The Salesforce billing challenge
Salesforce's revenue management centers on Sales Cloud for CRM, CPQ for quote generation, and Salesforce Billing for invoicing. While this integrated approach works for basic use cases, limitations emerge as businesses scale.
Implementation complexity
Salesforce CPQ and Billing implementations typically take 3–6 months and require specialized consultants. Simple pricing changes often require significant development work, tying up resources.
Pricing model limitations
While Salesforce CPQ handles traditional subscriptions well, usage-based pricing requires extensive customization. Hybrid structures combining subscriptions with usage components, prepaid credits, and tiered consumption push CPQ's capabilities to their limits.
Real-time metering gaps
Salesforce wasn't built for raw usage events streaming at high volume. Collecting usage data requires custom development. The lack of native metering means businesses invest heavily in custom solutions or accept delays between usage and billing visibility.
Operational overhead
What works for 50 customers becomes untenable at 500. Manual interventions for billing exceptions, custom pricing, and amendments compound as the customer base grows.
Enter Hyperline: modern revenue management
Founded in Paris in 2022 by Lucas Bédout and Clément Garbay, former engineering leaders at Spendesk, Hyperline was built specifically to solve billing complexities that modern B2B SaaS companies face.
The platform has raised €13.6 million from Index Ventures and now serves over 150 technology businesses worldwide, with customers generating from €3 million to over €100 million in annual revenue.
Hyperline embeds advanced billing functionality directly within the Salesforce environment through deep native integration.
The Hyperline–Salesforce integration
Hyperline delivers bidirectional synchronization of customers, quotes, subscriptions, and invoices with Salesforce. Dedicated components embed directly into Salesforce pages, allowing teams to create quotes, manage subscriptions, and access invoices without leaving their CRM.
Recent updates expanded synchronization to include detailed quote information with line items, subscription data with full product configurations, and comprehensive invoice details. This two-way real-time sync ensures data consistency without manual reconciliation.
Where Hyperline surpasses Salesforce native billing
1. Rapid implementation
While Salesforce CPQ and Billing implementations require 3–6 months, Hyperline customers go live in under one week. The platform's intuitive interface allows non-technical teams to set up products and configure pricing without engineering support.
“Transitioning to Hyperline has provided us with a much simpler, more efficient, and tailored billing experience. It allowed us to embark on a billing journey with much greater peace of mind.”
2. Usage-based pricing as core
Unlike Salesforce Billing, which treats usage as an add-on, Hyperline was built usage-native. The platform ingests raw usage data through database connectors, API calls, or CSV files, then runs calculations automatically.
Companies connect directly to PostgreSQL, MongoDB, BigQuery, or Snowflake for automated tracking. The events pipeline processes millions of usage signals with sub-second latency, ensuring accurate pricing.
Real-time consumption dashboards provide visibility into usage patterns, reducing billing disputes and identifying expansion opportunities.
3. Pricing flexibility without custom code
Hyperline natively handles flat fees, per-seat licensing, usage-based billing, tiered pricing (volume-based, graduated), prepaid credits, and hybrid combinations—all within a single platform without requiring Apex code or complex formulas.
“Compared to other platforms, Hyperline made non-tech teams autonomous to manage the entire process, with very fast setup.”
4. Automated revenue recognition
Hyperline automates revenue recognition, ensuring compliance while reducing manual work. The platform breaks down revenue by plan, product, or billing period with real-time dashboards tracking ARR, MRR, and cash flow.
5. Global operations and compliance
Hyperline generates compliant invoices in 100+ countries with templates meeting local regulations. Invoices render in real time in 10+ languages with proper localization.
As an EU-based company, Hyperline handles all client data in accordance with GDPR (SOC 2 certified, ISO 27001 in progress).
6. Payment orchestration
Hyperline acts as a payment orchestrator, providing a unified interface for Stripe, Mollie, GoCardless, Airwallex, and other processors.
Smart retry logic for failed payments and automated dunning management reduce involuntary churn.
7. Operational efficiency at scale
Hyperline reduces billing operations time by up to 90%, transforming work that consumed 2–3 days per month into just a few hours.
“We used to have a weekly billing review with my finance team, but Hyperline made it totally useless.”
CPQ in Hyperline
Hyperline CPQ offers native one-click integration with Salesforce, embedding quote creation directly in the CRM. Sales teams build quotes containing subscription configurations, usage components, and custom pricing in seconds.
E-signature and payment collection are embedded directly in proposals. Quotes automatically convert to active subscriptions with invoicing, payment collection, and revenue recognition fully automated.
When Salesforce users should consider Hyperline
Salesforce's native tools work well for businesses with simple subscriptions, limited product catalogs, and small customer bases. However, several signals indicate outgrown capabilities:
Pricing evolution
Adopting usage-based components, implementing prepaid credits, offering tiered pricing with multiple variables, supporting hybrid models, or handling complex enterprise contracts.
Operational pain
Finance teams spending excessive time on billing, frequent manual interventions, difficulty scaling billing processes, or engineering resources diverted to billing workarounds.
Revenue operations needs
Requiring automated revenue recognition, needing real-time usage tracking, managing multiple payment providers across regions, supporting international operations with local compliance, or seeking to reduce billing cycle time.
Implementation concerns
Facing 6+ month implementation timelines, requiring specialized consultants for changes, or finding ongoing maintenance demands exceed expectations.
Real customer impact
“As an API business, our pricing model was quite complex and I knew existing billing solutions would come up short and delay our go-to-market. Hyperline has a very short integration process and the ability to pull data directly from our system.”
— Jean-Louis Quéguiner, founder of Gladia
“Switching to Hyperline had a bigger impact than expected, we finally have control over billing from a finance perspective.”
“Compared to other platforms, Hyperline made non-tech teams autonomous to manage the end-to-end billing process, with very fast setup and high flexibility.”
Integration architecture
Hyperline leverages Salesforce's API to maintain bidirectional synchronization. Custom objects in Salesforce store Hyperline data (quotes, subscriptions, invoices), enabling reporting and workflow automation.
For advanced workflows, Hyperline's webhooks can trigger Salesforce Flows. When billing events occur (subscription renewed, payment failed, usage threshold exceeded), Salesforce automatically responds with appropriate actions.
Salesforce remains the system of record for customer relationships and sales processes, while Hyperline serves as the system of record for billing and revenue, with both synchronized automatically.
Strategic considerations
Salesforce customers evaluating billing options face a choice: extend Salesforce despite limitations or integrate a specialized solution.
Extending Salesforce means a unified platform and single vendor but accepting limitations and investing heavily in customization.
Integrating Hyperline means gaining specialized billing capabilities, rapid implementation, and operational efficiency that native tools struggle to deliver.
This best-of-breed approach enables companies to evolve pricing freely, scale billing efficiently, and maintain their CRM investment without compromise.
Looking forward
The B2B SaaS landscape continues evolving toward sophisticated pricing models. Usage-based pricing adoption accelerates as companies align pricing with customer value. Hybrid models become standard.
“The market is crying out for a new kind of monetization platform.”
— Lucas Bédout, CEO of Hyperline
For Salesforce users, this trend presents a decision point: invest heavily in customizing Salesforce Billing, accept pricing limitations, or integrate a specialized platform purpose-built for modern revenue operations.
Key takeaways
Salesforce's CPQ and Billing products deliver value for basic cases, but growing B2B SaaS companies frequently outgrow their capabilities as pricing models evolve.
Hyperline's value for Salesforce users
- Native integration embedding billing within Salesforce
- Implementation in under one week (vs. 3–6 months)
- Usage-based pricing as a core capability
- Support for any pricing model without custom code
- Real-time metering processing millions of events
- Automated revenue recognition and financial reporting
- Global compliance with invoicing in 100+ countries
- Payment orchestration across multiple processors
- 90% reduction in billing time
- No-code configuration enabling revenue team autonomy
For Salesforce customers experiencing billing pain—whether struggling with implementation complexity, seeking pricing flexibility, adopting usage-based models, or spending excessive time on operations—Hyperline offers a proven alternative that complements rather than replaces the CRM investment.
The platform's growth from a handful of early adopters to over 150 customers in 18 months, backed by €13.6 million from Index Ventures, validates both the market need and Hyperline's approach.
As B2B SaaS companies evolve toward sophisticated revenue models, having billing infrastructure that keeps pace isn't just convenient—it’s strategically essential.
Hyperline demonstrates that Salesforce users don’t have to choose between the CRM they rely on and the billing capabilities their business requires.