Conga CPQ vs. VanillaSoft

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Conga CPQ
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Conga CPQ empowers sales, partners, and customers to efficiently configure complex products and services offerings, and provide personalized prices and quotes, utilizing codified product and pricing information - to drive higher win rates and a more pleasurable buying experience. Conga CPQ also helps to maintain a single price book, discounting structure, and quoting structure across all channels. With an API-first approach, configuration, pricing, or quoting capabilities that can…
$35
per month per user
VanillaSoft
Score 4.9 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
VanillaSoft is a lead optimization platform designed to assist fast-response sales teams in maximizing their conversion rates. By providing a structured and efficient approach to lead management, VanillaSoft aims to ensure that every potential customer receives the attention they deserve. This platform is beneficial for sales teams that operate in high-pressure environments where timely follow-ups can significantly impact sales outcomes. The primary audience for VanillaSoft…N/A
Pricing
Conga CPQVanillaSoft
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Conga CPQVanillaSoft
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsVanillaSoft offers several add-ons to use in conjunction with our base platforms including: Auto Dialing Call Recording VoIP SmartCaller ID SMS
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Conga CPQVanillaSoft
Features
Conga CPQVanillaSoft
CPQ
Comparison of CPQ features of Product A and Product B
Conga CPQ
8.0
56 Ratings
10% below category average
VanillaSoft
-
Ratings
Quote sharing/sending8.454 Ratings00 Ratings
Product configuration8.753 Ratings00 Ratings
Configuration options8.454 Ratings00 Ratings
Pricing rules8.052 Ratings00 Ratings
Price adjustment8.652 Ratings00 Ratings
Purchase history and open contracts6.945 Ratings00 Ratings
Guided selling/Sales portal7.539 Ratings00 Ratings
CPQ reporting & analytics6.047 Ratings00 Ratings
CPQ-CRM integration8.850 Ratings00 Ratings
Attachments to quotes8.850 Ratings00 Ratings
Order capturing8.125 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Conga CPQVanillaSoft
Small Businesses
QuoteWerks
QuoteWerks
Score 9.9 out of 10
Salesmate
Salesmate
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
QuoteWerks
QuoteWerks
Score 9.9 out of 10
HubSpot Sales Hub
HubSpot Sales Hub
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP Sales Cloud
SAP Sales Cloud
Score 8.5 out of 10
Outreach
Outreach
Score 8.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Conga CPQVanillaSoft
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(70 ratings)
8.3
(88 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.8
(9 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(3 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
6.0
(4 ratings)
8.9
(3 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Online Training
7.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
1.0
(3 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Conga CPQVanillaSoft
Likelihood to Recommend
Conga
Conga CPQ is flexible in the price setup. We achieve a lot of customized pricing setups using CPQ. Usage flowing into billing works well also. The Conga cart is a huge painpoint for us. We bill each route and trip we run individually so we have a very large amount of manual, complex cart configuration.
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VanillaSoft
VanillaSoft is well suited for any marketing operations or sales operations team looking for a tool to help them efficiently reach prospects and engage with them through a streamlined method. This can be a great way to manage that engagement, measure it, and keep track of various aspects of prospects.
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Pros
Conga
  • The perceived power strength is that it is supposed to contain CPQ, Contract Management, Document generation and template manipulation, and cash/invoice process all in one wrapped package.
  • It was developed on the Force.com platform.
  • They provide multiple releases of their product per year.
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VanillaSoft
  • Our employees love it - very user friendly, easy to grasp, very little down time to learn it. They feel very confident immediately.
  • Great technical support - I can get solutions to customer problems that make our company look more responsive to our clients. Our clients appreciate our solving their problems immediately.
  • Because of the real time analytics - we can address immediate issues with marketing campaigns to make our client's personnel look great to their superiors.
  • Because of all the functionality - we can provide a turnkey approach from a small company with big company capabilities.
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Cons
Conga
  • Our number one complaint with Conga CPQ has been speed. In my experience, Conga CPQ is extremely slow, especially for large orders.
  • In my opinion, the configuration methods of Conga CPQ are outdated and error-prone. One literally puts configurations into string-based custom settings, including the API field names. This often leads to deployment issues and run-time configuration errors.
  • In my experience, Conga CPQ is everything but simple to develop. You need things like a 12-step pricing callback to support custom pricing.
  • In my experience, Conga CPQ support is not responsive.
  • When it comes time to lock in a renewal contract for Conga CPQ, in my experience, they delay engagement, so you are truly behind the 8 ball when it comes time to decide if you are going to continue with Conga CPQ.
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VanillaSoft
  • It really needs an "undo" button. I can't tell you how many times I was typing notes etc and hit a wrong button and all was gone so I had to start over.
  • This may be the way we have it set up....we have term codes which are how the callers terminate a call they were on. They finish the call, then type notes in the notepad section of what happened, then they terminate the call. But there are times that I need to go onto a record and just leave a note but don't need to terminate it as anything. If there is a way to do that, it would make my life a lot easier.
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Likelihood to Renew
Conga
The rating is based on several things: 1) Ongoing support requirements being able to be addressed by cross training existing Salesforce administrators 2) Apttus superior corporate vision for the quote to cash space 3) Apttus execution of the corporate vision with automated agents (Max), and Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning offerings to leverage the investment in Configure Price Quote 4) Apttus corporate health and investment in the product line
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VanillaSoft
We have no reason not to renew. VanillaSoft has been the best CRM (for us) that we have ever used. The value is great, we love the system, and it's easy to get assistance from VanillaSoft team when needed. Our team is so used to the calling and admin functions there is no desire to change.
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Usability
Conga
Conga CPQ is a great tool but lacks good support and [a] very limited knowledge base which doesn't include day to day errors which users face, thus leading us to support and take more time in turn. Also cart performance can be improved drastically which will enhance the user experience as the user doesn't have to wait for the pricing.
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VanillaSoft
The entire system is set up so perfectly. It makes training callers much quicker, and admin tools are so easy to navigate when you get used to using it. Also, if there is ever something I cannot figure out, I can get support from VanillaSoft very quickly to resolve and get my task accomplished.
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Reliability and Availability
Conga
I have not heard of any issue
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VanillaSoft
It is very rare that we have system issues. Maybe a handful of times over the years, we had to contact support about being unable to access. It was always a quick response from the VanillaSoft team, and they would clearly explain the issue and usually give time frame on fixing, or have it fixed immediately.
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Performance
Conga
No answers on this topic
VanillaSoft
I work on all aspects for VanillaSoft for our company. The pages overall do load very quickly. Reports are amazing, I can get quick report, customized reports, and anything I may need to present to client in very little time. It has made my job so much simpler. As far as I know, integration goes smoothly as well.
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Support Rating
Conga
Tier1/tier 2 support can only handle native functionality. Customizations have to be escalated to developers which aren’t included in the support program.

I go ahead and copy the people I directly worked with on implementation for assistance. I would rate them an 8 for support assistance.
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VanillaSoft
Response time was acceptable for the relatively few problems any of our users may have encountered. Fortunately, such occasions were rare.
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In-Person Training
Conga
No answers on this topic
VanillaSoft
It was very helpful and informative. The learning of the tool is something anyone can do, as the setup is so well thought out.
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Online Training
Conga
We attended 5 hours worth of webinars early on.

We had to understand how objects worked to figure out how to structure our data.

I would have liked more in-depth training but it would have been an additional cost
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VanillaSoft
It was very thorough. VanillaSoft team did not rush us. They explained the various functions clearly and were open to any and all questions we had as we began to learn the system. Also, once training completed, if we encountered anything we could not figure out, the support team was fantastic in helping us out.
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Implementation Rating
Conga
Be iterative. Take the opportunity to build a catalog based on how Apttus works well. Learn the tool yourself or use an SI. Take the time to build a configuration / pricing migration tool with X-Author for Excel or roll your own. Stick with OOTB Apttus as any customization will cost you every time a new version is released
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VanillaSoft
Our implementation was very easy.
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Alternatives Considered
Conga
We selected Apttus CPQ over SteelBrick due to the simplicity of SteelBrick's out of the box pricing and ability to customize quoted products. As a global organization with selling a highly configurable products, we felt the ability of Apttus to handle our requirements as standard functionalty rather than a customization was a material difference between the platforms.
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VanillaSoft
VanillaSoft stacks up against Microsoft Power BI very well by allowing the data visualization in a more effective way, Power BI has positioned itself as one of the more robust and intuitive tools for business intelligence and data presentation. VanillaSoft and Microsoft Power BI are a great bundle for the report and analytics team.
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Scalability
Conga
No answers on this topic
VanillaSoft
VanillaSoft has been great. The flexibility of the system is wonderful. The scalable software options are impressive as well. I would strongly support VanillaSoft's capabilities in this area. You really can do just about anything to get the setup and or integrations you may desire for your company needs.
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Return on Investment
Conga
  • The ability to generate engineered configurations that is right by construction has reduced the cycle time of the customer engagement. The fact that we are able to guide the process and end up with a validated bill of material reduces the iterations with the customers.
  • As long as the validations rules are correct the generated bill of material is accurate. We are now looking at using Apttus to perform quality checks in our product rules since the tool is able to test different configurations quickly and efficiently.
  • Configuration that use to take weeks and consumed valuable engineering resources has been transformed to become a customer facing application that is simple enough for customer to self-service.
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VanillaSoft
  • Ability to contact more clients each day.
  • The ability to save my correspondence and notes on each interaction allowing for the appearance to the customer that I am very engaged when we are speaking.
  • Increased sales from the calendar setting and saving my notes.
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ScreenShots

Conga CPQ Screenshots

Screenshot of Unlimited Product Capability - Can validate any combination of rules & constraints with an unlimited number of configuration attributes​.Screenshot of Model & deploy any pricing structure or strategy​ - pricing intelligence & discounting rules​ and profitability insights ​& margin visibility​Screenshot of Simple to complex product & pricing configurations​Screenshot of Helps sellers to quote accurately and spend less time selling, no matter how complex a business becomes.

VanillaSoft Screenshots

Screenshot of the VanillaSoft Call Activity Dashboard, used to to monitor sales campaigns.Screenshot of where to build reports using the VanillaSoft Web Reports Wizard.Screenshot of where VanillaSoft offers the ability to arrange modules into four panels for access to almost everything in one screen.Screenshot of VanillaSoft's caller screens, which can be displayed in three panels.