Superb and knowledgeable customer service, but you'll pay for it.
Updated July 05, 2022

Superb and knowledgeable customer service, but you'll pay for it.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Drupal Cloud

Modules Used

  • Cloud Platform

Overall Satisfaction with Acquia Digital Experience Platform

Acquia is our SASS solution for Drupal 7 powered websites, landing pages and webtools. Our prospect facing website and internal facing websites both utilize the Drupal 7 framework that Acquia hosts. In addition our SEM efforts, RFI forms and other marketing communication is on the platform. Acquia has performed consistently well.
  • Dependable Update
  • Knowledgeable Customer Service
  • Functionality seems designed for larger enterprise organizations
  • Interfacing tools are sometimes more complex then similar cloud hosted services such as Azure or AWS
  • I'm not sure if the money spent on Acquia couldn't have been saved on a less expensive hosting platform. Some of our contracts seem backed with features and extras we never used.
The website infrastructure was already implemented prior to my arrival. I'm unsure what impact it made in comparison to our prior host. Other services they have provided since my arrival have made no signification improvement. In fact we reduced our service expenses upon my arrival.
We don't use scalable solutions.
Acquia was chosen for its expertise in Drupal hosted websites. Our website however is either so simple, so dependable or both that we've never leaned on that specific trait to solve issues or iterate new website improvements.

Do you think Acquia Digital Experience Platform delivers good value for the price?

No

Are you happy with Acquia Digital Experience Platform's feature set?

Yes

Did Acquia Digital Experience Platform live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Acquia Digital Experience Platform go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Acquia Digital Experience Platform again?

No

Acquia has a very large offering of services that cater to larger enterprise clients. Smaller single-domain clients like our website seem like a loose fit for what Acquia provides.

Using Acquia Digital Experience Platform

2 - Marketing manager who approves purchase and myself who suggests hosting platforms.
1 - I'm the only one managing the Acquia Platform. One must be familiar with manipulating hosting management consoles such as GoDaddy, Huroku or the like in order to manage the Acquia platform. It's certainly not as complicated as Azure or AWS devops.
  • Hosting external Drupal websites
  • Hosting internal Drupal websites
  • Managing SSL certificates and domain names
  • Nothing unexpected, it's just web hosting.
  • Nothing innovative, it's just web hosting.
  • Nothing unusual, it's just web hosting.
  • We're not going to use it in the future.
  • We're moving away from Drupal 7
  • We've decided to go with Python/Django/Wagtail because it was simpler to develop in.
We're moving away from Drupal as a platform. Drupal 8 and 9 were simply too overburdened and difficult to maintain compared to other offerings. PHP seems like a dying language so we are currently in the process of migrating all of our Drupal 7 functionality and custom modules to a Python/Django/Wagtail platform. This doesn't mean Acquia isn't a great service, they are professional and top-knotch, but the only way we'd say with them is if I didn't complete the migration.

Evaluating Acquia Digital Experience Platform and Competitors

Yes - We looked at AWS, Azure and Heroku as well as hosting the Drupal 7 build on our own internal servers. There simply wasn't enough internal expertise to setup and maintain this at a professional level our company was comfortable with.
  • Product Reputation
  • Prior Experience with the Product
I think I would try Azure with OpenLitespeed as a server. The server has a built in reverse proxy which would have simplified our experience trying to maintain a Docker container structure.

Acquia Digital Experience Platform Implementation

It was implemented when I got there. I don't know how it was prior.
Change management was minimal

Acquia Digital Experience Platform Support

They are absolutely fabulous and have never dropped the ball in 8 years of us being on the platform. If it wasn't for Drupal 8/9 being unrealistically complicated compared to other offerings like Django/Wagtail we'd be still with Acquia and Drupal.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
Yes, we have several hours of premium consulting as well. This has helped us in the past make decisions about hosing blob content and finding solutions for a media server.
Yes, our website was slow having a difficult time processing SQL statements that we didn't know where causing issues. They suggested multiple was to increase performance as well as helped rule out other issues that we thought maybe contributing to website lag.

Using Acquia Digital Experience Platform

It's a great user interface. It's always being updated and I've never noticed a bad update that increased the complexity or reduced
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Convenient
Feel confident using
None
  • Moving instances of Dev/Test/Prod
  • Downloading database backups and files for testing on local builds
  • Managing SSL and Domains
  • The internal folder structures of the Linux distro they are running has a lot of confusing aliases - but that's deep beyond the platform in SSH