Why Salesforce’s CPQ retirement demands more than a migration and what revenue leaders should do next
In March 2025, Salesforce announced it would stop selling Salesforce CPQ to new customers. While the change was framed as part of a broader platform evolution, the actual impact on Salesforce CPQ customers is far more disruptive.
The Core Challenge: From Add-On to Ground-Up Redesign
Salesforce CPQ, a legacy product based on the SteelBrick acquisition, has long required custom configuration and external support to function at scale. It operates outside the Salesforce core and often relies on brittle rule sets, siloed logic, and limited integration with contract management or billing systems. Its complexity is legendary: 55% of Revenue Operations leaders surveyed by FoundHQ said Salesforce CPQ is the hardest Salesforce product to implement.
As a result, transitioning to Revenue Cloud demands more than a license change. It requires a full rebuild of product catalogs, quote flows, pricing rules, approval hierarchies, and system integrations.
The True Cost of Rebuilding
For most organizations, this process is costly and disruptive:
- SMBs face $25,000 to $65,000 in implementation costs
- Enterprises often exceed $500,000
- Data migration alone can add $5,000 to $50,000
- Training programs range from $500 to $5,000 per user
- Ongoing support adds another $10,000 to $45,000 annually
These investments often re-create existing functionality, without delivering innovation but higher complexity and continued dependencies.
Three Strategic Paths CPQ Customers Are Considering
1. Rebuild on Revenue Cloud
This option offers the customer Salesforce continuity but requires a rebuild of their quoting, pricing, and packaging. Companies must re-create existing processes from scratch in a new system architecture. While it ensures platform consistency, the time-to-value is slow and customization needs remain high.
2. Transition to a Modern CPQ Platform
A growing number of companies are using this inflection point to explore more flexible, modern, CPQ solutions—tools that do far more than digitize pricing tables. These tools are built to remove friction, collapse quote-to-close cycles, and power omnichannel sales motions.
Modern CPQ platforms typically enable:
- Guided selling that reduces errors and speeds onboarding by dynamically surfacing product recommendations, pricing rules, and margin guardrails.
- Digital sales rooms where buyers review proposals, ask questions, and sign all in one collaborative space.
- Unified execution across CPQ, CLM, billing, and renewals to eliminate tool switching and data sync issues.
- No-code administration so revenue teams can launch new pricing or packaging without dev resources.
- Low-touch and no-touch quoting through embedded flows for partners, eCommerce, or AI agents.
DealHub CPQ is frequently cited as a leader in this category, helping companies consolidate fragmented revenue tools into a unified platform.
73% faster quote-to-cash using guided selling
Intuit accelerated quote-to-cash cycles by 73 percent using DealHub’s guided selling engine, which walks reps through pricing, bundling, and configuration steps in real-time, minimizing training time and improving accuracy.
85% rep ramp-time reduction after Salesforce CPQ replacement
Asure Software adopted DealHub after a failed multi-year Salesforce CPQ implementation. With DealHub, they achieved full rollout in eight weeks and cut new-rep ramp time by 85 percent, thanks to unified workflows, in-app guidance, and digital DealRooms.
50–90% faster time-to-quote through self-service quoting
Trintech empowered reps to generate and send quotes independently, accelerating time-to-quote by up to 90 percent. Executives approve with a click—no logins, no additional licenses.
DealHub also supports embedded, headless quoting across any channel. Organizations can launch self-service configurators, partner portals, or AI-assisted quoting flows that align with specific GTM strategies, without needing to bolt on external solutions.
This breadth of capability positions DealHub not just as a CPQ tool, but as a revenue execution platform that scales with evolving go-to-market models.
While these platforms still require thoughtful onboarding and process alignment, they offer a faster, lower-risk path to modern revenue outcomes and free teams from the constraints of their legacy Salesforce CPQ infrastructure.
3. Rethink CPQ as Infrastructure
Some organizations are moving beyond traditional CPQ models entirely. Instead of relying on prebuilt quoting interfaces, they’re embedding pricing logic and quote generation directly into digital revenue channels, such as self-service portals, partner marketplaces, and eCommerce flows.
This “headless CPQ” approach treats quoting as part of the broader product infrastructure. With the right API framework, pricing can be configured dynamically, quote generation can be triggered programmatically, and AI agents can execute approvals or renewals based on predefined rules.
This model provides maximum flexibility and enables businesses to scale across multiple go-to-market channels. However, it typically demands strong internal product and engineering ownership, since the CPQ logic is maintained as part of the development stack.
DealHub stands out in this space by supporting embedded quoting use cases without requiring teams to build from scratch. Through a combination of low-code configuration, headless API endpoints, and dynamic workflows, DealHub enables:
- Self-service configurators for buyers
- Partner quoting portals that maintain margin rules and product accuracy
- AI agent–initiated quoting flows that can respond to intent signals or renewal triggers
- Flexible quote generation embedded into mobile apps, digital storefronts, or CRM experiences
This lets companies design custom digital quoting experiences while maintaining control, compliance, and data continuity without the cost and complexity of building CPQ from scratch.
For companies seeking to decouple from legacy CPQ constraints, DealHub offers a flexible infrastructure layer for quoting, contracting, and monetization without sacrificing speed.
Beyond Quoting: Laying the Foundation for Revenue Orchestration
Why quoting architecture is the control layer for AI, automation, and growth
By the end of 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions will take place in digital channels (Gartner). That means quoting systems can no longer be static or siloed, they must serve as real-time infrastructure for guided selling, margin optimization, and AI-led execution.
Some organizations will opt to rebuild inside Salesforce’s evolving architecture, reimplementing familiar processes with new tools. But others will use this opportunity to leap forward, replacing rigid CPQ workflows with unified, no-/low-touch platforms that span every revenue moment: quote, contract, bill, renew.
Those that treat CPQ as a control layer, not just a sales tool, will be best positioned to unlock predictive analytics, intelligent automation, and scalable revenue orchestration across channels, teams, and customer segments.
