Introduction
Compare DealHub CPQ and Salesforce CPQ
DealHub and Salesforce are industry leaders in CPQ solutions that enable organizations to automate the sales process. Both products feature many of the same capabilities, including guided selling, product configuration, dynamic pricing, CRM integration, API integrations, subscription and contract management, and many other out-of-the-box functionalities. However, there are subtle differences between the two solutions that make them better suited for different use cases.
DealHub CPQ is a highly rated CPQ solution that integrates natively with other CRM and ERP systems and offers an intuitive, user-friendly interface. Its fast implementation and easy configurability make it ideal for businesses new to CPQ technology as well as those with complex quoting and revenue lifecycle management needs.
Salesforce CPQ offers robust customization options, detailed reporting analytics, and deep integration with Salesforce CRM and Revenue Cloud. Its ability to configure advanced pricing models and complex product catalogs allows businesses to generate quotes for companies across a wide range of industries.
Product Overview
Overview of each CPQ Solution
DealHub CPQ and Salesforce CPQ are both widely used by organizations in various industries. Here’s a quick overview of each product and what it does well.
Define DealHub CPQ
DealHub CPQ is the foundation of DealHub’s complete Quote-to-Revenue platform. Connecting CPQ, CLM, eSignature, Subscription Management, and Billing ensures businesses can optimize revenue and scale as they grow. DealHub’s robust CPQ solution has a user-friendly interface for quickly configuring and managing product catalogs, pricing rules, and quotes.
Its guided selling process resides within the CRM workflow to supercharge sales teams with a streamlined quoting procedure—one that outperforms legacy applications in terms of speed of implementation and ease of maintenance, allowing you to develop a quote in no time.
Additional functionality and software like DealRoom (digital sales room) make DealHub a solid buyer engagement platform for managing end-to-end sales operations.
Define Salesforce CPQ
Salesforce is the CRM industry gold standard for sales automation and customer data management. Its CPQ solution is part of Salesforce Revenue Cloud. CPQ provides a solution for configuring complex products and bundles using the same interface as Salesforce CRM.
This cloud-based solution integrates seamlessly with Salesforce’s CRM platform to provide real-time insights into customers, deals, and prospects, making it a good choice for existing or prospective Salesforce customers.
Product Features
Comparison of Key Features
DealHub CPQ and Salesforce CPQ both offer robust features designed to streamline quoting and complex sales, but they take different approaches to automation, integration, and ease of use.
DealHub CPQ is known for its no-code configuration, making it easy for businesses to implement and adapt without extensive IT involvement. It provides a seamless, all-in-one platform that includes guided selling, contract management, and subscription management. DealHub’s automation capabilities simplify complex pricing, product bundles, and approval workflows, ensuring sales teams can generate accurate quotes quickly. Its native integrations with CRMs like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and HubSpot allow for a unified sales experience without the need for custom development.
Salesforce CPQ, on the other hand, offers deep customization and flexibility, particularly for businesses already using the Salesforce ecosystem. It supports complex product configurations and pricing models but often requires extensive setup and ongoing maintenance. While it provides powerful functionality, including advanced approval processes and revenue recognition features, many companies find that implementing and managing Salesforce CPQ requires dedicated administrators or developers. Its integration with Salesforce CRM is seamless, but connecting it with other platforms may require additional customization.
Ultimately, DealHub CPQ prioritizes ease of use, automation, and a frictionless sales process, while Salesforce CPQ offers extensive customization and scalability within the Salesforce ecosystem. Businesses looking for a fast, intuitive solution may prefer DealHub, while those needing deep configurability and are already invested in Salesforce may benefit from Salesforce CPQ.
Below is a breakdown of the key features that each product provides.
| DealHub CPQ | Salesforce CPQ |
|---|---|
| A centralized platform for managing sales engagement touchpoints within a company’s current CRM system. | Configure complex product combinations with the same user interface as Salesforce CRM. |
| Integration with third-party software, including Salesforce, Freshworks CRM, Microsoft Dynamics 365, HubSpot, accounting software, DocuSign, and ERP systems. API integrations sync pricing and other data into the playbook and enable advanced user management. | Provide real-time insights into customers, deals, and prospects through its integration with Salesforce’s CRM platform. Extended integrations through the Salesforce partner network. |
| Fast integration and setup within weeks with no code required. | IT implementation takes an average of 6-9 months. |
| Guided selling empowers sales reps to create winning proposals quickly and easily through an intuitive quoting process. | Salesforce offers pre-built guided selling capabilities, but more intricate workflows may require custom coding. |
| Readily scalable for sales team growth and expansion. | Modifications, alterations, and upkeep often require specialized expertise—incurring additional expenses. |
| With DealRoom, digital proposals can be easily sent via one URL, allowing companies to provide their customers with one point of interaction throughout all deal stages rather than multiple files or links. | Each price quote is delivered as an attachable file, and any alterations necessitate a new version of the document. |
| Out-of-the-box contract management, document generation, e-signature, and multi-dimensional pricing models. | Additional features and licenses available for added costs. |
| Digital sales room (DealRoom) for streamlined sales negotiations. Buyer engagement insights that help sales reps improve future sales communication. | Customer communication within the Salesforce platform and its partners (like Slack). |
| Subscription, renewal, and order management capabilities with rules-based quoting for complex sales. | Subscription management and complex billing capacity. |
| Supports multi-currency price quotes with localized pricing for international companies. | Supports multi-currency quoting. Users can define currency conversion rates, apply localized pricing, and ensure accurate quotes for international customers. |
| Full-cycle quote-to-revenue platform. | Full-cycle quote-to-cash automation with Revenue Cloud. |
| Automated approval workflows for faster turnaround times and quote collaboration across teams and stakeholders with audit trails. | Automated approval workflows to ensure compliance with pricing and discount policies before finalizing deals. |
| Web-based platform. | Web and mobile (iPhone and Android) platforms. |
| – Implementation team – Phone support – Mobile and online customer support – Knowledge base – DealHub Academy | – Phone support – Knowledge base – Chat – FAQs/Forum – Live online support – In-person training – Documentation |
Customer Size
Ideal Customer Profiles
DealHub CPQ is purpose-built for small organizations, medium-sized businesses, and enterprises alike. Its scalability makes it easy to add or remove users and features as needed, making it a suitable platform for companies of varying sizes.
With its no-code infrastructure and easy-to-use features, DealHub is friendly for small businesses, which may not require the same level of sophistication as larger organizations.
Salesforce CPQ also services businesses of all sizes. Salesforce is among the most ubiquitous CRM tools on the market, and its CPQ is a great option for current Salesforce users.
Still, Salesforce CPQ’s implementation process is longer and more complex than DealHub’s, making it less suited to smaller organizations without IT infrastructure. However, its scalability merits consideration when determining the best fit for larger companies that require its specific feature set.
Pricing
Breakdown of Pricing Options
Both Salesforce CPQ and DealHub CPQ use usage-based pricing models, meaning that the pricing plan is tailored to each customer’s specific needs.
The cost of Salesforce CPQ varies, but typically it runs between $75 and $150 per user, per month. It also requires additional fees for customizations, implementations, and other services.
Implementation costs for a customized system within Salesforce can take a significant amount of time and cost businesses a considerable amount of money.
| DealHub CPQ | Salesforce CPQ | |
|---|---|---|
| Product Pricing | Contact sales | CPQ: $75 per user per month (billed annually) CPQ Plus: $150 per user per month, billed annually CPQ + Billing Growth: Contact sales CPQ + Billing Plus: Contact sales |
| Implementation Fees | One-time implementation fee | Ongoing implementation fees for custom coding |
| Additional Licenses | No additional license fees | Additional license fees for e-sign, contract management, buyer engagement tracking |
To use Salesforce CPQ to its fullest extent, you’ll need to pay an implementation fee and possibly additional customization costs for complex use cases (i.e., custom coding). And applications related to Salesforce CPQ—like contract management, e-signature, sales proposals, and buyer engagement tracking—sometimes come with hidden license fees.
With DealHub, you’ll only have to pay a minimal one-time setup cost. You can then enjoy the advantages of having an integrated and complete sales stack for a fixed fee. And the pricing is dependent on usage, so you won’t pay more than you need to.
Pricing for DealHub CPQ is based on the organization, and prospective buyers need to talk to sales representatives about their needs. The plan is tailored to each client, and it can start at around $50 per user per month.
Summary
Considerations for Choosing Between the Two Solutions
When choosing between DealHub CPQ and Salesforce CPQ, businesses should consider factors such as implementation complexity, ease of use, scalability, and integration needs. DealHub CPQ is ideal for companies seeking a no-code, user-friendly CPQ solution that streamlines quoting, contract management, and subscription billing without requiring extensive IT resources. Its guided selling and automation capabilities help sales teams close deals faster with minimal administrative effort.
Salesforce CPQ is a powerful choice for organizations deeply embedded in the Salesforce ecosystem and requiring advanced customization and scalability. However, its implementation and maintenance often require dedicated administrators or developers. Businesses prioritizing speed, simplicity, and seamless CRM integration may find DealHub CPQ more suitable, while those needing highly configurable workflows within Salesforce may benefit from Salesforce CPQ.
FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions
DealHub CPQ integrates seamlessly with Salesforce CRM, so Salesforce customers can access the right customer data, contact information, existing products, and other details without having to manually enter them.
Additionally, DealHub CPQ enables sales teams to quickly generate quotes and contracts that are accurate and compliant with company policies, which may already be predetermined in Salesforce.
In certain cases, a 100% native solution may not be recommended or feasible. Salesforce even suggests a hybrid solution to drive large-scale calculations requiring immense computing power and abundant storage space for your CPQ solutions. It’s best to select a system that can efficiently execute the task at hand.
When an organization deploys a solid composite system, it will not only enable users to have an incomparable experience with Salesforce but also give them the benefit of cost-savings and improvements in performance.
For example, Dealhub CPQ’s digital sales room technology makes it easy to centralize stakeholder and prospect communication—an important factor in today’s digital-first environment. And with predictive sales playbooks and guided selling, Dealhub might improve a company’s workflows better than Salesforce’s native option.
Since it readily integrates with CRM systems including Salesforce, DealHub is still a viable option even over a 100% native solution.
Salesforce purchased SteelBrick CPQ in December 2015 and rebranded it as Salesforce CPQ. SteelBrick was a cloud-based product configuration and quoting solution that enables users to quickly configure, price, quote and order products.
Salesforce CPQ is based on the same platform as SteelBrick. But since the initial purchase, the company has rolled out additional features such as integrated contract management, robust pricing rules, automated workflow approvals, and more.
Salesforce CPQ competes with a variety of CPQ solutions, including DealHub CPQ. Its direct competitors include CRM providers like HubSpot, Freshworks CRM, and Microsoft Dynamics, which have their own CPQ offerings as add-ons or standalone products. CPQ vendors such as Conga and FPX also compete with Salesforce CPQ.
DealHub is a modern deal management software that competes with Salesforce CPQ, as well as other CPQ solutions such as Conga, PROS, Subskribe, and Experlogix. DealHub also competes with contract management software providers such as DocuSign and PandaDoc, although its primary focus is on CPQ solutions.
Salesforce and DealHub are two of the most advanced CPQ solutions on the market. The main difference between the two is the implementation cost. Salesforce is very expensive to implement and is best suited for organizations at the enterprise level. DealHub can be quickly implemented, offers lower costs, and is better tailored to small-to-medium businesses.
Additionally, DealHub has a Digital Sales Room feature that allows teams to collaborate on the same page with customers or prospects in real-time. This feature makes it easy for sales reps to provide product demos and resolve customer inquiries during the sales process.
The most important features of CPQ software are:
Product configuration
Pricing rules
Guided selling
Automated quote generation
Contract management (CLM)
Integration with CRM systems such as Salesforce
Workflow automation
Robust analytics and reporting
These features allow users to streamline the sales process, automate processes, manage contracts effectively, and gain better insights into the business.
Andrew is a professional copywriter with expertise in creating content focused on business-to-business (B2B) software. He conducts research and produces articles that provide valuable insights and information to his readers.
