Pricing for Resellers

Introduction to reseller pricing

As a cloud platform reseller, you can create pricing models for your customers. This will enable them to obtain pricing estimates for their virtual appliances before they deploy or at any time by clicking the pricing button, and also by using the API if they have access.

To get started, go to Pricing in the main menu.

The platform will display the pricing model that is assigned to your enterprise. You may open this pricing model in Edit mode to view the prices, but you cannot save changes. This pricing model should contain the base prices that you will pay the provider for virtual resources. You can use this pricing model to create your own pricing models for your customers. But before you create pricing models, you should configure VM template prices.

Set VM template prices

Your platform provider may have already created cost codes for you but you can create more cost codes using these steps.

To set a price for a VM template:

Create a cost code
1. In Pricing view on the Cost codes tab, click the + Add button to create a cost code
2. Enter a cost code (in the name field) and a description
3. On the Initial prices tab, enter the default template price for each currency, and click Save
4. In pricing models for your customers, set cost code prices
Assign the cost code to VM templates
1. Open the Apps library and edit a template
2. On the Advanced tab, select the cost code from the pull down list, and save

Click here to show/hide the walkthrough with screenshots

Here is a walkthrough of the steps with screenshots.

Create Cost code
1. Click the + Add button
2. Create a new cost code
3. Enter Initial prices
Add cost code to VM templates in Apps library
1. Edit the template
2. Go to the Advanced tab and select the cost code

Set hardware profile prices

To set prices for hardware profiles using cost codes:

Create cost codes, see Pricing View#Manage cost codes
Set cost code prices, see Pricing View#Create a new pricing model
When you create or edit a hardware profile, select a cost code
Click here to expand...

For dynamic hardware profiles, the platform will also use the prices for CPU and RAM.

To set prices in a pricing model for individual hardware profiles in each datacenter, see Pricing View#Create a new pricing model

To onboard and synchronize prices from public cloud, see Synchronize public cloud price lists

Create a reseller pricing model

When you create a pricing model for your customers, Abiquo will use the base prices from your tenant's pricing model and you can enter a percentage to increase or decrease the base prices. Note that the platform only allows users with the same tenant scope (who can administer exactly the same customers) to manage your pricing models. But all users with pricing privileges can view the pricing model assigned to their tenant.

To assign prices to resources for enterprises, create pricing models with prices for VM elements.

Before you begin

Add your currencies at Pricing → Currencies
Pre-create cost codes at Pricing → Cost codes to assign to resources, for example, hardware profiles or templates

To create a pricing model:

Go to Pricing → Pricing models
To base the pricing model on your enterprise's current model, click the + add button, or
To clone a pricing model, click the copy clone button. The platform will name the new model "PricingModelName (c)".
Note: The platform will assign your user scope to the pricing model

For more details see GUI Create a new pricing model General information

Modify prices

The platform uses the first pricing model for a location in a currency as the set of base prices for the location. If your enterprise has a pricing model, when you create a new pricing model, you can enter a percentage to modify prices, for example, to add a reseller markup. If you then enter a resource price that is lower than the base price, the platform will highlight the price.

Backup prices

.

For more details see GUI Create a new pricing model Resource prices Backup policies

Cost code prices

For more details see GUI Create a new pricing model Resource prices Cost code prices

Troubleshooting

Access to pricing models

When you create a pricing model, Abiquo automatically assigns the same scope as your user. The Abiquo UI does not display the scope of the pricing model
Users with pricing privileges can always display the pricing model of their own enterprise. Administrators who can switch to another enterprise can display the current pricing model of the enterprise, even if the pricing model has a different scope
To display or manage the pricing model of another enterprise in Pricing view, you must have the same scope as the creator of the pricing model

Configure the pricing estimate message

The default text of the pricing estimate message is as follows.

The charge for this Virtual Appliance will be %CHARGE_FORMATTED% per %CHARGEPERIOD%, charged per %MINPERIOD%, subject to a minimum charge of %MINCHARGE_FORMATTED%. Backup service charge: %BACKUP_PRICE%. VMs in this Virtual Appliance will be:
%VM_PRICES%
Resources defined in the Virtual Datacenter total %VDC_TOTAL_CHARGE% per %CHARGEPERIOD%:
%VDC_PRICES%

Notes about the pricing estimate message:

The virtual appliance and VM pricing estimates only include the costs that are directly related to VMs.
The virtual datacenters resources estimate includes other costs such as the network cost, backup costs, and the cost of datastore disks without a datastore tier, such as a cloud-init ISO.
The VDC resources cost also includes public IP addresses because they are billed for the time of reservation, which may be longer than the time they are attached to a VM.

To customize the pricing estimate message:

Edit the message, change the text and use the standard cut and paste keys to change the location of the variables.
You can also select variables to add to this message from the pull-down list. Align the message with your accounting system.

For more details see GUI Pricing estimate message variables

Display a pricing estimate message

To display pricing estimates, assign a pricing model to the enterprise. The platform will display the estimates as follows:

At any time users can click the Estimate button in the virtual appliance view to display a current pricing estimate for a VM.
Click here to show/hide the screenshots
Screenshot: Pricing estimate button with EUR price code
Screenshot: A sample pricing message
Users with access to the Abiquo API can also request a pricing estimate via the API.
To automatically display a pricing estimate popup when the user deploys a virtual appliance or VM, when creating a pricing model, select the checkbox to "Show charges before deployment".

Assign a pricing model to your tenants

After you save a pricing model, to assign it to one or more tenants, do these steps:

Go to Pricing→ Pricing models
Click Enterprise associations
In the search boxes at the top of the enterprise lists, enter text from the enterprise name to filter and display the enteprise
Select the pricing model

The enterprise with the pricing model will move to the enterprises With pricing model panel.

Troubleshooting: If an expected pricing model does not display in the list, check that you are logged in with a user with the same scope as the user that created the pricing model.

You can also assign a pricing model to an enterprise when you edit the enterprise. See Assign a pricing model to an enterprise

Display prices for your tenant

A tenant administrator with pricing access can display the pricing model for the tenant.

To display the prices for your tenant:

Go to Pricing view
Select and edit the pricing model
Go to Resource prices and select the cloud locations
Click Cancel to close the pricing model

Edit a pricing model

When you edit a pricing model, the access will depend on your user privileges and scope.

If your user is not the pricing administrator, the pricing model will be grayed out and you can edit the pricing model of your enterprise to view the prices only.

You can then compare the price lists for different providers, for example, by hardware profiles.

If you can manage a pricing model, when you edit it, the current price for each resource will be shown to the right of the price field. The platform does not highlight discounted prices.