CPQ is End Of Sale: Where Should You Go?
A Review of The Current CPQ and RLM Landscape
Salesforce announced the end of sale (EOS) for CPQ a few months ago after years of no new features being released for the sixteen-year-old product.
There's not a week that goes by that someone asks me what they should do with Salesforce CPQ (Steelbrick aka CPQ) or which billing solution they should go with, or if they should go with Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced (fka RLM fka Revenue Cloud aka RCA).
The answer is that there's not a concrete go-to for everyone, or even a best practice. The answer is that it's usually the best one for your business.
There are tools that are considered "best in class" by many analysts, but they don't work for everyone.
There are tools that are overbuilt because they're built for specific use cases. Such as integrating into Commerce Cloud for a Fortune 100.
There are only 100 companies in the Fortune 100 and 3000 CPQ customers.
We're biased at Right Sized Tech; we focus on startups and SMBs, so we tend to lean towards products that work with minimal support. The teams we support are usually already stretched thin, so we want to avoid wasting time with workarounds or complex setups. Keep it simple is our mantra.
The criteria we use when selecting tools are:
How easy/quick is it to implement? Time is money
How easy is it to maintain?
Which persona maintains it? Engineering, RevOps? What skill level
Can it be used for PLG and Direct Sales?
How complete is the API?
How extensible/customizable is it?
Can it handle billing?
Can it handle usage?
What is the integration landscape?
As an SMB/Midmarket organization, we focused on companies under 5k employees and with varying revenue. When we looked at the market for viable replacements, we identified the following companies:
Logik (now part of ServiceNow)
We considered including Sage Intacct and SuiteBilling, but determined that the average customer that Right Sized Tech serves will not fall into these categories.
We'll explore the high-level pros and cons of each below, and declare a winner. But we want to know what you think as well.
Salesforce RCA
Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced (RCA), formerly known as Revenue Lifecycle Management (RLM), is billed as a revenue management platform built on Salesforce.
RCA is strongly coupled with Commerce Cloud, so it makes logical sense to choose if this is something you fully support. From a product engineer's perspective, it is challenging to onboard with Salesforce's APIs if you're not familiar with them - but this is nothing new, compared to other RESTful APIs in the industry. However, if you're an enterprise customer and not a startup or SMB, this is probably something you've likely solved for.
Salesforce is working closely with partners and others in the market to inform its roadmap and has built a billing solution alongside quoting. You can use all the standard automations that Salesforce has, as well as approvals.
The current issue with RCA is that it's shrouded in mystery. I feel like Nicolas Cage will appear in a film where his objective is to find the documentation for RCA. Even though it was rebranded at Dreamforce '24, it's still listed as Revenue Lifecycle Management, which is confusing.
RCA is quite complicated, and there isn't a readily available talent pool to bring on the client side, so you'll lean on a partner for most of the implementation and further maintenance. Which, from my experience, isn't much of a selling point in the SMB space.
The other interesting component is that while folks are grumbling in one-on-one conversations about it, the product is heavily lauded by those same folks in public. So, make sure to vet your partners to ensure that they have your best interests in mind, not those of a channel partner.
Salesforce Ben released an article in May 2025 that details RCA further in this article.
Logik
Acquired by ServiceNow, and ServiceNow has publicly stated:
A NOTE ON THE SERVICENOW ACQUISITION
Continued cooperation with Salesforce
Salesforce is a trusted partner of Logik.ai, and we remain dedicated to supporting our shared customers. Our standalone CPQ and advanced configurator will continue to seamlessly integrate with Salesforce CRM, Salesforce CPQ (Steelbrick), RLM/RCA, and Commerce Cloud. We plan to maintain our ISV partnership status and are actively growing our team of Salesforce developers and engineers to further strengthen and expand our integration with the Salesforce ecosystem.
While it is reassuring to see this, we must exercise caution as to whether Logik will continue to support Salesforce in the long run. Given the public antagonism towards ServiceNow's competitor, we cannot predict whether they'll use deplatforming as a threat, nor do we know what contractual terms are in place.
Like RCA, Logik has a strong integration with eCommerce, with a strong Shopify and Salesforce integration.
Logik has powerful tooling, and we recommend it as more of a configure and price platform that has quoting. The UI leaves something to be desired and reminds us of the clunky UI of the legacy enterprise software it sits upon.
While it's a strong offering, it's not one we would typically recommend if choosing to move off of Salesforce CPQ, as there are other products with more incentives to improve upon their Salesforce experience.
DealHub
DealHub has been around since 2014, one year before the acquisition of Steelbrick by Salesforce, and five years after Steelbrick entered the scene, and is a Series C company.
They have a wealth of experience in the space and have had time to build out their integrations. They are a cross-platform CPQ serving HubSpot, Salesforce, Dynamics, and Freshworks with integrations to DocuSign, Slack, and Gong.
They offer integrated billing but no out-of-the-box subscription management. This approach may work for many businesses or those that don't need to manage subscriptions, but it puts them at a disadvantage compared to most SaaS companies.
The API is strong and can be used headless, and the documentation is good, which makes this engineer smile. It's been a while since we've been hands-on with the product, so we're supplementing our experience with documentation and customer interviews.
DealHub offers contract management (CLM), configure price quote (CPQ), deal room, and billing solutions. This is great for companies that want a one-stop shop experience and drives efficiency, but it does leave a watered-down experience compared to point solutions.
Overall, a strong offering and a competitor to CPQ, with a solid customer base and talent available on the market.
Nue.io
Nue is the relative new kid on the block, founded in 2019 but largely in stealth mode until the last few years. Nue has raised a Series B at this point and brought on an experienced CEO, Mark Walker.
Nue was founded by a team that knows the quote to cash space by the back of their hand. Cheng Zou and Tina Kung spanned across Zuora, Neocrm, Oracle CPQ, and Salesforce CPQ in engineering and product roles. This team knew the space, the problems, and how they wanted to tackle them.
We view Nue's competitive advantage as the Everything Billing platform and hybrid data model. Because the product is built with billing in mind, you have a unified experience from setting up the product catalog to building a quote.
Nue has a hybrid data model, and I think it's a strong differentiation. It means you get the speed and performance of a RESTful API directly with Nue's API, but also access to all standard Salesforce automations and features. This allows product engineering and RevOps or Salesforce teams to work with the features that best suit them and work independently.
There is no need to hire a CPQ Architect or Specialist; you can redeploy members of your existing team and get everyone up to speed.
Nue's team is customer-obsessed in an era where most companies prioritize efficiency and revenue protection. They realize that satisfied customers are a multiplier for growth, and the product team takes feedback seriously.
One of the most unique features that Nue has is the ability to preview an invoice during the quoting process. This allows your reps and customers to know that the next invoice will be correct and there are no surprises. That's a boost in potential NPS for your company.
Nue is still early and doesn't have everything ironed out quite yet. For example, if you're looking for extensive product rules such as "add X when Y is selected," they may not be the best choice for you yet.
But there is a reason that OpenAI and Anthropic are customers.
The Winner
At Right Sized Tech, we believe that Nue is the right tool for a large swath of customers looking to replace CPQ now that it is end of sale. We believe it has the best product vision, low-pressure sales tactics, and a strong current offering.
As with any tool, it may not be the best tool for every company, and that's where we fit it. We can have a strategic conversation with you about the pros and cons of each product and whether it is the right sized tech for your business.