision worth making now.