Every ISV I work with eventually asks some version of this question. Usually it comes up after a year of signing partners who never sold anything.

The logic sounds right. If partners paid to join, they would take it seriously. Skin in the game.

My position: most ISVs selling into the mid-market ERP channel should not charge a program fee until they have proof that partners make money with them. A fee is a filter, and filters only work when there is enough flow to filter.

What a fee actually signals

When a publisher like Sage or Acumatica charges a VAR for partner status, the VAR pays because the platform is the core of their business. Half their revenue might come from that one product line. The fee is a cost of staying in business.

Your add-on is not that. To a VAR, you are one of 30 or 40 ISV products they could mention on a call. Most of them they never will.

So when you ask for $2,500 to join, the VAR is not reading it as a commitment test. They are reading it as a question: is this ISV worth more to me than $2,500 this year? If you cannot answer that with deals they have already seen, the answer is no.

When a fee blocks recruiting

I have watched this play out more than once. An ISV with a decent product and maybe eight active partners launches a formal program. Three tiers, a fee for each, a certification exam with its own fee.

Recruiting stops. Not slows. Stops.

The VARs who were going to try one deal with you now have a procurement step in front of that first deal. The partner owner has to approve a spend for a vendor with no track record in their book. That conversation gets pushed to next quarter, and next quarter never comes.

A fee hurts most when:

  • You have fewer than 15 or 20 partners actually closing deals.
  • Your average partner margin per deal is under a few thousand dollars.
  • The VAR has never seen one of your deals close in their territory.
  • You are recruiting outside the ecosystem where your references live.

If any of those are true, the fee is not filtering for commitment. It is filtering for VARs who have spare budget and no particular plan, which is the opposite of what you want.

When a fee does filter for commitment

There is a point where a fee starts working. I have seen it, and I have recommended it.

It works when partners are already making real money from your product. If a typical VAR earns $15,000 to $40,000 a year in margin and services off your add-on, a $1,500 annual fee is noise. It is also a clean signal. The ones who will not pay it were not going to invest the time either.

It also works when the fee buys something the partner cannot get otherwise. That might be an NFR license for their internal demo environment, a seat in a hands-on certification with a real instructor, or a named listing in your partner locator that sends them leads.

And it works when you are oversubscribed. If 60 VARs want to resell you and you can only support 25 well, a fee is a reasonable way to sort the list.

Certification fees are a different question

I treat certification fees separately from program fees, because they solve a different problem.

A program fee is about who gets to sell. A certification fee is about who gets to implement. If your product needs configuration, and a bad implementation turns into a support ticket and a churned customer, you have a real reason to gate implementation rights.

What I recommend instead of an upfront fee

For most ISVs at the stage I usually meet them, I suggest this:

  • Free to join at the referral or reseller level. No exam required to register a deal.
  • Certification required before a partner can lead an implementation, but the first seat is free.
  • Additional seats paid, at roughly what it costs you to deliver the training.
  • A paid tier only once you have partners asking for things you cannot give everyone.

That last point matters. When partners start asking for dedicated support, a co-marketing budget, or priority on leads, you have found what a paid tier should contain. Build the tier around their requests, not around your revenue target.

The certification trap

One warning. Some ISVs turn certification into a revenue line. I understand why. Training is expensive to run and the line item looks good to a board.

But if a VAR has to pay $800 per consultant to learn your product, they will certify one person. That person leaves in 18 months. Now the partner has no certified staff, and you have a partner who stopped selling and does not know why.

Commitment comes from deals, not fees

The thing an ISV is really trying to buy with a fee is attention. You want to be on the short list of products the VAR's team actually brings up.

Attention comes from the partner closing a deal with you and seeing it go well. One clean implementation, one happy customer, one margin check that clears. That is what moves you up the list.

A fee does not create that. At best it confirms it after the fact.

A quick test before you charge

Before you add a fee, pull your own partner data. How many partners closed at least one deal with you in the last 12 months? What did the median partner earn from you in that time? How many of those deals did the partner find, versus deals you handed them? And how many new partners asked to join last quarter without being recruited?

If the active count is small and inbound requests are rare, a fee will make both numbers worse. Fix the economics first.

If partners are earning, asking, and coming to you on their own, then charge. You have earned it, and the partners who pay will be the ones you wanted anyway.

Where I land

It depends on where you are. But in my experience, more ISVs charge too early than too late. A fee is an easy lever to pull when the real problem is that partners do not yet see a reason to sell you.

If your channel is stalled, the fee will not fix it. It will just give partners a cleaner reason to say no.