Planning guide

This guide will help you prepare your strategy for the launch of your app editions on Atlassian Marketplace.

Introduction

For Marketplace partners dedicated to expanding their presence in the cloud, app editions present an exciting opportunity. You can now list multiple editions of an app under a single Marketplace listing, providing valuable pricing flexibility. You can also:

• Segment your audience based on customer needs and budget
• Monetize additional investments in cloud development
• Gain greater control over your app’s pricing strategy
• Expand your reach and make it easier for more customers to use your apps

This guide focuses on:

• The different edition scenarios for a paid app
• Guidance on becoming enterprise-ready
• Legal considerations when introducing editions

The content in this guide can help you navigate the critical steps to ensure a smooth and effective implementation of your editions.

Segment customers

In creating your editions, you need to determine how you want to segment what you’re offering. You have multiple options at your disposal, including multiple ways of packaging your app features, differentiating through the pricing, and more. The key requirement is to understand your customer segments and the features that are important to them. This understanding helps you determine the value of your app and your app edition strategy.

Build editions using an existing app

Below are some examples of how you can differentiate editions for an existing app. Let’s consider how this could look when you launch your own editions.

Let’s consider scenarios that a typical Marketplace partner may encounter while creating standard and advanced editions. This can help you understand how you want to strategize and figure out the path best suited for you.

Scenario 1: Room to add features

My current app defaults to the STANDARD edition. I'm considering building an ADVANCED edition by adding features from the backlog of highly requested features. The additional features justify the price increase for the new edition.

Things to consider

1. Is my cloud app regularly generating new subscriptions?
2. Is my customer base varied?
3. Do I have enterprise customers who have flagged missing functionality?
4. Do I have features in my backlog that I'm certain customers would have the budget for?

Recommendation

Your focus upon the launch of editions should be to upsell to existing customers and attract new prospective customers from the segment with a higher willingness to pay (enterprise customers, etc.)

Scenario 2: Room to add services

My current app defaults to the STANDARD edition. I choose to release an ADVANCED edition by adding another layer of services to the existing features. The increased service support justifies the price increase for the advanced edition.

Things to consider

• Is my cloud app regularly generating new subscriptions?
• Is my app solution solving a complex problem? Have my customers indicated that they would welcome extra support, training, and troubleshooting?

Recommendation

Your priority ahead of launch is ensuring that your support systems and practices are in place. You should be confident in your ability to provide these additional services and promote the advanced edition to existing and prospective customers.

Scenario 3: Transition current app to advanced and build a lower standard edition

As my existing app is feature-rich and in the upper price range, launching as a STANDARD edition may cause difficulties with my customers and my brand positioning. Prior to launch, I want to make my current app ADVANCED.

Things to consider

• While my feature-rich app is already priced as an advanced app, is it indeed suited for the advanced category?
• Would defaulting my current feature-rich app to the standard edition cause unnecessary complexity and confusion for my customers?
• Would a lightweight version of my current app cater to the various needs of my customers?
• Is my customer base varied? Am I catering to the needs of my customer segments?

Recommendation

Demonstrating clear value with your advanced edition is critical to ensuring that you don't lose existing revenue when customers downgrade to a lower edition. Future roadmaps, extra features, services, and clear and regular communications in the product and via marketing channels are important.

Scenario 4: Merge or consolidate existing apps in a standard or advanced app edition

To diversify my offerings, I had created multiple app listings with varied features on Atlassian Marketplace and all those apps are already live. However, now that editions are being introduced, I want to consolidate the features of these apps into different editions.

Things to consider

• Are my multiple apps listed on Marketplace generating regular cloud subscriptions?
• Would consolidating app listings into editions with differentiated features cater to diversified customer segments?
• How much effort and bandwidth would it take to consolidate my multiple listings into standard and advanced editions?

Recommendation

Consider introducing an advanced edition for one of your apps and planning an end-of-life for your other existing app. This will require strong communication and change management plans with customers which you will be solely responsible for. To help us explore this further, we would appreciate feedback on your needs related to merging existing app listings so that we can improve our capabilities roadmap in this area. Feedback can be submitted to Marketplace Support.

Build editions with a new app

In this section, we’ll look at building a new app from scratch. This gives you the flexibility to design and plan your product with edition differentiation that can appeal to a broader customer base.

Note that you can launch standard and advanced editions simultaneously as another option if you are fully confident in operational readiness. We have assumed that you will initially ask for feedback from the standard customers to drive the advanced strategy.

Scenario 5: Build a new app with a standard edition

I want to build an entirely new app with a STANDARD edition. In the future, I will add more complex and rich features to create my ADVANCED edition.

Things to consider

• Do you know enough about your customer segments and their varying needs?
• Do you have insights on the particular features and services you can differentiate between standard and advanced editions?
• Do you have mechanisms in place to collect customer feedback once you release a standard edition of your app?

Recommendation

Offering the standard edition lowers the barrier to entry for customers of any app. This allows you to collect customer feedback and generate awareness of your offering without too much time pressure. More importantly, this gives you the time to learn what's really important to your customers while earning immediate revenue.

Become enterprise-ready

As a Marketplace partner, you are responsible for designing apps and processes that comply with legal requirements, as well as Atlassian’s and customers' standards for reliability, compliance, and security, including customer data protection.

Many Atlassian customers are large, multinational teams supporting a significant user base. These enterprise customers often have strict and specific needs, particularly regarding data. Consequently, they maintain rigorous standards for evaluating apps before purchasing.

As you create your editions, consider how you can meet these standards. To help you address these customers' needs and build enterprise-grade cloud features, we recommend focusing on the following key areas:

1. Promotion of secure apps: Ensure your apps meet high-security standards by adhering to best practices, undergoing regular security audits, and obtaining relevant certifications. In the Privacy and Security tab of your Marketplace listing, provide comprehensive information on privacy, security, data handling, and compliance.

2. Reliability: Ensure your apps are reliable and perform well under various conditions. Implement robust testing procedures, monitor app performance, and promptly address any issues that arise. Consistent reliability is crucial for gaining and maintaining customer trust.

3. Transparency: Enterprise customers often require a high level of transparency, which is essential for building trust. Provide business-critical information by being transparent about app functionalities, offering clear documentation, responsive support, and engaging with the user community. Ensure that the Privacy and Security tab in your Marketplace listing includes detailed information on privacy, security, data handling, and compliance.

4. Participation in Atlassian’s Marketplace programs and badges: Engage with Atlassian’s programs and earn badges to demonstrate your commitment to security, reliability, and trustworthiness. Strategies include participating in Atlassian’s security programs, aiming for high customer satisfaction ratings, and actively maintaining and updating your app listings.

To gain customer trust and meet baseline expectations for enterprise customers in the cloud, consider making your app Cloud Fortified. This enhances the appeal of your offerings to enterprise customers by emphasizing essential features such as security, reliability, and support.

Additionally, review the guidelines at Marketplace App Trust | Atlassian to understand the specific needs of enterprise customers. By developing with these requirements in mind, your app can deliver compelling value to any Atlassian customer.

Legal considerations

As you consider your options for building out editions using your existing app, you should evaluate whether any of the changes you make would violate these or any other customer protections in your End User Terms.

As a reference point, consider the “transition obligations” set forth in Section 11.3(c) of our Marketplace Partner Agreement:

• Make your app available to current customers at least until the conclusion of any current subscription terms for all end users who have purchased your app;
• Arrange to provide ongoing support and maintenance for your app for all end users for the duration of the term for which you have committed to provide such support and maintenance; and
• Communicate matters accurately and in a positive and professional manner to end users.

These requirements are not tied to making changes to your app editions, but they are offered here as a reference for how we expect Marketplace partners to uphold any commitments they’ve made to their current customers when removing their app entirely. You may want to take similar steps as a courtesy to your current customers if your changes will materially reduce or otherwise affect the benefit they are receiving for their subscription fees.