Pantheon vs. WordPress VIP

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Pantheon
Score 8.5 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
WordPress VIP
Score 8.0 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Wordpress VIP, from a team at Automattic, is enterprise WordPress hosting with customer or digital experience features for enterprises.N/A
Pricing
PantheonWordPress VIP
Editions & Modules
Basic
$29
per month
Performance
$114
per month
Elite
Contact for quote
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
PantheonWordPress VIP
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
PantheonWordPress VIP
Considered Both Products
Pantheon
Chose Pantheon
Pantheon stacks up fairly equally, and we chose Pantheon originally because, at the time of making our decision, they were the best partner for our business size, and who could help us through challenges that VIP could not. Today, we are with VIP as that was a faster and more …
WordPress VIP
Chose WordPress VIP
Our team manages 4 different brands' websites and before WordPress VIP we were using multiple different hosts including DreamHost and AWS. These were convoluted and didn't offer the enterprise features for our organization that WP VIP was capable of. We also considered Pantheon,…
Features
PantheonWordPress VIP
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Pantheon
-
Ratings
WordPress VIP
7.3
2 Ratings
12% below category average
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings7.32 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Pantheon
-
Ratings
WordPress VIP
7.3
2 Ratings
6% below category average
API00 Ratings9.12 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language00 Ratings5.52 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Pantheon
-
Ratings
WordPress VIP
8.2
2 Ratings
5% above category average
WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness00 Ratings7.32 Ratings
Admin section00 Ratings8.22 Ratings
Page templates00 Ratings8.21 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
Publishing workflow00 Ratings7.32 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Pantheon
-
Ratings
WordPress VIP
8.0
2 Ratings
8% above category average
Content taxonomy00 Ratings7.31 Ratings
SEO support00 Ratings7.31 Ratings
Bulk management00 Ratings7.32 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
Community / comment management00 Ratings9.12 Ratings
Best Alternatives
PantheonWordPress VIP
Small Businesses
ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 10.0 out of 10
ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Bloomreach - The Agentic Platform for Personalization
Bloomreach - The Agentic Platform for Personalization
Score 8.9 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Bloomreach - The Agentic Platform for Personalization
Bloomreach - The Agentic Platform for Personalization
Score 8.9 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
PantheonWordPress VIP
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(68 ratings)
8.0
(22 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Usability
9.7
(29 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(2 ratings)
7.6
(21 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
PantheonWordPress VIP
Likelihood to Recommend
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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Automattic
WordPress VIP really changed the game when it comes to WordPress CMS and Content Management. A one-stop shop for all our client's business needs. We are focusing on Content Management instead of technicalities. The big advantage is the security features covering all recent vulnerabilities that any WordPress developer/user wastes lots of precious time fixing/updating. Performance-wise, WordPress VIP is definitely up there. We’ve been doing lots of optimization work over the last few years. Every client wants to score 100. With WordPress VIP we decreased the time spent on optimization significantly and now feel confident with taking more performance optimisation work than we did before. Lastly, maybe the most important for every business is the support quality. WordPress VIP runs a superb support team with phenomenal knowledge and expertise. Quick to respond and solves issues here and now. It is definitely recommended.
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Pros
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.
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Automattic
  • Keeps us informed of upcoming releases/patches associated with the Wordpress Platform.
  • Introduces us to products/companies/Wordpress plugins as necessary when new business needs arise.
  • Amy and Allie are excellent at managing the relationship; speaking with them on our monthly calls is a pleasure.
Read full review
Cons
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)
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Automattic
  • Too many different dashboard formats
  • Everything should have the same look and feel.
  • The admin portal looks different than the user content portal
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Pantheon
The environment is stable and we have not had any issues/downtime. The annual cost is reasonable.
Read full review
Automattic
It's true enterprise ready hosting framework providing unparalleled hosting infrastructure for WordPress. Where an organisation has high load needs, but with stability and scale VIP delivers. It provides complete peace of mind that the hosting, security and scalability are taken care of and organisations can focus on developing out their website strategies
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Usability
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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Automattic
There is documentation for everything you might need.
Read full review
Support Rating
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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Automattic
The people who work for WordPress VIP clearly are passionate about representing the organisation. Therefore when support is required, they do go above and beyond what you may expect in terms of overall support. They take security very seriously, and due to the nature of VIP, it's rarely a concern for the end-user, if at all.
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Implementation Rating
Pantheon
Once the environments were up and running, the implementation was easy to synchronize with latest data prior to switchover.
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Automattic
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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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Automattic
Our team manages 4 different brands' websites and before WordPress VIP we were using multiple different hosts including DreamHost and AWS. These were convoluted and didn't offer the enterprise features for our organization that WP VIP was capable of. We also considered Pantheon, but they were not Wordpress-centric enough for the direction we were going.
Read full review
Return on Investment
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.
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Automattic
  • Working as a WordPress VIP gold partner has helped our business grow from 12 staff to 28 staff in 2 years. They have brought many projects to the table that are always the right ones for us and they really understand our goals as a business.
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.