Salesforce CPQ end-of-life: the cost of waiting to migrate

For years, Salesforce CPQ (SteelBrick) has been the backbone of quoting for thousands of companies. It automated proposals, sped up approvals, and gave sales teams a structured way to configure complex deals inside Salesforce. For many, it supported was needed at the time.

That time is over.

Salesforce CPQ (SteelBrick) has reached end-of-sale. Most of the market is referring to this as end-of-life — and for existing customers, that’s exactly what it feels like.  

No new sales of Salesforce CPQ or innovation. Shrinking support. Rising costs.  

And the only path forward? A forced reimplementation on Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced (RCA) — an immature product with high costs, long timelines, and adoption concerns. If you are a Salesforce CPQ customer, you will need to migrate. The choice is whether you control the timing and the outcome, or whether Salesforce dictates it for you.  

Waiting hands them leverage and leaves you with fewer choices.

Salesforce CPQ end of life: why it’s the end of the road

When a product is declared end-of-life, the meaning is clear: it has stopped evolving. Salesforce CPQ has not received meaningful updates in more than four years. Performance limits remain unresolved. Features will continue to lag behind customer needs. Technical experts are moving on to other platforms.

For customers, this creates growing risk. Each year you stay on Salesforce CPQ, you face:

• Higher maintenance costs for aging customizations.
• Declining access to skilled administrators and developers.
• Stalled innovation while competitors modernize.
• Pressure from Salesforce to move to RCA on their terms.

End-of-life doesn’t mean the system stops working tomorrow. It means you are running on borrowed time, with no investment in the future of the platform.

The myth of a seamless upgrade

Revenue Cloud Advanced is often described as the natural evolution of Salesforce CPQ. The idea of a smooth upgrade is appealing, but it doesn’t reflect reality.

In reality, RCA isn’t an upgrade at all, it’s a full rebuild. Every workflow, customization, and integration must be recreated from scratch. RCA is much harder to implement than Salesforce CPQ and you don’t need all that complexity. Early adopters report projects stretching past a year, costs running two to four times higher than planned, and added spend on third-party tools to fill gaps.

Moving to RCA later doesn’t make it easier — it’s still a rebuild, just at higher cost and with less flexibility. And because RCA is still immature, many teams discover gaps after the rebuild, forcing new add-ons and costs just to get back to parity with what they had.

The cost of waiting

Many customers look at the road ahead and decide to wait. Maybe budget is tight this year. Maybe the current system is still running. Maybe they believe Salesforce will sweeten the deal closer to renewal.

That delay carries a hidden cost.

Loss of leverage. Salesforce knows every CPQ customer must eventually migrate. The longer you wait, the more negotiating power you give up.

Forced timing. Customers with less than 18 months left on their Salesforce agreements are already being pushed to renew into RCA. Wait too long, and the decision will be made for you.

Rushed projects. Migration is inevitable.  Waiting only ensures a rushed timeline with limited partner availability, more risk, higher consulting costs, and a greater chance of failure. You’re going to have to reimplement anyway, so do your due diligence now and don’t just fall into the RCA track by default.

Compounding technical debt. Every quarter on Salesforce CPQ adds more complexity and cost. Customizations pile up. Workarounds become brittle. By the time you do migrate, it is harder and more expensive.

And waiting until renewal doesn’t solve the problem — it only puts Salesforce in control of the timing.

Why Conga CPQ offers a better path

Conga CPQ is the proven, lower-risk alternative to RCA. It is Salesforce-native, so you preserve your CRM data, workflows, and user interface. But it does not lock you into Salesforce indefinitely. You can integrate with ERP, finance, commerce, or even future CRMs outside Salesforce.

That flexibility is critical. Enterprises need control over their own roadmaps, not dictated renewals.

Conga CPQ eliminates the trade-offs

It delivers proven enterprise-scale quoting, faster time-to-value, and lower total cost of ownership. Unlike RCA, Conga is Salesforce-native without locking you in, which gives you control of your roadmap and freedom of choice. Conga CPQ also delivers:

Enterprise-grade quoting, out of the box 

Multi-type quoting for hardware, software, services, and subscriptions. Asset-based ordering with automated renewals. Margin analysis and price waterfalls. APIs unified across CPQ, CLM, Billing, and Digital Documents.

Performance at scale

Validated for 10,000+ line items with sub-second responses. This is scale RCA has not achieved.

Faster, simpler migration

All migrations are reimplementations, but Conga’s guided process is faster and less disruptive than RCA’s long rebuilds. Customers typically go live in 6–9 months, with ROI in under a year. And because Conga delivers more out-of-the-box functionality, teams avoid the heavy customization that slows down other CPQ projects.

Lower TCO and predictable pricing

RCA typically doubles license costs and increases integration spend 2–3X. Conga avoids forced add-ons and keeps pricing predictable.

Continuous innovation

AI-guided selling, deal recommendations, automated renewals, analytics, and CPQ Copilot agents arriving before Salesforce’s equivalent.

Proven success

Six completed migrations from Salesforce CPQ are already live, with global enterprises running Conga CPQ at scale. Conga CPQ has nearly 4x the amount of live customers today. 

What enterprises gain by moving now

Organizations that start the migration process now gain several advantages:

• Negotiating leverage with Salesforce, not locked into RCA terms.
• Time to plan, test, and implement without disruption.
• Faster ROI and reduced long-term cost of ownership.
• A modern CPQ system that scales with growth and integrates with broader revenue operations.

By contrast, enterprises that wait face the worst of both worlds: mounting technical debt, shrinking support, and a rushed, expensive reimplementation dictated by Salesforce.

The bottom line

Salesforce CPQ is end-of-life. RCA is not an upgrade. Migration is inevitable.

The real decision is whether to act now, while you still have control, or wait until Salesforce dictates the terms.

With Conga CPQ, enterprises move forward with confidence:  

• Faster ROI (6–12 months vs. 12+ months for RCA)
• Lower TCO (no forced add-ons, predictable pricing)
• Proven scale (10,000+ line items, sub-second performance)
• Long-term flexibility (Salesforce-native today, CRM-agnostic tomorrow)

The longer you wait, the fewer choices you have.  

Don’t get forced into RCA and let Salesforce dictate your future. Make sure you choose the solution that’s best for our company today and sets you up for success tomorrow.