Executive summary
SteelBrick was a quoting tool Salesforce acquired in 2015 and rebranded as Salesforce CPQ. In 2026 Salesforce confirmed the product is end of sale, not end of life — it is no longer sold to new customers, while existing customers keep their licences, can add users, can renew, and continue to receive support. Salesforce’s forward investment has moved to Revenue Cloud Advanced, part of its Agentforce Revenue Management suite.
If you run Salesforce CPQ today, nothing breaks tomorrow. But the platform you are on is no longer the one receiving innovation, and that changes how you should plan. This guide explains what the product does, what changed, how Revenue Cloud Advanced differs architecturally, and — the part most articles on this topic skip because they are selling you a migration — when staying put is the right answer.
TL;DR
- Salesforce CPQ is end of sale, not end of life. Existing customers keep licences, can buy more users, renew, and get support.
- Salesforce no longer sells new Salesforce CPQ licences to new customers.
- Revenue Cloud Advanced (RCA) is the named successor, within the Agentforce Revenue Management suite.
- The difference is architectural, not cosmetic: CPQ is a managed package with SKU-based bundles; RCA is native, API-first and attribute-based.
- Migrating is a re-implementation, not an upgrade. Price rules, Quote Calculator Plugin scripts and quote customisations do not port across.
- Staying is a legitimate strategy for a stable quoting process — with an honest date by which you will revisit it.
Is Salesforce discontinuing CPQ? The short answer
No. Salesforce CPQ is end of sale, not end of life.
Salesforce states this directly on its own site: existing customers can continue using Salesforce CPQ, buy additional users, renew licences and receive support. What has stopped is the sale of new Salesforce CPQ licences to new customers. Salesforce’s investment in quote-to-cash has shifted to Revenue Cloud Advanced, part of the Agentforce Revenue Management suite. (Source: Salesforce, “Navigating the Future of Salesforce CPQ: Product End of Sale (Not End of Life)”, July 2026.)
The practical translation for anyone running it today:
- Your org keeps working.
- You can keep adding seats as you grow.
- You will keep getting support.
- You will not get the new capability Salesforce is building, because that is being built somewhere else.
That last point is the real decision, and it is a planning question rather than an emergency.
What SteelBrick CPQ is, and how it became Salesforce CPQ
SteelBrick began as a company solving one problem well: making it possible to configure products, apply pricing and produce a quote without spreadsheets and manual rework.
Salesforce acquired SteelBrick in 2015 and rebranded the product as Salesforce CPQ — Configure, Price, Quote — delivering it as a managed package installed on top of Salesforce and positioned within Revenue Cloud. That managed-package architecture is the detail that matters most for everything that follows, because it is precisely what Revenue Cloud Advanced moves away from.
You will still see all four names in circulation: SteelBrick, SteelBrick CPQ, Salesforce CPQ and Salesforce Revenue Cloud. They refer to the same lineage.
What Salesforce CPQ actually does
Product configuration and guided selling
Sales reps assemble bundles from valid options rather than free-typing line items. The configurator blocks invalid combinations and guided selling narrows the choice by asking qualifying questions — which is what allows a new rep to quote like an experienced one.
Pricing rules and discount approvals
Pricing is applied by rule rather than by judgement: volume tiers, customer type, region, contracted rates. Discounts outside policy route automatically to an approver, which is how commercial control survives contact with a quarter-end.
Quotes, e-signature and hand-off to billing
Branded quote documents generate from templates, go out for electronic signature, and — because everything sits on the Salesforce platform — flow into billing without re-keying. Removing that re-keying step is where a lot of the measurable error reduction in a CPQ project comes from.
What’s replacing Salesforce CPQ: Revenue Cloud Advanced
Revenue Cloud Advanced (RCA) is the named successor, sitting inside the Agentforce Revenue Management suite. It is not a new version of CPQ. It is a different architecture that happens to do the same job.
How RCA differs architecturally
The comparison below is adapted from the one Salesforce publishes on its own end-of-sale page.
| Area | Salesforce CPQ | Revenue Cloud Advanced |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Managed package installed on top of Salesforce; quote-centric | Native to Salesforce core; API-first, headless, composable |
| Composability | Monolithic — adopt all of it or none | Modular — adopt pricing, quoting, ordering or billing independently |
| Product model | SKU-based bundles and options | Attribute-based product catalogue |
| Pricing engine | Price rules, custom scripts (QCP/PSP), custom code | Declarative pricing procedures and elements |
| Configurator | Rules-based | Constraint-based |
| Quoting | Custom object inside a managed package; logic tied to the UI | Standard Salesforce data model; composable, API-first |
| Sales channels | Primarily direct | Direct, partner, ecommerce, self-service, in-product |
| Revenue models | One-time and subscription; limited consumption | One-time, subscription, consumption and hybrid |
| Subscriptions | Contract-based amendments and renewals | Asset-based amendments, renewals and cancellations |
| AI readiness | Limited native support | Built for Agentforce, APIs and headless workflows |
Read that table as one sentence: CPQ was designed around the quote; RCA is designed around the revenue lifecycle, with the quote as one composable piece of it.
The practical consequences are worth stating plainly. Attribute-based catalogues suit businesses whose offers vary along dimensions rather than by SKU. Constraint-based configuration usually means less rule maintenance at scale. Composability means you can adopt pricing without adopting billing. And declarative pricing procedures replace the custom code that a lot of mature CPQ orgs are quietly carrying — frequently written as part of long-running custom Salesforce development engagements.
What this means for Agentforce
If AI agents are anywhere on your roadmap, this is the part that matters. RCA is the layer Salesforce is building agentic revenue capability on — an agent that can quote, amend or renew needs an API-first, permission-aware model underneath it, which is exactly what the managed-package architecture was never designed to expose. We cover the delivery side of that in Agentforce and AI agents, and if you are shortlisting help, our list of Agentforce implementation partners compares ten of them honestly.
If agents are not on your roadmap, this argument does not apply to you, and you should discount it accordingly.
Should you migrate, or stay on Salesforce CPQ?
Almost everyone publishing on this topic sells something that benefits from you migrating — competing CPQ vendors, Salesforce itself, and implementation partners. So here is the honest version, including the case for doing nothing.
When staying is the right answer
- Your quoting process is stable and your product catalogue is not changing shape.
- You sell one-time or straightforward subscription products through a direct channel.
- Your CPQ implementation is healthy — rules are documented, someone owns it, it is not held together by undocumented scripts.
- You have no near-term plan for consumption pricing, partner or self-service channels, or agentic workflows.
- You have larger problems competing for the same budget. That is a legitimate reason and nobody selling a migration will say it out loud.
Staying is a strategy, not a failure. What turns it into a failure is staying by default — never deciding, and discovering in three years that the decision has been made for you. Put a review date in the calendar.
When migrating is the right answer
- Your revenue model is changing — consumption, usage-based, or hybrid pricing.
- You are opening partner, ecommerce or self-service channels.
- Your product catalogue has outgrown SKU-based bundles and rule maintenance has become a job in itself.
- Agentforce is a real roadmap item rather than a slide.
- You are already facing a significant CPQ re-implementation for other reasons — in which case rebuilding on the platform receiving investment is the obvious call.
The factors that actually decide it
| Factor | Points toward staying | Points toward migrating |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue model | One-time / simple subscription | Consumption, usage-based, hybrid |
| Product catalogue | Stable, SKU-shaped | Attribute-driven, frequently changing |
| Channels | Direct sales only | Partner, ecommerce, self-service |
| Customisation depth | Light, documented | Heavy QCP/custom code already being rewritten |
| Agentforce plans | None | Active roadmap item |
| Change capacity | Team already at capacity | Budget and people available |
| Timeline pressure | No forcing event | Contract, audit or re-platform already scheduled |
If most of your answers sit in the left column, staying is defensible. If most sit in the right, you are already migrating — you just have not scheduled it.
What a migration involves, and what does not carry over
The most common and most expensive misconception is that this is an upgrade. It is not. It is a re-implementation with a data migration.
What generally does not carry across without rework:
- Custom price rules and Quote Calculator Plugin scripts. RCA uses declarative pricing procedures. Logic has to be re-expressed, not ported.
- SKU-based bundle structures, where the target catalogue is attribute-based. This is a modelling exercise, not a data copy.
- Quote object customisations. CPQ’s quote lives in a managed package; RCA uses the standard data model.
- Approval processes and templates tied to CPQ objects.
- Integrations pointed at CPQ objects — billing, ERP, revenue recognition. These usually need remapping, and they are typically the hardest part of the whole exercise. See our guide to Salesforce integration.
What tends to carry across more easily: accounts, contacts, opportunities and historical quote records for reference, and your commercial policy — which is documentation, not configuration.
A useful reframe: the customisation depth that made your CPQ valuable is exactly what makes the migration expensive. If you have been carrying custom Salesforce development inside CPQ for years, budget accordingly.
What it costs and how long it takes
Salesforce does not publish list pricing for Revenue Cloud Advanced, and any specific figure you read online is someone’s negotiated outcome rather than a rate card. Rather than repeat a number we cannot stand behind, here is what actually determines yours.
What drives licence cost: number of users needing quoting capability, which modules you adopt (RCA’s modularity means you can take pricing without billing), and your existing Salesforce agreement — timing a CPQ conversation to coincide with a wider renewal materially changes the outcome.
What drives project cost:
| Driver | Effect |
|---|---|
| Depth of existing customisation | Usually the single largest factor. Heavy QCP and custom price rules mean rebuilding logic, not migrating it. |
| Product catalogue complexity | Re-modelling SKU bundles as attributes is design work before it is configuration work. |
| Number of downstream integrations | Billing, ERP and revenue recognition remapping is where timelines slip. |
| Data quality | Cleaning product and pricing data usually costs more than expected, and is usually discovered late. |
| Parallel-run requirement | Running both systems while in-flight quotes complete adds cost, and is often non-negotiable. |
On timeline: phasing beats a big bang. Because RCA is modular, most organisations can move pricing and quoting first and leave ordering and billing in place — which shortens the risky part considerably. Anyone quoting you a duration before seeing your catalogue and integration map is guessing.
The other CPQ options on the table
Salesforce CPQ’s end of sale has reopened a market. The realistic shortlist:
| Option | Best suited to | Main trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue Cloud Advanced | Salesforce-committed organisations, especially with Agentforce plans | Re-implementation effort; newer platform |
| Conga CPQ (formerly Apttus) | Deep enterprise configuration and contract-heavy processes | Heavier to implement and maintain |
| Oracle CPQ | Very complex configuration with substantial internal IT | Weaker Salesforce integration story |
| SAP CPQ | Organisations already standardised on SAP | Less comfortable for Salesforce-native teams |
| Lightweight / SMB CPQ tools | Small teams with simple quoting | Ceiling arrives quickly as complexity grows |
| Stay on Salesforce CPQ | Stable process, simple catalogue, direct sales | No forward innovation; a decision deferred, not avoided |
Which CPQ is best? There is no universal answer, and any page that gives you one is selling something. The question that actually resolves it is what revenue model are you selling, through which channels, on which CRM — answer those three and the shortlist usually reduces to one or two.
Common CPQ problems we see, and how to avoid them
Configuration complexity gets away from you. Product rules multiply until nobody can predict what the configurator will do. Start with your highest-volume products, keep rules flat rather than nested, and document why each rule exists — the “why” is what disappears first.
Reps route around the tool. If quoting in CPQ is slower than a spreadsheet for a common deal shape, reps will use the spreadsheet. Involve them in the design, and measure quote creation time as an adoption metric rather than assuming.
Legacy systems do not cooperate. Older ERP and billing systems rarely map cleanly. Map the data flow before you build, and test in a sandbox with real volumes, not sample records.
Pricing drifts out of date. Products and prices change faster than anyone updates the system. Assign a named owner and a recurring review — this is an operating discipline, not a project task, and it belongs in your revenue operations function.
Nobody owns the decision. With CPQ end of sale, the most common failure now is simply not deciding. Drift is a choice with worse odds than either alternative.
Working with Mountainise
Mountainise works on quote-to-cash as part of a wider revenue operations practice, which means a CPQ decision gets assessed against how the business actually sells rather than as an isolated tooling question. That includes the case for staying where you are.
Our Salesforce work spans Salesforce consulting, Sales Cloud implementation, CRM implementation and enhancement, Agentforce and AI agents, and revenue operations.
The short version
Salesforce CPQ — the product that started life as SteelBrick — is end of sale, not end of life. If you run it, it keeps working, keeps being supported, and keeps being renewable. What it will not do is keep getting better, because Salesforce’s investment has moved to Revenue Cloud Advanced.
Whether that matters to you depends on what you sell and how you sell it. If your revenue model, channels and catalogue are stable, staying — with a real review date — is defensible. If they are changing, or Agentforce is on your roadmap, the answer changes.
Frequently asked questions
No. Salesforce CPQ is end of sale, not end of life. Existing customers keep their licences, can add users, can renew, and continue to receive support. Salesforce has stopped selling new Salesforce CPQ licences to new customers.
Revenue Cloud Advanced, part of Salesforce’s Agentforce Revenue Management suite. It is a native, API-first, composable platform rather than a managed package, and Salesforce names it as the successor to Salesforce CPQ.
Revenue Cloud is the broader product family; Revenue Cloud Advanced is the specific successor product within it. Salesforce CPQ was itself part of Revenue Cloud, which is where a lot of the naming confusion comes from.
No. Same job, different architecture; the comparison table above sets out how they differ.
Revenue Cloud Advanced (RCA) is the product name. It sits inside the Agentforce Revenue Management suite, which is why it is sometimes referred to by that suite name in Salesforce materials.
Not today. It is supported and renewable. What you will not get is the new capability Salesforce is building, because that work is happening in Revenue Cloud Advanced. Staying is reasonable for a stable quoting process — but set a date to revisit it rather than letting it drift.
It is a re-implementation with a data migration, not an upgrade. Custom price rules, Quote Calculator Plugin scripts, bundle structures and quote-object customisations generally have to be rebuilt rather than ported. The depth of your existing customisation is the best predictor of effort.
Yes. Salesforce acquired SteelBrick in 2015 and rebranded the product as Salesforce CPQ. The SteelBrick name persists in search because that is what a generation of admins first learned it as.