Introduction
Compare DealHub CPQ vs. PandaDoc CPQ
Configure, price, quote (CPQ) software is a critical element of the sales process, helping sellers create accurate proposals for new leads and move them through the sales funnel more quickly. It ensures the consistency of pricing, product features, and discounting across all sales channels, and it allows sales teams to rapidly generate quotes and contracts tailored to each customer’s specific needs.
DealHub CPQ and PandaDoc CPQ share many of the same functionalities. Both are cloud-based software that include document management tools, contract lifecycle management (CLM), product configuration, pricing calculation, discounting, and many other features that unify quoting, contracting, and e-signature.
DealHub CPQ works its best when its features improve sales productivity in B2B sales organizations. Other customer segments use its product, but it’s primarily designed to help sales reps create new quotes and contracts, collaborate with decision-makers, and track sales team performance and customer data in CRM.
PandaDoc CPQ serves a multitude of companies, but its product mostly revolves around its CLM and document generation capabilities. The bread and butter of PandaDoc CPQ is its ability to quickly generate numerous document types in multiple formats. It also includes key e-signature and content collaboration functionalities.
Product Overview
Overview of each CPQ Solution
DealHub CPQ and PandaDoc CPQ fall under the same software umbrella, but the way they approach product configuration, pricing, and quoting is fairly different. Although each has standard CPQ features, DealHub CPQ focuses more on streamlining sales processes, while PandaDoc CPQ emphasizes collaboration and document generation.
Defining DealHub CPQ
At its core, DealHub is a revenue amplification platform—that is, it helps organizations increase their top-line revenue by improving sales efficiency. DealHub’s features work best for organizations with complex pricing models and an SDR-led growth strategy, such as B2B SaaS organizations, solar companies, and technology resellers.
For subscription-based SaaS businesses, DealHub offers a comprehensive subscription management feature. This tool allows businesses to manage the lifecycle of their subscriptions more efficiently and accurately, from setting pricing and discounting rules to tracking renewals and cancellations.
DealHub’s digital sales room (DealRoom) is another unique offering. It centralizes and tracks communication between sellers and decision-makers, enhancing collaboration and engagement within sales teams. It provides a convenient location for all deal-related conversations and document exchanges, improving transparency and accountability.
DealHub’s core features, including guided selling, automated quoting and proposal generation, real-time pricing rules, and a library of integrations, make it useful for businesses outside the above-mentioned customer segments. It is customizable to suit different industries and sales processes.
Defining PandaDoc CPQ
PandaDoc CPQ shines as a document management and automation platform. It’s designed to expedite the generation of proposals, quotes, HR documents, and contracts. This broad functionality suits businesses without a robust or stratified sales infrastructure, such as agencies and other service-based organizations.
PandaDoc’s Advanced Quotes feature is a valuable tool for managing sales offerings. It allows teams to pre-configure the exact products and services they intend to sell, providing a controlled and efficient approach to marketing their offerings. This feature simplifies the sales process, reduces errors, and ensures consistency across the team.
One of PandaDoc’s significant strengths is its vast template library (with over 750 customizable templates). Combined with the ability to create custom templates, this makes document creation swift and effortless. PandaDoc also facilitates real-time collaboration and feedback gathering directly within the document, simplifying negotiations and keeping all team members on the same page.
Pandadoc CPQ’s interactive pricing tables let recipients select packages and optional products or services that best suit their needs, removing some legwork on the seller’s end. It can even apply quantity-based discounts automatically, eliminating the need for manual calculations or referencing pricing spreadsheets.
Product Features
Comparison of Key Features
When examining the actual product, the nuanced differences between DealHub and PandaDoc become clear.
DealHub CPQ’s standout features, including guided selling, subscription management, and the DealRoom, offer a helpful way to navigate complex products and pricing strategies. Companies that have repeatable sales processes and a well-defined funnel find that DealHub CPQ automates their sales process and provides transparency into the entire pipeline.
PandaDoc CPQ’s extensive template library, negotiation capabilities, and interactive pricing tables benefit businesses focusing on document-heavy sales processes. This includes organizations that haven’t productized or that offer completely customized solutions.
Here’s a breakdown of each product’s features:
DealHub CPQ | PandaDoc CPQ |
---|---|
An all-in-one revenue management platform encompassing everything from quote-to-cash and billing, to subscription management and insightful sales engagement metrics | Create and manage a multitude of document types, including proposals, quotes, contracts, HR documents, and employee onboarding forms. |
Seamless integration capabilities with various third-party applications, such as Freshworks CRM, Microsoft Dynamics 365, HubSpot, accounting software, DocuSign, and numerous ERP systems. | Seamless integration with all popular CRM systems, including Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Zoho CRM, and HubSpot. |
Quick and easy no-code setup process, enabling your team to be up and running within weeks. | The platform’s implementation timeframe may vary depending on the complexity of the organization’s processes and the extent of document types and templates required. |
Employs guided selling flows, enabling sales reps to effortlessly generate proposals and quotes, all while syncing data back to the company’s CRM for full visibility and control. | PandaDoc offers 750+ customizable templates for a streamlined document creation process, although creating intricate, highly specific templates might require a bit more time and familiarity with the platform. |
Designed with scalability in mind, readily accommodating growth and expansion of sales teams. | Scalable and integration-ready with various business applications for a unified workflow. |
Through DealRoom, digital proposals can be delivered either as links or attachable files, streamlining the sales process to a singular point of interaction. | Quick quote generation using the Advanced Quotes feature, which can also be customer-facing in specific scenarios. |
Comprehensive contract management, electronic signature functionality, document generation, and multi-dimensional pricing models available straight out-of-the-box. | Unique features to meet the needs of different roles within an organization (HR, sales, management, C-suite). |
Incorporates predictive sales playbooks to expedite the buyer’s journey through the sales process. | Automated data extraction from CRM to create accurate quotes, eliminating the need for manual data entry. |
Built-in subscription, renewal, and order management capabilities and rule-based quoting simplify complex pricing models. | Interactive pricing tables and automatic quantity-based discounting provide detailed and customizable pricing strategies. |
Offers buyer engagement insights to equip sales reps with actionable data for refining future sales engagements. | Interactive pricing tables and automatic quantity-based discounting provide detailed and customizable pricing strategies. |
Automated approval workflows push buyers through the funnel faster. | Full-cycle document management from creation to e-signature, providing an efficient process for any type of business. |
Cross-functional collaboration during the quoting process, complete with audit trails for accountability and transparency. | Ability to create and send highly visual, interactive, and media-rich proposals to clients in a few clicks. |
Web-based platform. | Web and mobile (iPhone and Android) platforms. |
Phone, mobile, and online customer support Knowledge base Training and enablement from DealHub experts | Phone, mobile and online customer support Knowledge base Developer portal Forums Training and enablement from PandaDoc experts |
Customer Size
Ideal Customer Profiles
When examining the actual product, the nuanced differences between DealHub and PandaDoc become clear. Each has features tailored to its specific ICP.
For instance, Account Executives at B2B SaaS firms can use DealHub’s guided selling feature to tailor product and service offerings based on customer-specific needs. Especially if the company’s software is built on a microservices architecture to serve multiple customer segments, DealHub makes it easy to pick different subscription items in its product catalog, input the number of users or software licensees, and generate a quote.
Suppose a B2B SaaS sales organization sells a multi-tiered software subscription. DealHub CPQ has features purpose-built for selling SaaS solutions that enable AEs to configure the software package based on the customer’s requirements. Real-time pricing rules automatically calculate the total cost, considering applicable discounts or promotions.
PandaDoc CPQ’s expansive document management capabilities make it ideal for companies with more individual documents and a less-structured sales program.
Agencies, for instance, see PandaDoc’s Advanced Quotes feature as a game-changer. If an agency owner is negotiating a contract with a new client for recruitment services, they can use PandaDoc to pre-configure the exact services they’ll provide, from job posting to candidate screening to final placement. The interactive pricing table lets the client choose the services they need and see the associated costs immediately.
Customer Support
Support Features & Resources for Each Solution
CPQ implementation is usually a complicated process that requires IT support for setup and employee onboarding. Especially at the enterprise level, where companies span multiple locations (or countries) and are dealing with high-volume sales, CPQ is a major investment that needs support from the provider.
Both DealHub and PandaDoc offer onboarding services for new customers, with varying levels of engagement. They also provide customer service and training for end users to help them get familiarized with their product’s capabilities.
DealHub is the standout software provider when it comes to support features—the company’s in-house experts can customize the product, accelerate the learning curve with training, and build custom integrations for the existing tech stack.
Pricing
Breakdown of Pricing Options
Due to the flexible nature of the company’s software, DealHub uses a quote-based pricing model. To get the pricing information for DealHub CPQ, interested buyers should consult a sales representative who will assess their specific requirements. The plan is tailored to each client, starting at around $50 per monthly user. With DealHub, there aren’t any tiers—every customer can access all of the product’s features. DealRoom is available for an additional cost (also quote-based).
PandaDoc has pricing tiers starting with a free option offering only e-sign capabilities. These options provide document automation and many of its other key features, but they don’t specifically include the brand’s CPQ offering, which is also available on a quote-based model.
Here’s a quick rundown of the costs associated with each product:
DealHub CPQ | PandaDoc CPQ | |
---|---|---|
Product Pricing | Contact sales | Contact sales |
Implementation Fees | One-time implementation fee | One-time implementation fee |
Additional Licenses | No additional license fees | PandaDoc available at four different pricing tiers |
Summary
Considerations for Choosing Between the Two Solutions
When deciding between DealHub and PandaDoc for CPQ, decision-makers should consider the specific functions of their business and the features that will have a high ROI.
Smaller companies and those that can’t productize their offering or structure their sales process will be able to use PandaDoc to generate sales contracts, proposals, Individual quotes, and even internal documents for contractors and employees. Service and project-based businesses and companies that aren’t dealing with a high volume of transactions should opt for PandaDoc.
Companies with complex but repeatable sales offerings (such as order-by-order customization or multi-tiered subscriptions) should go for DealHub. The product’s expansive coverage of different customer segments and price tiers will enable sales teams to scale their business quickly with a single platform.
FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions
Think of CPQ software as a digital sales assistant. When a sales qualified lead (SQL) turns into an opportunity, sales reps use it to quickly configure the right proposal and/or contract. CPQ software can also be used to assemble orders, assess pricing and discounts, manage inventory, approve payments, and provide billing information.
DealHub CPQ readily integrates with Salesforce CRM, meaning Salesforce customers can continue to use their CRM while streamlining their sales process and gathering more customer data. DealHub CPQ allows sales teams to easily create precise and policy-compliant quotes and contracts, utilizing the company’s predetermined guidelines outlined in Salesforce.
PandaDoc CPQ is an alternative to Salesforce CPQ, and it integrates with Salesforce CRM. The integration provides users with full customization of the CPQ process, allowing them to create and manage quotes, contracts, orders, invoices, and more right in Salesforce without switching between systems or manually re-entering data.
PandaDoc is an all-in-one document automation platform that helps companies create, send, and track documents like contracts and agreements. PandaDoc CPQ is a specific product the company offers that provides customers with a guided sales process for quote creation and management. The software allows them to generate accurate quotes quickly, making it easier to close deals faster.
Rhonda Bavaro excels in boosting SaaS companies’ growth through innovative content marketing, thriving in the dynamic sales tech industry amidst evolving technologies that drive revenue acceleration.