Who are Combeenation?

If you sell complex, highly configurable products, whether that is industrial machinery, modular furniture, or made to measure garages and carports, the quoting process can quietly become one of the biggest drags on your sales team. Combeenation is an Austrian configure price quote, or CPQ, specialist built specifically to solve that problem for manufacturers and distributors with deep product complexity. For buyers comparing CPQ vendors, understanding how Combeenation's approach differs from the larger, more generic platforms on the market is a useful place to start.

Viewpoint Analysis is a Technology Matchmaker, helping businesses to quickly find and select new enterprise technology. Our aim is to be the place enterprise buyers go to understand the software and technology market before speaking to vendors. Read on to learn more about Combeenation.

Who Are Combeenation?

Combeenation was founded by Klaus Pilsl, who began building product configurators well over a decade before the company itself was established, and who remains closely involved in the business today. The company is headquartered in Neufelden, in Upper Austria, and operates as Combeenation GmbH.

The company has more than sixteen years of experience in the configurator and CPQ space, having grown from a founding team of four to a team of more than twenty five people. Combeenation positions itself firmly as a specialist for small and mid sized manufacturers, rather than chasing the largest global enterprise accounts that the biggest CPQ platforms tend to target.

The business has built a reputation in German speaking markets in particular, working with manufacturers across mechanical engineering, furniture, construction, medical technology and component manufacturing, while also serving customers more broadly across Europe. Combeenation won the Upper Austria State Prize for Innovation in 2016, recognition of its early work in configurator technology, and the company has continued to build out partnerships with platforms commonly used alongside CPQ, including Shopware for ecommerce and Pimcore for product information management.

What Does Combeenation Do?

Combeenation provides a configure price quote platform that lets manufacturers of complex, highly variant products take the entire sales configuration process out of spreadsheets and disconnected internal tools and put it into a single, rules driven system. At the centre of the platform is a configurator that maps the complete logic of a product, including every dependency between components, so that only technically valid combinations can ever be selected, whether by an internal sales team, a distributor, or an end customer configuring directly online.

That configuration logic feeds directly into automated, rule based pricing, which recalculates in real time as a buyer adjusts their selection, taking into account user specific price lists, discount structures and currency requirements. The result then flows into quote generation, producing a complete, branded document at the touch of a button, often alongside supporting outputs such as parts lists, technical drawings and production documents. Buyers researching the wider CRM Technology market will recognise CPQ as one of the more specialised, deeply technical corners of the sales technology stack.

A distinguishing feature of Combeenation's approach is the deliberate separation of product data from product logic. Item master data, pricing and imagery can be maintained and updated independently of the underlying rules that govern how a product can be configured, which the company argues significantly reduces the ongoing maintenance burden compared with systems where logic and data are tightly intertwined. Combeenation also positions itself as system independent, with the platform designed to integrate with a customer's existing ERP, CRM, PIM or ecommerce systems through APIs rather than requiring a wholesale replacement of the surrounding technology stack.

Implementation is typically delivered as a full service engagement. Rather than handing customers a self service tool and leaving them to map their own product logic, Combeenation's team works through analysis, product tree mapping, interface design, system integration and technical build, with the stated aim of delivering a working CPQ system rather than a long, open ended configuration project.

Visualisation is treated as a core part of the offer rather than a cosmetic extra. Combeenation's configurators render selections as real time 2D and 3D models, and in some implementations augmented reality, so that both the sales team and the end customer can see exactly what a configured product will look like before a quote is finalised. The platform also supports guided selling, walking less experienced users step by step through a configuration so that even highly technical products can be quoted by people without deep product knowledge, which Combeenation positions as a way to reduce dependency on a small number of specialist staff.

Combeenation Technology Areas

Combeenation's platform is built around four connected capability areas, all sitting on the same underlying product logic and data layer.

• 3D Configurator. Interactive, rules based configuration of modular products, with real time 2D and 3D visualisation so only valid combinations can ever be selected.

  
  

• Price Management. Automated, rule based pricing that recalculates in real time as a configuration changes, including individual discount and price logic by user group.

  
  

• Offer Management. One click generation of complete, branded quotation documents, parts lists, technical drawings and production documents from a finished configuration.

  
  

• Distributor Management. Role based access for dealers and distribution partners, with tailored pricing, discounts and permissions for each distinct sales channel.

These four areas are not sold as standalone modules in the way some larger platforms package their CPQ capability. They are built on a single shared product logic and data layer, which is part of why Combeenation can offer version control with rollback on configuration changes, and why the company argues its platform scales to millions of product variants without the maintenance burden growing in proportion.

Buyers wanting a wider view of how these capabilities compare with the rest of the sales technology market can explore the Viewpoint Analysis CRM Technology page.

Combeenation Alternatives

CPQ is a well-established category (learn more about it in our What is CPQ Software blog post), and Combeenation sits alongside both large enterprise platforms and other specialist configurator vendors. The right comparison for any given buyer tends to depend heavily on company size, the complexity of the product range, and whether CPQ needs to plug into a wider CRM suite the organisation already runs. Buyers already committed to a major CRM platform will often start their evaluation there, while manufacturers with deeply technical, highly variant products may find more value comparing specialist configurator vendors against each other first.

Salesforce CPQ. Tightly integrated with Salesforce's CRM and Revenue Cloud products, this is a natural fit for organisations already standardised on Salesforce, though it can require significant configuration effort to handle deep, engineering level product complexity in the way Combeenation does.

Oracle CPQ. A strong option for large enterprises already running Oracle's wider CX and ERP suite, Oracle CPQ offers considerable breadth but is generally aimed at bigger organisations than Combeenation's typical mid market manufacturing customer.

SAP CPQ. Best suited to businesses already invested in the SAP ecosystem, SAP CPQ benefits from deep ERP integration but, like the other large suite vendors, tends to come with a heavier implementation footprint than a specialist platform.

Tacton. A close comparison in terms of specialism, Tacton focuses on configuration for complex engineered products and is often considered alongside Combeenation by manufacturers with very high product variance, though it typically targets larger enterprise accounts.

Configit. Another configuration specialist with strength in modelling extremely large and complex variant spaces, Configit is frequently evaluated by automotive and industrial manufacturers alongside Combeenation.

If you want to look at the key CPQ software options, take a look at our latest CPQ Software Options 2026 blog.

If you are exploring the CPQ and sales configuration market and want to understand who else you should be considering alongside Combeenation, the Viewpoint Analysis Longlist Builder is a good place to start. Answer a few questions about your requirements and we will come back with a comprehensive report covering all the vendors worth considering for your shortlist.

Combeenation Customer Examples

Combeenation publishes a range of detailed case studies on its own website, almost all drawn from manufacturers of physically complex, highly configurable products. Reported outcomes across these case studies commonly include large reductions in the time needed to prepare a quotation and a significant drop in quoting errors, which the company attributes to moving product logic out of spreadsheets and into a single, governed system. The examples below give a sense of how different customers are using the platform in practice.

KEBA Industrial Automation, a global automation business with around 2,000 employees across 16 countries, replaced an internal Excel based configurator with Combeenation's platform for its drive controller range, reporting significantly faster quotation creation and far fewer misunderstandings in the quoting process.

BBQ Kitchen, a manufacturer of modular outdoor kitchens compatible with popular barbecue ranges, uses Combeenation to manage a product line with over a billion possible variant combinations, reporting major time savings and a sharp reduction in quotation errors.

Easycarport, a German manufacturer of carports and canopies, moved away from a rigid, variant by variant configuration model to a fully modular logic built on Combeenation, with the configurator now feeding directly into its merchandise management system.

Lehner Tore, a manufacturer of garage and industrial doors, uses Combeenation to let distributors configure and price products themselves, removing a significant volume of manual queries that previously had to be handled directly by the company.

Suggested Next Steps

Further reading. If you want to understand more about the CPQ area, take a look at our What is CPQ Software overview and our CPQ Software Options 2026 guide.

Build your initial longlist. Not sure who else you should be considering alongside Combeenation? The Viewpoint Analysis Longlist Builder asks you a few questions about your organisation and requirements, and we come back with a comprehensive report covering all the vendors worth putting on your list. It is a straightforward way to make sure you are not missing a strong option before you start shortlisting.

Run a quick selection process. If you are ready to move to a formal evaluation, the Viewpoint Analysis 30-Day Technology Selection service takes you from a standing start to a preferred vendor decision in a single month. It combines the best of our Rapid RFI and Rapid RFP processes, and we run the whole thing for you, writing the brief, managing vendor engagement, and guiding your team to a scored, defensible decision.

Speak to Viewpoint Analysis. If you would like to talk through your requirement and understand how we can help, request a call and one of our team will be in touch.