Cacheflow CPQ was a software platform designed specifically to streamline the quote-to-cash process for businesses selling Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products. It automated many of the manual tasks typically involved in closing and renewing SaaS deals, allowing sales teams to focus on building relationships and closing deals faster. It has been acquired by HubSpot and is no longer being sold as a standalone solution.
Cacheflow accomplishes this with features such as pre-configured quote templates and CRM integrations. This enables sales reps to generate professional quotes in minutes, eliminating the need for manual data entry and saving them valuable time. Additionally, Cacheflow provides advanced discounting options and the ability to configure multi-year contracts with automated billing.
By automating these tasks and centralizing all deal-related data in a single platform, Cacheflow empowers sales teams to close deals faster, improve sales efficiency, and provide a more streamlined buying experience for their customers.
Why this product is good
Positives of Cacheflow's CPQ Software
Product Details
What is Cacheflow CPQ?
Cacheflow helps sales teams close more deals with less admin work throughout the quote-to-cash process. Customers can review quotes, select payment options, e-sign, and expand or renew their subscriptions from one link.
Cacheflow manages quoting, e-sign, payments, usage-based billing, subscription management, and renewals from one platform. These features are particularly valuable to SaaS companies. APIs and workflows reduce administrative hours and improve the buying experience.
Features Include:
- Single-link checkout
- Reporting
- Ramped deals
- Approval workflows
- Pricing models
- Usage-based billing
- Multi-currency
- Integration-friendly architecture
Single-link checkout: Simplify the quoting process by sending a single link to review, revise, approve, and sign quotes. The same link also captures payment information, enabling a streamlined experience.
Reporting: Access real-time insights into critical revenue metrics such as Total Contract Value (TCV), Annual Contract Value (ACV), and Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). Cacheflow ensures seamless synchronization across your CRM, ERP, and other financial systems, keeping your data accurate and up-to-date.
Ramped deals: Configure multi-year, ramped contracts tailored to customer needs. Automate ARR collection, ensuring accurate billing aligned with contract terms.
Approval workflows: Optimize sales approvals with customizable workflows. Create approver groups and set triggers based on criteria like Total Contract Value (TCV), discount percentage, geography, and deal complexity, ensuring faster approvals without compromising governance.
Pricing models: Support various SaaS pricing strategies, including fixed, usage-based, tiered, and hybrid models. This flexibility enables you to align pricing with customer preferences and industry trends.
Usage-based billing: Automate billing processes for usage-based models by connecting product usage data via webhooks. This ensures accurate, transparent billing based on real-time consumption, enhancing customer satisfaction and trust.
Multi-currency: Expand your global reach with multi-currency billing capabilities. Accept payments in any currency, overcoming cross-border complexities and enabling faster growth in international markets.
Integration-friendly architecture: Leverage out-of-the-box integrations with popular CRM, ERP, and payment platforms. Cacheflow CPQ fits seamlessly into your existing tech stack, enabling smoother operations without costly customizations.
What are the advantages of using Cacheflow CPQ?
Cacheflow CPQ Benefits
Cacheflow offers many benefits to SaaS companies, ensuring accurate quotes and streamlining the quote-to-cash process.
Benefits of Cacheflow include:
- Intuitive user experience enables sales teams to quickly send quotes to prospective customers.
- One platform for the quote-to-cash process syncs proposal generation, e-signatures, subscription management, contract storage, and renewals.
- Seamless integration with Salesforce and HubSpot for bi-directional customer and deal data flow across systems.
- Enables cross-functional teams to collaborate on proposals to ensure compliance, accurate pricing, and timely approvals.
- Complete visibility into past and future billing makes it easier to track revenue trends and manage cash flow.
- Configure and update pricing models easily so your team can respond quickly to market changes, new customer demands, and emerging revenue models.
What industries are CPQ solutions best suited for?
Cacheflow CPQ for Industries
Cacheflow CPQ is specifically designed to address the challenges that SaaS companies face in the quoting process. Here’s how it caters to them:
IT Services
Standardized Offerings: Cacheflow allows defining various service models like subscriptions, one-time fees, or usage-based billing. This flexibility helps IT service companies accurately configure service packages for clients.
Centralized Pricing Management: Complex pricing structures with multiple factors can be built and managed centrally, ensuring IT service companies present consistent and up-to-date pricing to clients.
Embedded Documents: Proposals included embedded Terms of Service, case studies, and other supporting documents that support stakeholder decision-making and improve the customer experience.
SaaS
Multiple Subscription Types: Cacheflow caters to diverse SaaS business models. It enables sales operations to define various offerings like subscriptions, one-time fees, usage-based pricing, and minimum commitments.
Real-time Sales Data and Forecasting: The platform integrates with existing CRM systems, providing a centralized view of customer interactions and sales activity. This real-time data allows sales operations teams to generate more accurate forecasts, identify potential roadblocks in the sales pipeline, and make data-driven decisions to optimize recurring revenue.
Streamlined Deal Flow: Cacheflow facilitates a smooth quote-to-cash process by enabling features like flexible payment options and automated billing. This streamlines the deal-closing process for sales reps and reduces friction for customers, ultimately accelerating revenue generation.
Prices
Cacheflow CPQ Pricing
Pricing is available upon request, but Cacheflow offers two plans: ‘Sales Flow’, and ‘Sales + Finance Flow’. There is also special pricing starting at $799/month for early-stage startups.
Is there anyone else out there?
Competitors and Alternatives to Cacheflow CPQ
Cacheflow CPQ faces competition from several established players in the CPQ software market. Prominent Cacheflow alternatives include Salesforce, DealHub, and PandaDoc. These solutions offer similar functionalities like quote automation and CRM integrations. When choosing a CPQ solution, SaaS companies consider factors like pricing, scalability, and the specific feature set required for their unique sales process.
Top Cacheflow CPQ Alternatives
Salesforce CPQ
A key competitor to Cacheflow CPQ is Salesforce CPQ, a comprehensive deals management solution built directly into the Salesforce platform. While Cacheflow emphasizes ease of use and rapid implementation, Salesforce CPQ offers a wider range of functionalities, including customizable dashboards, lead and contact management, and sales opportunity pipelines. Both solutions provide accurate and fast quote generation, handling complex configurations, customizations, and discounts. However, Salesforce CPQ leverages the power of Salesforce Cloud, ensuring real-time data synchronization with your CRM for a seamless user experience. This tight integration might be a major advantage for companies already heavily invested in the Salesforce ecosystem.
DealHub CPQ
DealHub delivers a comprehensive Quote-to-Revenue platform that extends well beyond Cacheflow’s checkout-focused approach, providing end-to-end revenue operations for B2B SaaS companies managing both sales-led and product-led growth motions. While Cacheflow specializes in frictionless checkout experiences and payment processing for self-service and PLG scenarios, DealHub unifies CPQ, subscription billing, real-time usage metering, contract lifecycle management (CLM), and automated revenue recognition with ASC 606/IFRS 15 compliance in a single platform. The platform’s AI-powered quoting capabilities and no-code environment empower sales teams to configure complex deals, including multi-year ramps, usage tiers, and hybrid pricing models. DealHub’s native integrations across multiple CRMs (Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics) plus connections to NetSuite, Stripe, and DocuSign create a governed revenue architecture. It also provides real-time ARR, MRR, and pipeline visibility. For organizations seeking to consolidate their revenue tech stack beyond checkout optimization, DealHub offers a compelling alternative.
PandaDoc CPQ
While Cacheflow CPQ focuses on automating the CPQ process, PandaDoc CPQ leans towards a simpler, user-friendly approach. Ideal for agencies, consultants, and B2B service providers, PandaDoc offers a no-code interface and drag-and-drop quote builder. This prioritizes ease of use over in-depth functionalities like advanced discounting or multi-year contract configurations. While both offer quote generation, PandaDoc positions itself as a broader document management platform, including proposals, invoices, and contracts, with searchable storage for easy retrieval.
FAQs
Common Questions and Answers
Yes, HubSpot has acquired Cacheflow. On October 11, 2024, HubSpot announced its acquisition of Cacheflow. This acquisition aims to enhance HubSpot’s Commerce Hub by integrating advanced billing and CPQ capabilities, enabling businesses to close deals faster and collect revenue more efficiently.
Following the acquisition, Cacheflow became a wholly owned subsidiary of HubSpot and is being integrated into HubSpot’s Commerce Hub platform.
No. Cacheflow has been fully discontinued following its acquisition by HubSpot. It is no longer available for purchase, and all former customers were notified that the product has reached end-of-life. While HubSpot may eventually launch a new solution based on Cacheflow’s technology, it will be a new product under the HubSpot brand, with no set release date or confirmed feature set.
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.
