Pantheon is an excellent managed hosting solution, but pricey for nonprofit/education institutions with limited budgets
September 14, 2021
Pantheon is an excellent managed hosting solution, but pricey for nonprofit/education institutions with limited budgets
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Pantheon
Pantheon is being used by World Literature Today, a department at the University of Oklahoma that publishes a quarterly literary magazine. Pantheon offers managed web hosting for the magazine's Drupal website. Pantheon helps World Literature Today deliver online content to the magazine's online readers and hosts the full digital edition of the magazine that offers a monthly or annual subscription. Pantheon has helped WLT monetize an easily readable online edition of the magazine and is an excellent solution for an organization that doesn't have an in-house web designer or developer.
- Easy dev-test - live environment to safely apply Drupal updates and deploy new code
- Excellent web server resources that give peace of mind regarding scalability and uptime
- Good knowledge base
- Solr search
- Good product/service support
- Help with database support, Pantheon is appealing because a lot of the technical details of backend development are supported by Pantheon, but this means lots of their customers don't have a lot of knowledge about MySQL databases and best practices.
- Offering an accessible price point for non-profits and public education institutions.
- Guidance and trusted recommendations for contract developers to do Drupal 7 to 8 migrations. OR offering development service to perform Drupal 7 to 8 migrations.
- Enabled my client's business to host a full online edition of a magazine where they can take paid monthly and annual subscriptions.
- The recent increases in monthly costs with Pantheon [have] taken a large chunk out of their ROI, however.
- Pantheon has enabled my client to maintain a high-quality website without the need to have a full-time web developer on staff.
Pantheon offers an advantage over WP Engine and Flywheel by offering hosting support for both Drupal and WordPress websites. Pantheon's pricing model could be much more competitive, however. Pantheon ended up winning out over Media Temple in World Literature Today's hosting selection because of its managed hosting and enhanced support for medium to large scale websites. Pantheon's development, testing, and live environments are similar to WP Engine and Flywheel's, but Pantheon does have a much tidier and easier-to-navigate UI.
Do you think Pantheon delivers good value for the price?
Not sure
Are you happy with Pantheon's feature set?
Yes
Did Pantheon live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Pantheon go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Pantheon again?
Yes