Google Cloud Platform vs. Pantheon vs. Upsun

When most of our stuff is in Google Cloud Platform, it works great to integrate and cross/share data that is all in Google Cloud Platform or BigQuery. It has simplified things from a permissions perspective as well. I'd say it is less appropriate when trying to test something quickly locally, or when half your stuff is in AWS or another provider.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

In our organisation we are the only team that uses Platform.sh to host any site. This was a cost effective way for us as we were using Acquia Cloud earlier for these websites. We mostly use Platform.sh for those sites which are always in development as it is simpler and faster to handle these operations in Platform.sh. Then we do a lift and shift to Acquia as we move more towards the go live and post production maintenance side.

Incentivized

• Easy to set up
• Affordable use of the tool
• Easy to access billing
• Reliable service

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• As this is a PaaS it mitigates the complexities of a Cloud infrastructure like Acquia
• We are easily able to integrate our sites with different technologies like Python and Rest
• Helps us in providing Continuous Development cloud deployment hosting solution

Incentivized

• The UI is so confusing. The console is good, but it is like a maze. There are too many menus and settings, and things do not work as expected. It takes time to get friendly, and it is not friendly for new users.
• Support experience: Sometimes, you get a great engineer, but other times, it's very difficult to talk with them as they are unable to respond as expected and solve issues late.
• Region and zone are issues, as not all services are available in all regions, which is lacking when deploying something in the same region or zone.

Incentivized

• 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)

Incentivized

• Platform.sh is not for beginners in my opinion. It has a good amount of learning curve in my opinion.
• As this is a PaaS, teams habituated with cloud infrastructure may miss the server side support from their cloud teams. I believe you will have to work on server bugs more on your own.
• During normal maintenance periods, integrations may fail if you are working on your sites in that time, in my experience.

Incentivized

The environment is stable and we have not had any issues/downtime. The annual cost is reasonable.

Incentivized

The Google Cloud Platform console is pretty slick for BigQuery especially. I have liked the visibility I get from using that and the way to integrate and see what's in our data lake. The logging console for tracking GKE jobs isn't quite as great, which is why it doesn't get a full 10.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Once the environments were up and running, the implementation was easy to synchronize with latest data prior to switchover.

Incentivized

Google Cloud Platform is release later than Amazon web service, I think that why Google Cloud Platform can learned and optimized the Dashboard and some features that make it easy to use and can be cheaper than amazon web service.

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.

Incentivized

In our team we use Platform.sh mostly while sites are in developmental phase. Then we do a lift and shift to either Acquia or AWS depending on the type of sites we have. Platform.sh is really cost effective and more fluid in terms of Continuous Development hence the usage. After said development is done, we generally lift and shift to Acquia for more content heavy sites and to AWS for more transaction oriented sites.

Incentivized

• It allows us to focus our efforts on other, more important items at hand
• It gives us an affordable option letting me know it's available to all users, not just the largest scale ones out there
• The customer service is always helpful and reliable, along with the service itself which lets me focus on my work instead of worrying about the service.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Continuous development for sites in build has been fluid
• Platform.sh is really cost effective when comparing to AWS or Acquia Cloud
• On the other side, lack of server side support demands a big learning curve from its users in my opinion.

Incentivized