Haris OdobasicAs of 15 October 2026, Salesforce no longer sells Salesforce CPQ to new customers, and its successor, Revenue Cloud, is listed at $150 per user per month for Revenue Cloud Growth and $200 for Revenue Cloud Advanced, billed annually, as an add-on to a Sales Cloud, Service Cloud or CRM licence (Salesforce). Implementation comes on top and often rivals the licences, so for many teams the real question is whether to buy a CPQ at all or build quoting inside the CRM they already own.
Existing Salesforce CPQ customers can keep using it, renew and add users, but it no longer gets new features (Salesforce). In HubSpot, quoting now sits in Revenue Hub, launched in June 2026. Below we cover what CPQ costs in both platforms, why it is priced like a CRM, and how to build your own.
The question we get every week
"Why would you pay 200k-500k for a CPQ project?"
That is the question our clients ask most, and it is a fair one. But the right question is not "Why does it cost that much?" It is "Should we build our own instead?"
I argue that a custom CRM is overkill for most companies. A custom CPQ is a different conversation, and it is the one build-vs-buy decision in RevOps worth making.
About half of our client base uses a custom CPQ. Two of them we built alongside the client, and a few others came in with one already running.
A quick history lesson
CPQ did not start as sales software. It grew out of product configurators, the rules-based logic next to the ERP that made sure a customer's specification did not conflict with what the factory could build. Think aircraft, heavy machinery and industrial equipment.
In 2000, Godard Abel and Christopher Shutts founded BigMachines, which took the configurator to the cloud. Gartner's IT glossary later described CPQ suites as systems that "typically include pricing engines, proposal generators, quoting systems, and rules or constraint engines, and are complemented by approval and authorization workflows". That definition still holds.
Then came the acquisition wave.
- Oracle announced it would acquire BigMachines on 23 October 2013.
- Salesforce agreed to buy SteelBrick on 23 December 2015 for about $360 million and completed the deal on 1 February 2016. It became Salesforce CPQ.
- SAP's acquisition of CallidusCloud, announced in January 2018, was valued at $2.4 billion.
- Apttus and Conga combined in May 2020 under the Conga brand.
CPQ went from a niche manufacturing tool to a strategic sales platform in about two decades, and the big vendors paid a lot to own it.
The CPQ market today
Mordor Intelligence values the CPQ market at USD 3.14 billion in 2025 and expects USD 7.55 billion by 2031, a CAGR of 15.74%. Cloud deployments held 58.21% of the market in 2025, and North America was the largest region with 39.22% (Mordor Intelligence). That is one firm's estimate; others differ.
Every major enterprise vendor now has a CPQ product, from Salesforce, Oracle and SAP to specialists such as PROS and Conga. This is a mature category, which is why pricing has settled at a predictable and expensive level.
Why Salesforce CPQ pricing is so high
Two things drive the cost, licences and implementation.
Licences are priced like a CRM
Salesforce CPQ itself is end of sale. Salesforce says existing customers can keep using it, buy additional users, renew and receive support, but new customers can no longer buy it. It is in a maintenance phase with no new feature development, no end-of-life date has been announced, and Revenue Cloud Advanced is the successor. New buyers therefore price Revenue Cloud, as shown below.
| Product (Salesforce list price, 15 Oct 2026) | Per user per month, billed annually | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue Cloud Growth | $150 | Streamlined CPQ and subscription management |
| Revenue Cloud Advanced | $200 | Complete quote-to-cash platform |
| Sales Cloud Core (the CRM seat underneath) | $195 | The edition that replaced Enterprise |
Revenue Cloud is a paid add-on that requires a Sales Cloud, Service Cloud or CRM licence and an annual contract. On 3 September 2026 Salesforce replaced its Enterprise, Unlimited and Agentforce 1 editions with Core ($195), Advanced ($395) and Max ($550), while existing customers keep their legacy pricing (Salesforce). For anyone who quotes, the CPQ seat costs about as much as the CRM seat underneath it.
Take 50 people who build quotes. At list price, Revenue Cloud Advanced adds $120,000 a year (50 × $200 × 12), or $600,000 over five years. Revenue Cloud Growth adds $90,000 a year. Negotiated discounts lower that, implementation raises it, and the licence line grows with every new quoter. That five-year figure is the budget a custom build has to beat, including the people who maintain it.
Implementation is in the same range as a CRM project
In the projects we see, implementation runs from about $20,000 for a simple catalogue to $500,000 or more, depending on the complexity of your products, pricing models and workflows. Six figures is standard for a mid-sized company with 200 or more employees, and seven figures is not unusual at enterprise scale. After go-live, budget every year for enhancements, because pricing, products and approvals keep changing.
One recent client was quoted roughly €25,000 to €30,000 a year for a third-party CPQ, which is exactly what prompted a conversation about a lightweight configurator inside Salesforce instead.
So, why the big number?
What quoting costs in HubSpot
HubSpot changed its quoting model in 2026. Revenue Hub, launched in June 2026, brings quoting, contracts, billing and payments into HubSpot (HubSpot). Its quoting tool is what HubSpot now calls HubSpot CPQ, a set of tools for configuring products and services and creating, managing and approving quotes, available in Revenue Hub Professional and Enterprise (HubSpot Knowledge Base).
- Price. HubSpot's product catalog lists a Revenue Seat at $95 per month for Revenue Hub Professional and $140 for Enterprise, including core seat access. A Sales Seat costs $100 or $150 (HubSpot catalog). These are US list prices. Annual billing and promotions lower them, and new portals in EMEA moved to a flexible seats-and-credits model in October 2026 with different seat types.
- Approvals. Standard quote approvals come with Professional. Advanced, workflow-based approvals need Revenue Hub Enterprise.
- Legacy quotes. Sales Hub's legacy quotes are no longer available to new users. Only accounts created before 3 September 2025 may keep them (HubSpot).
- Payments. HubSpot payments only works for businesses located and operating in the US, the UK and Canada, so EU teams need a separate payment provider.
So in HubSpot, too, the CPQ seat costs about as much as the sales seat. For a standard catalogue, start with Revenue Hub; build when your rules or multi-year deal structures outgrow it.
One warning from client work. With a separate quoting layer, flexible contract dates and step-up plans can make the PDF look right while the line items underneath cannot support ARR. Keep line items granular by contract year, present them simply, and use an incremental-value field when the deal amount is total contract value. Our guide to ARR reporting with custom snapshots shows why.
What makes CPQ complex
Let me take the vendor side of the argument first.
- Product configuration rules. Compatibility logic, constraints, required components, mutually exclusive options. Get it wrong and you sell something that cannot be built.
- Pricing logic. List price, customer discounts, volume breaks, ramp deals, multi-year commitments, usage tiers, co-terming, currencies, regional price books.
- Approval workflows. Discount thresholds trigger different approvers; legal, finance and revenue recognition each step in at certain points.
- Document generation. Branded, legally reviewed, with the right terms for the right deal type.
- Integrations. Read from the CRM; write back pricing, PDFs and subscription lines; push to ERP, billing, contract management and the data warehouse.
- Governance. Every rule change has downstream effects, so you need change management, sandboxes and testing.
At an enterprise, all six are genuinely hard. That is what you are paying for. But notice that the core of that list is narrow and well defined.
Why CPQ is much simpler than CRM or ERP
Now the other side of the argument.
A CRM is the system of record for accounts, contacts, opportunities, activities and campaigns, and the operating layer for your whole commercial organisation. An ERP is the financial backbone, covering ledger, payables, receivables, inventory, revenue recognition, tax and compliance. Both touch every function and carry decades of features and regulation. Rebuilding either is a multi-year project that will fail.
Stripped down, a CPQ does four things.
- Hard-coded logic (configuration and pricing rules)
- Approval flows
- Document generation
- Reading and writing data (from the CRM, to the CRM, to the ERP)
So why is it priced like a CRM or an ERP? It makes little sense, and that is why so many buyers struggle to accept CPQ pricing.
The scope is narrow and the boundaries are clear. A CPQ sits between the CRM and the ERP with one job, which is to produce a correct quote that both systems can use downstream. There is no 30-year backlog of regulatory features and no sprawl across departments. When something is narrow and well defined, it is buildable, especially in 2026 with low-code tools and AI coding assistants such as Claude.
Why custom CPQ beats custom CRM
I will say it again. A custom CRM is almost always a bad idea. You will spend two years rebuilding records, activity tracking, email sync, permissions, reporting and integrations, and by year three you have a worse HubSpot.
A CPQ is different.
- The vendor surface area is tiny. No mobile app, email sync or partner portal. Product data in, quote PDF out.
- The logic is yours anyway. Whether you buy or build, you define every rule, approval and threshold; the vendor only provides the framework.
- The economics flip at scale. CPQ is priced per user, so the more quoters you have, the better a one-time build looks.
- The tooling has caught up. Low-code platforms and AI coding tools can now handle all four jobs. That was not true in 2015.
Put differently, with a CRM you are rebuilding a platform. With a CPQ you are building a workflow.
How to build CPQ in Salesforce or HubSpot
The best option, by a wide margin, is to build it inside the CRM you already own. Salesforce can do this with standard capabilities, and so can HubSpot and most modern challengers. You do not need a separate CPQ platform; you need to use the platform you have properly. Our Five Dots RevOps knowledge base puts it as a rule that there should be one place to quote, inside the CRM. A separate quoting tool means a separate login and a separate truth, and it fails as soon as sellers have to register the same quote twice. Clean the product data before you configure prices.
Data layer. In Salesforce, use the standard Product, Price Book, Price Book Entry, Quote and Quote Line Item objects, with custom fields for region, tier or ramp logic and custom objects for complex bundles. In HubSpot, use the product library and line items with custom properties. Outside the CRM, use Airtable for small catalogues and Postgres for bigger ones.
Logic layer. In Salesforce, Screen Flow handles guided selling, configuration rules and dynamic pricing, and validation rules block invalid configurations; use Apex only when you must. In HubSpot, product properties, calculated properties and workflows cover most rules. Outside the CRM, Retool plus Make or n8n works, with a small function for heavy calculations.
Documents. Salesforce and HubSpot quote templates cover most needs, and a templating library in a small function costs almost nothing. Pick based on volume, not brand.
Approvals. Use Salesforce Approval Processes or HubSpot quote approvals. Make them risk-based and finish them before the customer signs. For renewals, a tiering that works in our client work is no approval above price guidance, manager approval between guidance and the floor, deal desk approval below the floor, and approval for non-annual billing.
Integration. If the CPQ lives inside the CRM, the data is already there; you need an outbound connection to the ERP for booking. If you build outside the CRM, connect to the CRM, not straight to the ERP, and let the CRM-to-ERP integration do the rest.
Before you start, simplify. Consolidate products and price books, define bundle rules and look at your real order forms for repeatable patterns. Then spend a weekend on a proof of concept. Within a week you will know whether this is feasible for your business.
If you would rather have it built with you, our Forward Deployed GTM Engineers build quoting workflows inside Salesforce or HubSpot and hand them over to your team. Book a call about a custom CPQ build.
Before you go custom, be honest about these four things
A custom CPQ is not a silver bullet. It has real prerequisites.
- Have one or two genuinely technical people in your GTM organisation. Someone who can read JavaScript, write a Python function and understand an API, not an Excel-only operator. Our RevOps org chart for SaaS shows where that role sits.
- Consultants can build it, but someone must maintain it internally. This is where most custom builds go wrong, because pricing, products and approvals change constantly.
- Have good governance. Who can change pricing rules, who signs off new SKUs, and how are rules tested before they go live? If you cannot answer that, a vendor CPQ is safer because it forces a structure on you.
- The investment scales with team size. At 5 quoters, a vendor tool is cheaper. At 50, the list-price licence line is about $120,000 a year on Revenue Cloud Advanced, so a build that costs less than that pays back inside a year. At 200, it is an easy decision.
The bottom line on Salesforce CPQ pricing
CPQ is expensive because the category has consolidated around a few enterprise vendors who price it like a CRM. The products are good, the services are good, and for many companies buying is still the right call.
But the work you are actually paying for, configuration rules, pricing logic, approvals, document generation and integrations, is scoped, bounded and, in 2026, very buildable. If you have the technical talent in-house, the quoting volume to justify it and the governance to maintain it, a custom CPQ is one of the highest-return bets you can make. Map your revenue tech stack first to see what it would replace.
That is why we keep doing it. If you want to know whether a custom build fits your quoting process, book a call.
FAQ
How much does Salesforce CPQ cost in 2026?
Salesforce no longer sells Salesforce CPQ to new customers. Its successor, Revenue Cloud, lists at $150 per user per month for Growth and $200 for Advanced, billed annually, on top of a Sales Cloud, Service Cloud or CRM licence, as of 15 October 2026.
Is Salesforce CPQ being discontinued?
Salesforce CPQ is end of sale, not end of life. Existing customers can keep using, renewing and expanding it with support, but it receives no new features, and Salesforce has not announced an end-of-life date. Revenue Cloud Advanced is the successor.
Does HubSpot have CPQ?
Yes. HubSpot CPQ is part of Revenue Hub Professional and Enterprise and covers quotes, templates and approvals. Sales Hub's older legacy quotes remain only for accounts created before 3 September 2025.
How much does a CPQ implementation cost?
In the projects we see, from about $20,000 for a simple catalogue to $500,000 or more for complex products and workflows, plus a yearly budget for enhancements.
Should we build our own CPQ?
Build if you have technical people in your GTM team, an owner to maintain it, clear pricing governance and enough quoting users for per-seat licences to add up. Otherwise, buy and configure well.
