How to Get Started with AWS Partner Central & Co-Selling

TL; DR

• AWS Partner Central is the central workspace for managing your AWS partnership, programs, solutions, opportunities, and co-selling activities. It now runs inside the AWS Management Console and also handles AWS Marketplace seller management.

• Getting started with AWS Partner Central has three stages: pre-registration readiness, identity and business verification, and completing the registration form.

• Pre-registration readiness involves using a company-owned AWS account that is on a paid plan and in good standing and setting up ownership and access.

• Identity verification requires a valid government-issued photo ID with a recent photo and a smartphone with a camera to take a selfie via QR code.

• Business verification requires your legal company name, registration or tax ID, and the AWS Alliance Lead’s name.

• In practice, co-selling is one of the key ways ISVs use Partner Central to drive revenue. Canalys reports that frequent co-sellers saw 51% higher average revenue growth, 65% reported higher close rates, and 80% considered AWS Marketplace key to their co-sell motion.

• Co-selling can drive revenue, but manual processes and fragmented systems make it resource-intensive. ISVs often switch between Partner Central and their CRM, duplicate opportunity data, chase updates across channels, and reconcile mismatched deal stages, leading to missed opportunities, lower efficiency, and higher operational costs.

• SaaSify's agentic platform centralizes the entire AWS co-sell motion inside ISVs’ CRM or the SaaSify dashboard, automating opportunity submissions, referrals, and private offers. AI agents identify co-sell and funding opportunities, while RevOps gain visibility into the full deal lifecycle without switching between tools.

AWS Partner Central is the operating hub for an organization's relationship with AWS. Available through the AWS Management Console, it gives AWS Partners one place to manage their partnership, access partner programs and benefits, funding, and work on co-sell opportunities with AWS field reps.

How to Get started with AWS Partner Central

Getting started with AWS Partner Central begins with three decisions: the AWS account that will represent your partnership, the person who will own the registration, and the access model your team will use.

Before registering, AWS requires three things:

1. A person with legal authority to accept the AWS Partner Network Terms and Conditions and the APN Customer Engagements Terms and Conditions on behalf of the company

2. An AWS account on a paid plan (not the Free Tier) and in good standing

3. The credentials and permissions needed to access that account and AWS Partner Central

1. Choose the AWS account that will represent your partnership

The AWS account you select becomes the primary account for your Partner Central activities. AWS uses it for APN fee billing, and its billing address becomes your headquarters address in the AWS partner discovery portal.

If your organization has several AWS accounts, AWS recommends a Member account within AWS Organizations rather than the Management/Payer account. Settle this with your AWS and IAM teams before registration, because the choice affects who gets access, how users are provisioned and how partner activity is managed as the relationship grows.

2. Assign an Alliance Lead for Your AWS Partnership

AWS calls the person registering the organization the Alliance Lead. This person must have the legal authority to accept the AWS Partner Network Terms and Conditions and the APN Customer Engagements Terms and Conditions on behalf of the company and become the primary contact for the account.

The registration form asks for the Alliance Lead's name, business title, and business email, along with your primary product or service. AWS sends a verification code to that email. If the role changes hands later, the Alliance Lead contact details can be updated at any time.

3. Work with your IAM administrator before registration

AWS Partner Central now sits within the AWS Management Console, so access follows the AWS identity and permissions model. Legacy Partner Central used company email credentials instead.

AWS Partner Central uses IAM roles and permissions to control access to account management, opportunity management, and AWS Marketplace operations.

4. Complete the Partner Central registration

Once the account, ownership, and permissions are ready, registration follows the current AWS Console flow:

1. Go to the AWS Partner Network page and choose Become a partner.

2. Sign in to the AWS account you selected for Partner Central.

3. Open AWS Partner Central from the AWS Management Console, using the console navigation or search.

4. Choose Get started.

5. Complete identity verification, then business verification. Identity verification uses a government-issued photo ID and a selfie taken through a mobile QR code flow. Business verification checks your legal company name, registration or tax ID, and jurisdiction of incorporation.

6. Enter the Alliance Lead and company details, verify the business email, accept the applicable terms, and submit.

After registration, AWS takes you to the Partner Central dashboard. New registrants get an AWS Partner Central account and an AWS Marketplace account set up together, so there is no separate linking step.

If your company already has a Partner Central account from the legacy experience, do not create a new registration. A new registration replaces all historical partner data. The existing Alliance Lead should link an AWS account to the legacy profile and migrate it to the new console experience. Choose that account carefully, because the link is permanent once migration is complete. Before starting, review the AWS Partner Central migration guide for the steps and decisions involved.

5. Complete the onboarding actions

The Partner Central dashboard includes a Get Started widget: a prioritized list of actions AWS recommends to support co-selling and selling through AWS Marketplace.

For an ISV, setup turns into GTM work at this point. Set up the right users and roles, complete your partner and solution information, and start the program activities that support the motions you plan to run.

Setting up AWS Partner Central establishes your relationship with AWS. The next step is putting that relationship to work in your sales motion.

For an ISV, co-selling is the bridge between being an AWS Partner and working with AWS on live customer opportunities. Through Partner Central, partners share opportunities with AWS, collaborate with AWS sellers, and manage joint opportunities through the sales cycle. Once AWS accepts an opportunity, partners can work with the assigned AWS sellers, access deal support resources, and get guidance on technical validation and pricing.

The sequence runs in five steps:

1. Set up Partner Central.

2. Build your partner and solution foundation.

3. Identify customer opportunities.

4. Share qualified opportunities with AWS.

5. Work with AWS sellers to move each deal forward.

For Marketplace-led ISVs, AWS Marketplace is part of this motion too. Since 1 July 2026, partners can associate up to 10 AWS Marketplace solutions and up to 10 Marketplace products with a single co-sell opportunity, which gives AWS sellers a clear view of what is being positioned for the customer.

Before starting sharing opportunities, ISVs need to be co-sell ready. That means understanding the Partner Path, ACE eligibility, solution readiness, and the other requirements that decide whether you can run an effective AWS co-selling motion.

Co-selling with AWS is a journey with four milestones: share your pipeline with AWS, earn AWS referrals, earn AWS seller incentives, and earn AWS recommendations. Each milestone has its own eligibility requirements, and each one widens what AWS will do with you.

The journey starts as soon as you enroll in the Software Path. From that point, you can share your own opportunities with AWS through the APN Customer Engagements (ACE) program, and each opportunity AWS validates connects you with the AWS Account Manager on that account. Those early deals build the relationships and the track record that the next stages ask for.

Passing the Foundational Technical Review (FTR) takes you to the Validated stage, and enough AWS-validated opportunities on top of that make you ACE eligible, so AWS can send its own leads and opportunities to you.

Once you sell through AWS Marketplace and have launched deals behind you, AWS invites you into the ISV Accelerate Program, where AWS sellers are paid to co-sell your solution. Earning an AWS Competency or Service Ready designation then takes you to the Differentiated stage, where AWS uses data to recommend you to its sellers.

Two points shape the whole journey:

1. The Software Path has no select. AWS states there are no tier requirements to validate software offerings.

2. The Service Path has Advanced, or Premier tiers.

The table below sets out every stage on the way, including the enrollment and validated gates, with what each requires and what it unlocks.

At every stage, AWS decides its level of involvement deal by deal. Each opportunity receives a co-sell motion (AWS Field-engaged, Agent-engaged, or Partner-led) and an Opportunity Quality Score from 0 to 100. A higher score can raise the chance of direct AWS field engagement but does not guarantee it.

Getting started with AWS Partner Central is the first step in building an AWS partnership. The opportunity grows from there.

As an ISV moves from registration to active co-selling, the motion becomes more complex. Teams need to manage Partner Central opportunities, respond to AWS-originated opportunities, keep CRM and ACE data aligned, connect Marketplace activity to the deal, create private offers, and identify funding opportunities that can help move deals forward.

SaaSify helps ISVs build this motion step by step from inside your CRM or the SaaSify dashboard. It connects the marketplace and CRM as one system, automating marketplace operations and establishing a bidirectional sync between the two for real-time data, opportunity inflow.

Add hyperscaler experts and dedicated AI agents, and partners can accelerate co-sell revenue while automating the work around each opportunity. AI agents can identify relevant funding opportunities, prepare and submit funding requests on top of co-sell opportunities, surface real-time insights, and build tailored strategies to help teams close enterprise deals faster, without adding operational overhead.

Start with AWS Partner Central

For an ISV getting started, the first challenge is often knowing what to set up, what to prioritize, and how to turn the AWS partnership into a revenue motion.

SaaSify combines its Cloud GTM platform with hyperscaler experts to help ISVs get started with AWS Partner Central and build the right foundation for co-selling. As the motion develops, SaaSify gives teams the technology to manage and automate the work that follows.

Bring AWS co-selling into the CRM

Co-selling becomes harder to manage when sales teams work in the CRM while partner teams work in Partner Central. SaaSify connects the two.

Teams can create, submit, view, and manage AWS co-sell opportunities from Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho CRM, and Pipedrive. AWS-originated opportunities can also flow back into the CRM, so the sales team can respond without switching between systems.

Automate the work behind every co-sell opportunity

Running co-sell at scale involves more than submitting an opportunity.

Teams need to identify opportunities that are ready for AWS engagement, complete the required information, validate the data, submit the opportunity, respond to AWS-originated opportunities, update stages, and keep the CRM and Partner Central aligned.

SaaSify automates these repeatable steps so teams can spend more time on the deal and less time maintaining the process.

AI agents can work with live CRM and Partner Central data to support pipeline analysis, sales plays, funding requests, and other actions around the opportunity.

Let Agents Build Your Scalable Path

AWS co-selling can also create opportunities to access partner funding.

The challenge is finding the right funding program, understanding its requirements, and preparing the request while the opportunity is still active. SaaSify's AI-powered funding workflows help teams identify and prepare funding requests around live opportunities.

The SaaSify Funding Agent can check a funding request against AWS requirements and return a corrected draft before submission.

This gives partnership teams a way to move from simply managing co-sell opportunities to acting on the funding opportunities attached to those deals.

The Pipeline Insights and Reports Agent can generate AWS pipeline reports and deliver advanced analytics instantly with requests in natural language.

The Sales Play Generator Agent creates sales plays using the context of a specific AWS opportunity.

The result is a Cloud GTM motion where AI takes on more of the repeatable work while sales and partnership teams stay focused on customer conversations, AWS relationships, and decisions that require human judgment.

The goal is simple: help ISVs spend less time managing the systems behind their AWS partnership and more time using that partnership to create and close revenue.

Looking to experience how SaaSify accelerates your co-sell revenue?

Book a free session with SaaSify experts.