# Pricing what you resell: cost, markup, margin and the invoice at the end of it (https://app.resellerhq.com/blog/pricing-what-you-resell-cost-markup-and-margin)

By ResellerHQ. Published 2026-10-15, updated 2026-10-29.

Pricing what you resell is eight small sums a reseller tends to get wrong by hand, not by nature: the markup on one sale, the seat cost across a whole book of customers, the point at which fixed costs are covered, and what that book is worth in profit rather than revenue. Each sum below is worked by a free calculator rather than by hand, linked at the exact row it replaces. Google Workspace and Microsoft 365's list prices are read on the day this guide was checked, separately from the date it was published, because a vendor's price list is the one figure here that goes stale on its own schedule.



Pricing what you resell breaks down into eight sums that are each easy to do in your head once and easy to get wrong across a whole book of customers: the margin on a single sale, the seat cost for a customer buying licences in bulk, the point at which your fixed costs are covered, what your recurring revenue and your customers' lifetimes are actually worth, and the notice a price increase needs before it lands on someone's renewal. [How to price reseller services: markup, price lists and customer-specific rates](/blog/how-to-price-reseller-services-markup-and-price-lists) already covers what markup and margin mean and how a price list or an agreed price works; this guide does not repeat any of that. It hands you a calculator for each of the sums instead, each one linked at the exact row of arithmetic it replaces.

## Pricing what you resell, one sum at a time [#pricing-what-you-resell-one-sum-at-a-time]

Eight free tools, each built for one sum in this guide rather than for the whole book of a reseller's business at once.

| Sum                                                                        | Tool                                                                                         |
| -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| One sale's margin, across every product line in a month                    | [Reseller profit planner](/tools/reseller-profit-planner)                                    |
| Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365 seat cost, at the tier and term you pick | [Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365 cost comparison](/tools/workspace-vs-365-cost-comparison) |
| Licence seats across a term, idle seats and a mid-cycle change             | [Seat cost planner](/tools/seat-cost-planner)                                                |
| The exact part-cycle charge or credit for a seat change                    | [Proration calculator](/tools/proration-calculator)                                          |
| How many customers cover your fixed costs                                  | [Reseller break-even calculator](/tools/breakeven-calculator)                                |
| MRR, ARR and a twelve-month projection                                     | [MRR to ARR calculator](/tools/mrr-arr-calculator)                                           |
| Customer lifetime value, on profit rather than revenue                     | [Customer lifetime value calculator](/tools/churn-ltv-calculator)                            |
| A renewal price increase, written as a notice                              | [Renewal increase notice builder](/tools/renewal-increase-notice-builder)                    |

## How do you work out one sale's margin correctly, the first time? [#how-do-you-work-out-one-sales-margin-correctly-the-first-time]

The arithmetic for one sale is markup on cost, not margin carved out of the price you charge - the two numbers describe the same profit differently, and [how to price reseller services](/blog/how-to-price-reseller-services-markup-and-price-lists) covers exactly how they diverge and what to do about it. What that post does not give you is a way to see every product line of a real month side by side: domains at one margin, licences at another, numbers at a third, against the fixed costs none of those lines ever see on their own.

That is what the [reseller profit planner](/tools/reseller-profit-planner) is for. Enter each product line as a name, a quantity, a cost and a price, add your fixed costs for the month, and it stacks the lines into one month's revenue, cost of sales and net profit, naming the thinnest-margin line and the line still priced under cost rather than burying either in a total. A healthy margin on every individual line can still leave a month behind once the fixed costs are subtracted, which is the thing a single sale's margin can never show you.

## How do the costs of Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 actually compare today? [#how-do-the-costs-of-google-workspace-and-microsoft-365-actually-compare-today]

At list price, read on 15 October 2026, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 charge the same figure at every business tier.

| Tier   | Google Workspace                     | Microsoft 365 (with Teams)           |
| ------ | ------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------ |
| Entry  | Business Starter, $7.00/user/month   | Business Basic, $7.00/user/month     |
| Middle | Business Standard, $14.00/user/month | Business Standard, $14.00/user/month |
| Top    | Business Plus, $22.00/user/month     | Business Premium, $22.00/user/month  |

*Prices read on 15 October 2026 from [Google Workspace: Pricing](https://workspace.google.com/pricing) and [Microsoft Licensing: 2026 Microsoft 365 packaging and pricing updates](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/news/2026-m365-packaging-pricing-updates), which states the figures above took effect 1 July 2026. Google's page shows a 16% discount for a one-year commitment on top of the monthly figure. Check both pages again before you build a price list from this table, because list prices move and a commitment term can change what you actually pay.*

Storage is where the identical bill stops meaning the same thing. Google pools 30 GB across Gmail and Drive together on Business Starter, then gives 2 TB per user on Standard and 5 TB per user on Business Plus. Microsoft gives every Business tier 1 TB of OneDrive per user, separate from a 100 GB mailbox with a 50 GB archive on Basic and Standard, growing to a 1.5 TB archive on Business Premium ([Microsoft Learn: OneDrive service description](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/onedrive-for-business-service-description); [Microsoft Learn: Exchange Online limits](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/exchange-online-service-description/exchange-online-limits); both read 15 October 2026). A pooled allowance and a per-user one are not the same promise to a customer with one heavy user, which is the kind of question a per-seat total cannot answer on its own.

The [Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365 cost comparison](/tools/workspace-vs-365-cost-comparison) tool runs the seat arithmetic at any tier and seat count you pick, and states the storage behind each figure next to the bill, each with the date it was read. For the fuller comparison of which programme to actually join - entry requirements, API shape, support burden, published seat counts - see [Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365: which is better to resell?](/blog/google-workspace-vs-microsoft-365-for-resellers)

## How do you plan licence seats across many customers? [#how-do-you-plan-licence-seats-across-many-customers]

A seat term is three numbers, not one: what the vendor bills you this month, what that figure costs across the whole commitment, and what share of it is seats nobody is actually signed in to. The [seat cost planner](/tools/seat-cost-planner) takes a seat count, a price per seat and a term, and reports all three together with a mid-cycle change worked out to the day, so a customer adding two seats eleven days before the end of a cycle gets a part-cycle figure rather than a full month's charge or nothing at all.

The [proration calculator](/tools/proration-calculator) is the same part-cycle arithmetic on its own, for checking a line on a vendor invoice that looks wrong: the cycle price divided by the days in the cycle, times the days left, times the seats that changed, rounded once at the end. It is also the tool to reach for before promising a customer a fair part-cycle figure, because ResellerHQ's own mailbox billing does not prorate: a mailbox added mid-month is charged a full first month and then renews with the rest of the domain's mailboxes on the same date (see [mailboxes](/docs/mailboxes) for the rest of how they renew and what happens if a renewal goes unpaid). A reseller who promises a customer a fair part-cycle charge for a mid-month addition has to work that figure out themselves, which is exactly what these two calculators are for.

## How many customers do you need before the business pays for itself? [#how-many-customers-do-you-need-before-the-business-pays-for-itself]

Fixed costs are the part a single sale's margin never shows: the tooling, the support hours and the hosting that are owed whether or not anyone buys anything this month. The [reseller break-even calculator](/tools/breakeven-calculator) divides a month of fixed costs by the profit one customer leaves behind, after your own supplier cost, and rounds the answer up, because no customer signs a fraction of a contract. Below that count, the business is being funded out of something else; above it, every further customer is profit rather than a contribution toward the bill.

The number worth entering is profit per customer, not revenue per customer - a customer who pays $180 and costs $60 to serve contributes $120 toward the fixed costs, not $180, and dividing by the larger figure understates how many customers you actually need.

## What is your book of customers actually worth? [#what-is-your-book-of-customers-actually-worth]

Two different questions, and two different tools.

**What the book bills right now, and where it is headed.** The [MRR to ARR calculator](/tools/mrr-arr-calculator) turns monthly recurring revenue into its yearly figure, then projects the next twelve months from new revenue, expansion, churn and contraction. A reseller's recurring revenue is rarely as smooth as that projection: a licence seat bills every month, but a domain or a number renews once a year and lands the whole fee in a single month, so the tool is most useful for the underlying trend rather than for predicting any one month's invoice.

**What one customer is worth over their whole life, not just this month.** The [customer lifetime value calculator](/tools/churn-ltv-calculator) applies your margin before it answers, because a reseller keeps the margin and nothing else - a revenue-based lifetime value is close to three times the profit figure at a 35% margin, which is the kind of gap that makes an unprofitable acquisition channel look fine for a year. Lifetime value here comes from the churn rate: lose three customers in a hundred each month and the average customer lasts a little over thirty-three months, multiplied by the monthly profit one customer leaves behind.

## How do you raise a price without losing the customer? [#how-do-you-raise-a-price-without-losing-the-customer]

A price increase needs two things: the right notice, and the right wording. [How to price reseller services](/blog/how-to-price-reseller-services-markup-and-price-lists) already covers the notice side - what Google's and Microsoft's own reseller terms say about how much warning a price change needs and whether it reaches something a customer already holds - so this guide does not repeat it.

What it adds is the wording. The [renewal increase notice builder](/tools/renewal-increase-notice-builder) takes the old price and the new one and hands back a paragraph naming the exact dollar change and percentage, worded as an increase or a decrease, ready to paste into an email once the notice period has actually been checked. It pairs with two events ResellerHQ already emits: `price_list.updated`, which the webhooks guide lists as "A price list changed; `changed` names the settings that moved and `customerIds` the customers on it" ([webhooks](/docs/webhooks)), fires the moment the new price is set, which is when the figures below are known and the notice can be written; `domain.renewed`, listed there as "A domain was renewed" ([webhooks](/docs/webhooks)), fires when a renewal actually bills - the latest point a notice like this one should already be sitting in a customer's inbox, not the moment to start drafting it.

## How do you turn all of this into money collected? [#how-do-you-turn-all-of-this-into-money-collected]

Everything above decides what a customer owes. None of it collects the money. [How to invoice your reseller customers](/blog/how-to-invoice-your-reseller-customers) covers what an invoice must show, invoicing a sale as it happens versus running one monthly billing run, and how to chase an invoice that has gone overdue - none of which this guide repeats. Work the sum, price the sale or the seat correctly, and the invoice at the end of it is the easy part.


## Frequently asked questions

### What is the difference between pricing one sale and pricing a book of customers?
One sale is a markup on a cost: price minus cost, divided by cost. A book of customers adds three things a single sale cannot show - the fixed costs that exist whether or not anyone buys anything, the seats and renewals that change month to month, and the length of time a customer stays before churning, which decides what the relationship is worth in total rather than this month.

### Is Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 cheaper to resell?
At list price, the business tiers are the same figure: $7, $14 and $22 a user a month for Workspace Business Starter/Standard/Plus and Microsoft 365 Business Basic/Standard/Premium, read on 15 October 2026 from each vendor's own pricing page. What differs at that price is storage and features, not the bill, and what a reseller actually pays is a wholesale rate neither vendor publishes.

### Does ResellerHQ prorate a mailbox added mid-month?
No. A mailbox added to a domain mid-month is charged a full first month, then renews with the domain's other mailboxes on the same date. A reseller who wants to charge a customer a fair part-month for it has to work out that amount themselves, which is what the proration calculator below is for.

### How many customers does a reseller need before the business pays for itself?
Divide your monthly fixed costs by the profit one customer leaves you after your own supplier cost, then round up, because no customer signs a fraction of a contract. A reseller with $1,000 of fixed costs and $85 of profit per customer needs twelve customers, not 11.8 - eleven leaves the month $65 short.

### Should I measure a customer's lifetime value on revenue or on profit?
On profit, if you resell at a margin. Revenue counts money that belongs to your supplier as soon as it arrives, so a revenue-based lifetime value overstates what a customer is actually worth to you by the whole cost of what you resell them - on a 35% margin, by almost three times.

### How much notice do I have to give before a renewal price goes up?
That depends on the agreement behind the sale, not on anything a calculator can tell you. How to price reseller services covers what Google's and Microsoft's own reseller terms say about notice periods; a renewal notice builder only turns an old price and a new one into a paragraph you can send once you know when it is allowed to land.

## Sources

- [Google Workspace: Pricing](https://workspace.google.com/pricing)
- [Microsoft Licensing: 2026 Microsoft 365 packaging and pricing updates](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/news/2026-m365-packaging-pricing-updates)
- [Microsoft Learn: OneDrive service description](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/onedrive-for-business-service-description)
- [Microsoft Learn: Exchange Online limits](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/exchange-online-service-description/exchange-online-limits)