Drupal vs. Pantheon

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Drupal
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Drupal is a free, open-source content management system written in PHP that competes primarily with Joomla and Plone. The standard release of Drupal, known as Drupal core, contains basic features such as account and menu management, RSS feeds, page layout customization, and system administration.N/A
Pantheon
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Pantheon is a WebOps platform where marketers and developers collaborate to drive results. The vendor states that with Pantheon, site owners maximize their capacity to update website design and functionality, responding to market trends, catering to consumer behavior, and adding real value to the business's bottom line. Today, companies compete on the basis of digital experiences, and the best results emerge from an agile build-test-learn process. Whether it's publishing content,…
$29
per month
Pricing
DrupalPantheon
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Basic
$29
per month
Performance
$114
per month
Elite
Contact for quote
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DrupalPantheon
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
DrupalPantheon
Considered Both Products
Drupal
Chose Drupal
Drupal is head-and-shoulders above WordPress in terms of extensibility and community support, in great part because it is completely open-source. I would recommend it in almost every case over WordPress. (WP is only better if you already know that system well, and your end …
Pantheon
Chose Pantheon
A lot of times, we'll inherit existing environments from client projects and will work with them to not disrupt anything. What I like about Pantheon is that it's a fairly simple setup with a lot of power behind it. It can save hours of setup and admin, and is reliable enough …
Chose Pantheon
We use whatever platform best suits our clients in terms of use-case and pricing, but Pantheon's UI is preferable to our team, and the platform is generally inline with our typical approach of building distributions from an upstream codebase instead of creating and managing a …
Chose Pantheon
When you compare the cost of the product to the value it provides and time to launch - Pantheon wins the race. While Acquia is nice, it is generally a much more expensive hosting environment with not as many built-in features. OpenShift and Amazon Web Services are great if you …
Chose Pantheon
Other than Pantheon I am aware of Aquia. Aquia from the outside appears to have a higher learning curve. Other than that, I am not aware of the pros and cons comparing them.
Chose Pantheon
Acquia is quite an established platform and is a much bigger company than Pantheon. We've been using Acquia for a long time now. But from using both services, I personally like using Pantheon more. It doesn't have a high learning curve. It's easy to configure, install and …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
DrupalPantheon
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Drupal
10.0
65 Ratings
21% above category average
Pantheon
-
Ratings
Role-based user permissions10.065 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Drupal
9.6
62 Ratings
23% above category average
Pantheon
-
Ratings
API9.358 Ratings00 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language10.053 Ratings00 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Drupal
9.5
68 Ratings
22% above category average
Pantheon
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG editor9.361 Ratings00 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness9.366 Ratings00 Ratings
Admin section9.668 Ratings00 Ratings
Page templates9.667 Ratings00 Ratings
Library of website themes8.958 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design10.063 Ratings00 Ratings
Publishing workflow9.367 Ratings00 Ratings
Form generator10.063 Ratings00 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Drupal
9.6
67 Ratings
26% above category average
Pantheon
-
Ratings
Content taxonomy10.063 Ratings00 Ratings
SEO support10.062 Ratings00 Ratings
Bulk management10.059 Ratings00 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions8.961 Ratings00 Ratings
Community / comment management9.361 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
DrupalPantheon
Small Businesses
Divi
Divi
Score 10.0 out of 10
ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
Progress Sitefinity
Progress Sitefinity
Score 8.4 out of 10
Enterprises
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Progress Sitefinity
Progress Sitefinity
Score 8.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
DrupalPantheon
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(77 ratings)
8.0
(68 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(18 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(9 ratings)
9.6
(29 ratings)
Availability
9.7
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.9
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
5.0
(4 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
6.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
5.1
(4 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
DrupalPantheon
Likelihood to Recommend
Drupal.org
Well, I'm definitely biased, I've been working with Drupal for 12+ years, and I can say it's appropriate for any size/scale of a project, whether it's a small catalog website or a huge corporation. If I want to dial it down to a specific use case, Drupal is best what most customers/clients that have high-security standards, and need to have extensive editorial experience and control over their website's architecture. Due to its core design, Drupal can connect with each part of its own and any external third-party resources quite easily. For a less-suited scenario, I might say that if you don't have enough budget to get proper work done, sometimes just using WordPress with a pre-designed theme might sound better to you, but if you have the budget and the time, always go with Drupal
Read full review
Pantheon
Pantheon is excellent for medium-large websites that require high availability and a managed workflow. It would be inappropriate for small websites because of the cost or for situations where more control of the environment is appropriate. We find it useful because we rarely do anything outside of the Drupal application.
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Pros
Drupal.org
  • Content Types... these are amazing. Whereas a more simplistic CMS like Wordpress will basically allow you to make posts and build pages, Drupal 8 gives you the ability to define different types of content that behave differently, and are served up differently in different areas of the website.
  • Extensibility... it scales, ohhhh does it scale. They've really figured out server-side caching, and it makes all the difference. Once a page has been cached, it's available instantly to all users worldwide; and when coupled with AWS, global redundancy and localization mean that no matter where you're accessing the site, it always loads fast and crisp.
  • Workflows... you have the ability to define very specific roles and/or user-based editorial workflows, allowing for as many touchpoints and reviews between content creation and publication as you'll require.
Read full review
Pantheon
  • Effective use of our codebase deployment and implementation.
  • The dashboard functionality and general stability and security are excellent.
  • The server is quite consistent, and if you need assistance from the support team, they are very quick to respond.
  • Automatic updates let me ensure that my customers have safe websites without increasing my own expense.
  • The team offers excellent assistance and help for chat.
Read full review
Cons
Drupal.org
  • Security and new release notifications are a hassle as they happen too often
  • Allowing them to write PHP modules is a big advantage, but sometimes integrating them is a small challenge due to the version the developer is working on.
  • Steep learning curve, but worth it
Read full review
Pantheon
  • Pricing structure has too large of a jump between Basic and Performance plans
  • Have run into issues with prescribed WP updates not working through dashboard and having to do manually.
  • Pantheon site dashboard occasionally is unavailable (the site is never affected though)
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Drupal.org
The time and money invested into this platform were too great to discontinue it at this point. I'm sure it will be in use for a while. We have also spent time training many employees how to use it. All of these things add up to quite an investment in the product. Lastly, it basically fulfills what we need our intranet site to do.
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Pantheon
The environment is stable and we have not had any issues/downtime. The annual cost is reasonable.
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Usability
Drupal.org
It's a great CMS platform and there are a ton of plugins to add some serious functionality, but the security updates are too complex to implement and considering the complexity of the platform, security updates are a must. I don't want my site breached because they make it too difficult to keep it up to date.
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Pantheon
Pantheon is an easy system, especially to the users with previous experience with other similar platform and the interface is clear enough to easily understand how things operates. On the Cloud deployment everything also works effectively and the technical team from Pantheon community are very helpful on providing the necessary assistant to their customers.
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Reliability and Availability
Drupal.org
Drupal itself does not tend to have bugs that cause sporadic outages. When deployed on a well-configured LAMP stack, deployment and maintenance problems are minimal, and in general no exotic tuning or configuration is required. For highest uptime, putting a caching proxy like Varnish in front of Drupal (or a CDN that supports dynamic applications).
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Pantheon
No answers on this topic
Performance
Drupal.org
Drupal page loads can be slow, as a great many database calls may be required to generate a page. It is highly recommended to use caching systems, both built-in and external to lessen such database loads and improve performance. I haven't had any problems with behind-the-scenes integrations with external systems.
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Pantheon
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Drupal.org
As noted earlier, the support of the community can be rather variable, with some modules attracting more attraction and action in their issue queues, but overall, the development community for Drupal is second to none. It probably the single greatest aspect of being involved in this open-source project.
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Pantheon
Even tier 1 Pantheon chat and ticket support are knowledgeable, competent, and useful. They routinely understand and promptly resolve urgent, complex, and/or unusual issues that other hosts need to escalate to tier 2 or tier 3 support personnel. I honestly can't think of a truly negative or disappointing support experience in the years I've used Pantheon hosting for client websites.
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In-Person Training
Drupal.org
I was part of the team that conducted the training. Our training was fine, but we could have been better informed on Drupal before we started providing it. If we did not have answers to tough questions, we had more technical staff we could consult with. We did provide hands-on practice time for the learners, which I would always recommend. That is where the best learning occurred.
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Pantheon
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Drupal.org
The on-line training was not as ideal as the face-to-face training. It was done remotely and only allowed for the trainers to present information to the learners and demonstrate the platform online. There was not a good way to allow for the learners to practice, ask questions and have them answered all in the same session.
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Pantheon
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Drupal.org
Plan ahead as much you can. You really need to know how to build what you want with the modules available to you, or that you might need to code yourself, in order to make the best use of Drupal. I recommend you analyze the most technically difficult workflows and other aspects of your implementation, and try building some test versions of those first. Get feedback from stakeholders early and often, because you can easily find yourself in a situation where your implementation does 90% of what you want, but, due to something you didn't plan for, foresee, or know about, there's no feasible way to get past the last 10%
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Pantheon
Once the environments were up and running, the implementation was easy to synchronize with latest data prior to switchover.
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Alternatives Considered
Drupal.org
Drupal is community-backed making it more accessible and growing at a faster rate than Sitefinity which is a proprietary product built on .NET. Drupal is PHP-based using some but not all Symphony codebase. Updates for Drupal are frequent and so are feature adds.
Read full review
Pantheon
Although it may seem a good fit for a company that needs extra control over the deployment process and development process, for a firm that is mainly concentrating on SEO, it would be an overkill. Pantheon provides that sweet automation that allows us to shed some weight on development and focus on our business activities.
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Scalability
Drupal.org
Drupal is well known to be scalable, although it requires solid knowledge of MySQL best practices, caching mechanisms, and other server-level best practices. I have never personally dealt with an especially large site, so I can speak well to the issues associated with Drupal scaling.
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Pantheon
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Drupal.org
  • Drupal has allowed us to build up a library of code and base sites we can reuse to save time which has increased our efficiency and thus had a positive financial impact.
  • Drupal has allowed us to take on projects we otherwise would not have been able to, having a further impact.
  • Drupal has allowed us to build great solutions for our clients which give them an excellent ROI.
Read full review
Pantheon
  • Pantheon allows ordinary sites to excel esp if there is consistent development going on behind the scenes.
  • Website management is super easy and the hosting fee gets paid off as you save on developer hours.
  • Expensive for those who are not consistently developing on the platform, there are other options out there at better price points.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Pantheon Screenshots

Screenshot of Find out in seconds if your site is ready to launch. Use Launch Check to get recommendations and discover site issues fast with our report based on over 50 automated checks.Screenshot of Our Developer Dashboard has everything you need to build, launch, and run Drupal and WordPress sites. Interface via SFTP or Git, deploy and scale your sites, and access tools like backups and one-click core updates. Easily add team members and control access.