How to integrate Zuora and Salesforce

Managing subscriptions at scale is complex - handling recurring payments, cancellations, upgrades, and invoicing becomes exponentially challenging as your subscriber base grows. When using Salesforce alongside Zuora's subscription billing platform, integration is crucial for empowering your Go-To-Market and customer facing teams, such as sales, service, and success teams, to manage subscribers efficiently. This guide explores your integration approaches.

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Introduction

Zuora is a powerful billing tool designed for back-end finance teams to handle subscription billing and payments. However, to truly serve customers well, you need to manage all customer objects—orders, quotes, new orders, upgrades, renewals, and cancellations—in your CRM where front-line, customer-facing teams work. By integrating Zuora with Salesforce (the world's #1 CRM), you enable sales, service, and success teams to seamlessly serve customers without switching between systems.

This article covers three ways to integrate Zuora with Salesforce, including implementation details for teams operating in high-velocity environments.

Zuora

Zuora is a cloud-based platform specializing in subscription billing, revenue, and finance solutions. It enables businesses to manage recurring billing, payment processing, and automated subscription services throughout the customer lifecycle.

Key features of Zuora Billing:

  • Flexible Subscription Pricing and Packaging: One-time charges, recurring fees, usage-based pricing, and tiered rates
  • Automated Billing Operations: Recurring billing cycles, invoice generation, and payment collections
  • Diverse Payment Methods and Gateways: Credit/debit cards, bank transfers, PayPal, and integration with multiple payment gateways for global transactions

Learn more about Zuora

Salesforce

Salesforce provides comprehensive CRM solutions through Agentforce Sales and Agentforce Service, both running on the same platform with a shared data model built around Accounts and Contacts.

Agentforce Sales: Empowering Sales Teams

Agentforce Sales centralizes customer information, enabling organizations to manage the entire sales lifecycle from prospecting to closing.

Key features:

  • Lead and Opportunity Management: Track leads through the pipeline and convert them into opportunities
  • Forecasting and Reporting: Accurate sales forecasts with real-time dashboards and reports
  • AI-Powered Insights: Einstein AI prioritizes leads and identifies upsell/cross-sell opportunities
  • Collaboration Tools: Integration with Slack and other apps for team alignment
  • Mobile Productivity: Access CRM data on the go

When integrated with Zuora, sales teams should be able to seamlessly create quotes and orders for new subscriptions, renewals, and upgrades.

Agentforce Service: Elevating Customer Support

Agentforce Service streamlines customer support operations with full visibility into sales interactions, ensuring continuity across the customer journey.

Key features:

  • Fast Case Handling: Automated routing, knowledge base access, and streamlined workflows
  • 360-Degree Customer View: Complete insight into customer histories, preferences, and transactions
  • Omnichannel Engagement: Seamless interactions across phone, email, chat, messaging, and social channels
  • AI and Automation: Einstein AI surfaces insights, suggests responses, and automates repetitive tasks
  • AppExchange Ecosystem: Thousands of pre-built apps and integrations for industry-specific needs

When connected with Zuora, agents should be able to manage subscription-related inquiries—billing questions, plan changes, or cancellations—ensuring smooth service experiences.

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3 Integration Options

Important note: The Zuora Connector for Salesforce CRM (replacing Zuora 360 and 360+) is a free, uni-directional sync that brings Zuora billing data into Salesforce for viewing. However, it's read-only and doesn't enable sales or service teams to take action from Salesforce. They cannot create or modify subscriptions from Salesforce. While useful for visibility, it doesn't fulfill the core use case of empowering Go-To-Market teams to manage subscriptions.

For actionable integrations, consider the following three options:

1. Zuora CPQ X (Bi-directional sync for sales)

Zuora's Salesforce-native Lightning tool supporting the full quote-to-cash process for subscription businesses. It works particularly well for companies that are primarily sales-led growth (SLG) or sell very bespoke enterprise deals.

Key characteristics:

  • Bi-directional sync between Salesforce and Zuora
  • Configure and customize subscription terns flexibly
  • Create and update quotes and subscriptions, pushing them to Zuora
  • Supports the full lifecyle from new deals, upsells, cross sells, torenewals
  • Paid add-on delivered via Salesforce Managed Package

2. Custom-build CPQ and workflows in Salesforce, integrating manually with Zuora APIs

You can also build your own CPQ or subscription workflows in Salesforce and manually integrate with Zuora via its REST APIs, either directly or through middleware like Mulesoft. This gives you full control over quoting, contracting, and subscription changes while keeping Zuora as the billing system of record.

Pros:

  • Complete flexibility to match your unique business logic
  • Can use Salesforce-native tools such as Flow or Apex
  • Enables integration with other systems via middleware

Cons:

  • High development and maintenance effort
  • Complex data synchronisation and error handling
  • Requires strong Salesforce and integration expertise

This route suits teams with solid technical resources and highly customised processes.

3. Limio for Salesforce (Omnichannel CPQ for sales & customer service)

Limio is an omnichannel commerce solution integrating Salesforce and Zuora to empower customer service, success, and sales teams in B2C and B2B environments to quote and sell. It works particularly well alongside a PLG and/or Partner channel, and for high-velocity sales and customer success teams.

Key characteristics:

  • Configure, price, quote, and manage subscriptions directly within Salesforce
  • Omnichannel architecture: Agents initiate quotes in Salesforce, customers complete online via Limio Commerce storefront or agents can take over an online quote and finish it in Salesforce.
  • Real-time sync across systems
  • Manage renewals, upgrades, cancellations, and in-life changes
  • Paid Salesforce Managed Package with no-code/low-code Salesforce Flows and Lightning Web Components

Learn more about Limio for Salesforce

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Benefits of Limio for Salesforce

Omnichannel commerce that adapts your sales model
Blend online, service-assisted, partner-led, and AI-powered journeys into one unified subscription commerce engine. Agents in Salesforce can start or hand off orders and quotes to customers with real-time sync across systems.

Lightning-native, low-code workflows
Built with Lightning Flows, Lightning Web Components, and Salesforce Platform Events, Limio for Salesforce empower Salesforce admin teams to manage orders, quotes, pricing, and subscription changes with intuitive workflows - no engineering required.

Configurable quoting, pricing and packaging
Enable teams to build and configure quotes, bundle offers, apply promotions or retention discounts, and manage packaging in real time with accurate pricing for new business, upgrades, or save offers.

Error-proof operations and unified visibility
Guided, scripted UI ensures correct data capture and tracking—from payments to provisioning and entitlements—with real-time order feedback and full lifecycle traceability.

Visual timeline of the subscriber journey
See every touchpoint in a customer's subscription lifecycle—quotes, changes, payments, cancellations—through a unified visual timeline embedded in Salesforce for faster, more informed interactions.

Setup Steps: Zuora Salesforce Integration with Limio for Salesforce

Step 1: Install Limio for Salesforce App

  1. Log in to your Salesforce account
  2. Visit Limio for Salesforce on AppExchange
  3. Click "Get it now" to contact Limio
  4. Limio provides an install link
  5. When prompted, select "Install for All Users"

Step 2: Configure Limio and Zuora Account

Connect Limio for Salesforce to your Limio Commerce application by setting up:

  1. Enable Salesforce integration in Limio: Go to Settings → Integration → Salesforce, select your Salesforce environment, and enable access.
  2. Set up an Authentication Provider: Use your credentials from Limio to create an OpenID Connect Authentication Provider in Salesforce.
  3. Create Named Credentials for Limio and Zuora: In Salesforce, set up secure connections for both systems.
    • For Limio, create or update the limio_new Named Credential, link it to the Authentication Provider, authenticate using your Limio login, and enable it in Custom Settings.
    • For Zuora, open the Zuora External Credential, add your Zuora username and password as authentication parameters, and update the Named Credential reference to i42as__ZuoraRest_V3.
  4. Configure integration preferences: Adjust options such as account sync, duplicate handling, and Platform Events or Flows to match your processes.

This ensures secure and efficient connection between Limio for Salesforce and Limio Commerce for omnichannel commerce.

Conclusion

When integrating Zuora with Salesforce, you have several paths to choose from. Free tools like the Zuora Connector provide basic, read-only visibility. Zuora CPQ X delivers bi-directional, sales-focused workflows for quoting and orders. Custom-built solutions let you design CPQ and subscription workflows directly in Salesforce, integrating manually with Zuora via APIs or middleware such as Mulesoft - offering full flexibility but at higher development and maintenance cost.

For a truly native, omnichannel experience that unifies direct sales, customer service, partner, and self-serve journeys, Limio for Salesforce stands out. Built with omnichannel in mind, it allows teams to manage quoting, packaging, pricing, ordering, and in-life subscription changes across both B2B and B2C, all without code. Whether a transaction starts with a rep, a partner, a self-serve site, or an AI assistant, Limio keeps everything unified and visible in Salesforce in real time.

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