Conga (Apttus) CPQ vs Salesforce CPQ: a 2026 comparison for admins and buyers

Ten dimensions, with sources

What the differences mean day to day

Ownership of change. Conga’s admin UI handles routine changes, but complex pricing and validation logic lives in Apex callbacks, so changes beyond it usually need a developer or partner; TurboEngines settings, if licensed, sit outside the org. Salesforce CPQ implementations are more often admin-maintained, but the product they maintain is frozen.

Where your data is. Both keep records in your Salesforce org. Conga’s pricing objects are its own; Salesforce CPQ’s list prices are standard Price Book Entries. That matters when you leave: standard objects move with you, package objects do not.

What you are paying for. Conga still ships about three CPQ-for-Salesforce releases a year (four major releases from October 2025 to October 2026, mostly incremental, including an Agentforce Quote Agent with a Claude MCP connector and enhancements to the price optimization integration in the cart); its larger investment goes to TurboEngines, the Advantage Platform, Dynamics 365 and AI (Conga release notes). Salesforce is investing in Revenue Cloud, a different product with a different data model, priced at $150–$200 per user per month (Salesforce pricing).

Which Conga CPQ you are comparing

Conga now sells two CPQs (conga.com). Advantage CPQ is the former Apttus CPQ: the Salesforce managed packages this page compares, also hosted on Conga’s own Advantage Platform. Smart CPQ came with Conga’s purchase of PROS’s B2B business, completed February 2, 2026 (Conga); it works with any CRM and is aimed at manufacturers and distributors. Salesforce CPQ is one product in one package.

The difference matters when analyst claims come up. In Gartner’s January 2026 Magic Quadrant for CPQ Applications, PROS (now Smart CPQ) was placed in the Leaders quadrant and Conga’s own CPQ in Challengers, per Conga’s February 5, 2026 release (Conga). Conga’s report page now headlines the Leader placement for the company as a whole (Conga), so ask which product a claim refers to before it shapes the decision.

Where each product is heading

Both products live in your org today. Where they are going is the bigger difference.

Moving from Salesforce CPQ to Conga is a rebuild

Conga markets directly to Salesforce CPQ customers; one of its blog posts says the product faces “sunset and eventual end-of-life” (Conga). Salesforce says otherwise: end of sale, not end of life, with no forced migration (Salesforce). If you move to Conga anyway, little transfers as-is:

• Pricing. Price Book Entries become Conga Price List Items, and SBQQ price rules and discount schedules are rebuilt as Conga price rules and matrices.
• Configuration. SBQQ product rules and option constraints become Conga constraint rules and option groups.
• Quotes. SBQQ__Quote__c records move to Conga’s Proposal object, edited in a separate cart.
• Documents. Quote templates are rebuilt as Conga templates.
• Install base. SBQQ subscriptions and contracts become Asset Line Items.

Conga’s own guidance puts a typical CPQ implementation at 3–6 months: 6–12 weeks for smaller companies with standard configurations, and more than nine months for complex enterprise rollouts (Conga). A move that keeps your standard Products and Price Books is shorter: typically 4–8 weeks to Kugamon (playbook).

What each costs over three years

Salesforce CPQ is not sold to new customers and has no published price; existing customers renew on contract terms (Salesforce). Conga publishes no price list on conga.com; its one priced CPQ offer is on AWS Marketplace, $5,400 per user for 36 months (about $150 per user per month), on a listing marked “Deployed on AWS” (AWS Marketplace).

On our 50-user, three-year model, Conga comes to about $601,500: about $211,500 of licence, $270,000 of implementation and $120,000 of admin. Every Conga line is an estimate, the midpoint of the low and high cases in our October 2026 competitor research, with every competitor’s admin cost counted. For comparison, Kugamon CPQ comes to about $143,500 on published licence and implementation prices plus an admin estimate, and Revenue Cloud Advanced to about $897,000 (an estimate). The Conga CPQ pricing page explains each line; the calculator lets you replace them with your own quote.

Questions to ask before you decide

1. Which product are you proposing?

   Advantage CPQ on Salesforce, Advantage CPQ on the Advantage Platform, or Smart CPQ? And which one earned the analyst placement in the slides?

2. Where will my cart be priced?

   Inside Salesforce, or on Conga’s Flexible Compute Platform through TurboPricing, and how is that licensed (Conga docs)? What syncs, how often, and who fixes a failed sync?

3. Which objects hold quotes and prices?

   Conga’s Proposal and Price List objects, or the standard Salesforce Product and Price Book with the CPQ’s own quote object? The answer decides how your reports, Agentforce and any future migration work.

4. Can my admin make the change?

   Ask to see a price rule and a discount approval changed live, by your admin, without Apex callbacks or a partner.

5. Will you commit to a fixed fee and a date?

   Conga’s own guidance is 3–6 months for a typical implementation. Ask for a fixed-fee, fixed-date statement of work for your scope.

6. How many packages, and what happens at upgrade?

   Conga’s October ’26 release notes list 26 managed packages in the dependency table, several needed only for specific features, and the June ’26 security changes were mandatory (Oct ’26, June ’26). Ask how upgrades are tested and rolled back.

If you run Conga CPQ

Ask your account team where pricing computation will run in two years and what the license for that looks like. Ask how many callback classes exist and who can read them. Then price the alternatives with your own numbers: the alternatives guide lists what is available, and the ROI calculator compares three-year cost using published Kugamon prices and labeled estimates for Conga.

If you run Salesforce CPQ

You are not being forced anywhere. Salesforce says existing customers can renew, add users, and receive support, and that there is no forced migration (Salesforce). The practical pressure is that nothing new arrives and the online documentation is gone. Your two exits are Revenue Cloud Advanced — a re-implementation that runs 12–18 months in practice — or a Salesforce-native alternative that keeps your standard Products and Price Books. The migration hub walks through both.