Zoom’s partner points now reward growth inside existing accounts

Zoom told its resellers on 20 October, at its Zoomtopia Partner Connect event, that the points which decide their standing in the Zoom Up Partner Program will be counted differently. The Legacy Points Bonus is gone. In its place a Net MRR Growth metric awards one point for every $1,000 (about £750) of monthly recurring revenue (MRR) a partner adds during the assessment period. Revenue from new customers still counts, separately, so a partner can score on both.

The participation side has been simplified as well. Asset shares and campaign leads give way to a flat five points for each customer-facing activity, events included, with further points for qualifying deals through AWS Marketplace and for taking part in Zoom’s quarterly marketing campaigns. Next year Zoom plans to add sales performance incentive funds (SPIFFs) and rebates that scale with the length of a customer’s contract.

Nick Tidd, Zoom’s head of global channel go-to-market, presented the package as the latest step in a longer build. “In just two years, we’ve invested heavily in our program, tools, and the breadth of our platform,” he said in the company’s announcement.

The scoring change gives more weight to what a partner adds after the signature. Under the new rules a partner earns points for the monthly recurring revenue it adds to an account it already holds, and the rebates Zoom plans for next year scale with contract length. In an interview with Channel Dive, Tidd described customer adoption as the next task: “Implementation is kind of the easy part.”

Paid for what customers add

Partners are Zoom’s largest source of new enterprise business, the company says, and in the second quarter of its 2027 financial year the channel drove nine of its 10 largest customer experience deals. Zoom also reports that help tickets fell 46% year on year after earlier program updates, and that partners have completed more than 300 certifications.

Partner level also governs access to not-for-resale (NFR) licenses. From November partners will be able to see their NFR allocations and availability by partner level, and by the first quarter of 2027 Zoom plans to let them request extra licenses themselves through the Partner Portal.

The points framework itself is not new. Channel Dive reports that Zoom introduced it nearly a year ago, and that partners will learn their tier later in October. What has changed is that revenue growth at existing customers now earns points of its own, while asset shares and campaign leads no longer do.

A specialization for managed service providers

The second change aimed at the same partners is expected in December 2026. Zoom plans a managed service provider specialization for partners that deliver managed services, with anticipated benefits including Advanced Delegated Account Access, direct Tier 2 support, incentive benefits and enhanced service levels. The announcement does not give the criteria a partner must meet to earn it.

A business process outsourcing (BPO) program, due later in October, will give eligible BPO providers access to Zoom Contact Center under spend commitments and usage-based terms. Zoom’s Virtual Agent and its pay-as-you-go Zoom Phone plans are already priced on consumption, Tidd told Channel Dive.

The open question on AI tokens

Consumption pricing is where the partner’s share is least settled. Tidd told Channel Dive that Zoom will run three pricing models in the market depending on the type of customer. He said partners may not be compensated on the token side of agentic AI sales, but that they still have a role in the model through the license for ZoomMate, the agentic AI work surface Zoom launched in June. Tidd said several of Zoom’s competitors do not plan to share token revenue with partners or compensate them for it.

Net MRR Growth pays on monthly recurring revenue, and Zoom’s announcement does not say how usage-based revenue will be scored. A customer whose spending moves from per-seat licenses toward AI usage could raise its Zoom bill without raising the figure a partner’s points are counted on. Until Zoom says how that usage is treated, the scheme rewards the per-seat revenue a partner adds more clearly than the AI work its customers buy.

At least one partner sees a contest for the whole account. David Goodwin, co-founder and chief executive of ATC of Ohio, a Zoom partner, told Channel Dive he expects Zoom to be seen less as a video platform over time and to compete with Microsoft as an all-in-one platform. If that happens, the partner that holds the customer’s Zoom account would be competing with Microsoft’s own partners for the same budget.

Zoom has spelled out what it will pay for in revenue growth and customer-facing activity, with contract-length rebates still to come next year. It has not yet set out what it pays for in AI usage, the part of the commerce model its own channel chief says the whole market is still working out.