Upgrading from Zuora Quotes to Zuora CPQ X: Your Strategic Options

If you're on Zuora Quotes 9.x and considering the path to CPQ X, there are some helpful observations and questions that can guide the discussion before committing to a programme of work.

Understanding the nature of the move to CPQ X

It can be useful to clarify whether the shift to CPQ X should be viewed as an upgrade or a reimplementation. The architecture is significantly different, so one open question to explore with Zuora is how much of your existing configuration, logic, and user experience can be preserved. Another question is how they recommend approaching any design reconsiderations when moving from the legacy workflow driven model to a single page quoting experience.

What changes in practice

Several areas may require deeper exploration to understand how current behaviour translates to CPQ X. These topics can be introduced as questions such as:

Visualforce and custom flows

How do custom Visualforce pages, wizard steps, or guided flows map into the new single page model in CPQ X, and what patterns are recommended for recreating them with the Extensibility Framework, JavaScript hooks, and sidebar components?

Legacy JavaScript

What is the suggested pathway for customers who rely on Product Selector JavaScript Plugins or other legacy JS behaviours, and how should they approach reworking these into Custom Action Plugins?

Rule logic

How does the change from zChargeGroup to the QPlan structure affect any existing custom rule actions, and what refactoring guidance or tooling is available to ease the transition?

Apex triggers and save behaviour

Since CPQ X holds quote state in browser memory until the final save, how should customers adapt existing Apex triggers or automation that currently rely on incremental saves throughout the wizard?

Data model

How do new objects such as Charge Segment and new behaviours like Store Existing Products change the shape of downstream data, reporting, and integrations, and what patterns does Zuora recommend for finance teams and integrations that currently depend on the legacy Quote Rate Plan Charge structure?

Sales processes

Given the move away from multi step guided wizards, how should customers rethink sales rep workflow, approvals, and mid process

The Strategic Question You Should Ask First

Here's the thing: if you're going to invest that level of effort essentially rebuilding your CPQ, shouldn't you evaluate whether Zuora CPQ X is still the right tool for where your business is heading?

Consider these questions:

Has your business model evolved beyond single-channel sales? Most SaaS companies today operate with hybrid sales models—mixing traditional sales-led deals with product-led growth (self-service signups, trials converting to paid) and partner channels. Legacy CPQ tools, including Zuora CPQ X, are primarily designed for direct sales reps working inside Salesforce. If a customer starts with a self-serve plan on your website and then needs a custom quote from sales for an upgrade, can your CPQ handle that handoff seamlessly? If not, you'll face ongoing friction as these hybrid motions become more common. Upgrading Zuora CPQ will improve the Salesforce experience, but it fundamentally doesn't solve cross-channel quoting.

Are you locked into a single billing platform? Zuora CPQ is tightly coupled with Zuora Billing, which works beautifully if that's your only system. But what if you use Stripe for self-serve checkouts and Zuora for complex B2B subscriptions? What if you're considering adding new billing systems or acquiring companies with different infrastructure? Traditional CPQ solutions force you into their ecosystem—Salesforce CPQ pushes you toward Salesforce Billing, Oracle CPQ toward Oracle billing, and so on. When you think about your next three to five years, will you need flexibility across multiple monetization platforms? Zuora CPQ X won't give you that.

How agile do you need to be? Modern revenue operations increasingly demands rapid iteration—launching new pricing models, testing bundling strategies, enabling flash sales or usage-based pricing with minimal development time. If every major change requires months of CPQ customization work or waiting for vendor updates, that friction slows your entire revenue engine. Will Zuora CPQ X enable the agility you need, or will you continue fighting the tool every time your go-to-market strategy evolves?

Who needs to use your quoting system? If you have growing channel sales, how will partners create quotes? CPQ X is designed for internal Salesforce users—exposing it to partners requires Experience Cloud plus extensive customization. If user adoption has been a challenge (sales reps reverting to spreadsheets because the tool is cumbersome), will the new interface actually solve that, or do you need to rethink the entire user experience?

The Alternative: Omnichannel CPQ

Instead of investing six to twelve months rebuilding legacy functionality in a new UI that still fundamentally operates on a single-channel model, consider whether an omnichannel CPQ platform might better serve your business - especially if you're already undertaking a major reimplementation effort.

Limio for Salesforce represents a different approach. Rather than upgrading within the Zuora ecosystem, Limio provides a unified platform for managing quotes and orders across all channels - direct sales inside Salesforce, self-service e-commerce on your website, partner portals, and more. The platform maintains one central product catalog and pricing engine feeding every channel, ensuring consistency regardless of where deals originate.

The key difference from a strategic perspective is that Limio works alongside your existing billing infrastructure rather than replacing it. You don't abandon Zuora Billing - Limio integrates with Zuora (as well as Salesforce, Stripe, and other systems) to push orders and subscriptions through established workflows. This means you can modernize your quoting experience and add omnichannel capabilities while keeping all your invoicing, revenue recognition, and financial processes in Zuora exactly as they are. It's a "no rip and replace" approach that overlays new capabilities on your existing foundation.

For organizations operating hybrid sales-led and product-led growth motions, this architecture makes particular sense. Limio enables scenarios like a sales rep creating a quote in Salesforce that generates a checkout link for the customer to complete purchase online, or a customer selecting a plan on your website that creates a draft quote for sales to review and upsell. This two-way flow across channels is difficult to impossible with traditional single-channel CPQ tools, but it's core functionality in an omnichannel platform.

The platform also positions itself as low-code for launching new pricing, packages, or promotional offers quickly—deploying changes across storefront and Salesforce simultaneously without extensive development work. If agility matters for your revenue operations, this can significantly reduce the operational burden compared to implementing complex pricing schemes in traditional CPQ systems.

Additionally, Limio includes partner portal capabilities out of the box. If channel sales are part of your growth strategy, partners can self-serve quotes and orders under your pricing controls—functionality you'd need to custom-build with Zuora CPQ X.

Making the Decision

You have two paths forward:

Path 1: Upgrade to Zuora CPQ X. This makes sense if you're fully committed to the Zuora ecosystem, operate primarily through direct sales in Salesforce, and simply need a better user interface. You'll invest significant time and resources reimplementing your customizations, but you'll stay within a familiar vendor relationship. Just be realistic about the timeline and effort required - this isn't a simple upgrade, it's a project requiring IT, Sales Operations, Finance, and RevOps coordination over many months.

Path 2: Evaluate omnichannel alternatives. If you're already facing a major reimplementation effort, this is your opportunity to ask whether a different approach might better support your business for the next three to five years. Particularly if you operate hybrid sales models, need cross-channel flexibility, or want to avoid billing platform lock-in, exploring tools like Limio could give you more strategic flexibility with comparable or less implementation effort than the CPQ X upgrade.

Many organizations at this inflection point choose to run parallel pilots—testing an omnichannel solution for new digital sales motions while maintaining their existing CPQ for established processes—before making a final decision. This allows you to evaluate alternatives with real usage data rather than theoretical comparisons.

The critical insight is this: upgrading your CPQ is a strategic decision, not just a technical project. Use this moment to ensure whatever path you choose aligns with where your business is heading, not just where it's been. Whether that's Zuora CPQ X or an alternative like Limio, make the choice deliberately based on your company's strategy for sales channels, customer experience, and operational agility.

The worst outcome would be investing six to twelve months upgrading to CPQ X only to discover two years later that you still can't support the hybrid sales motions or cross-channel flexibility your business needs—and facing another major CPQ project. Choose wisely now.

Ready to explore your options? For the CPQ X route, start with Zuora's official documentation and engage their professional services team. For an omnichannel evaluation, reach out to Limio for a demo showing how their platform might overlay with your current Salesforce and Zuora setup. Some organizations even pilot both approaches before committing—there's no rule saying you must decide today. What matters is making an informed choice aligned with your business strategy.