Pantheon WordPress Hosting Review

7 thoughts on “Pantheon WordPress Hosting Review”

1. Jim B May 14, 2015 at 3:02 PM

   In short stay away from Pantheon. They are THE worst hosting service EVER.

   The first thing you need to do is make sure you have backups turned on. As bizarre as it sounds, Pantheon does not back up your sites by default. We had the default configuration and after a week of development their systems crashed. We lost everything and had to start over. Of course they have documentation in reams of text if you look. And their support people are good at blaming you.

   My second beef with them is they have an email notification service that is turned off to inform you of future “scheduled” outages. But once again it is your fault if you did not find it in the mounds of worthless documentation. For Pantheon security is number 1. What that means is they decide when an issue is important and they decide when to take down ALL sites simultaneously. They MAY give you 24 hours notice that THEY decided you will be out of business and how for how long. We learned about this “feature” when our site magically was not available, the night before go live. We had plenty of time in the original plan, but having to start over wasted our contingency.

   Our account is at the Corporate level. We will be scaling up to Pantheon’s equivalent to enterprise level, but not with them. If you have a mission critical app, need to have things done quickly, expect a partner who understands hosting, or who cares about your site, go anywhere else. Pantheon is a disaster. They take no responsibility for their stupid rules. Hide behind volumes of CYA documentation.

   Get the word out.

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   1. Dave Nattriss May 21, 2015 at 7:55 PM

      How do those things make them the worst ‘ever’, Jim? Your massive exaggeration doesn’t help anyone.

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2. Shawn Peters December 16, 2015 at 4:08 PM

   REALLY JIM, REALLY?
   I agree with Dave on Jim’s comment. @Jim — your comment was obviously meant as a way to vent your frustrations but you provided no real evidence at all for why someone should steer clear of Pantheon. Furthermore, both issues are VERY easily remedied and it sounds like you didn’t do your own work and are now blaming Pantheon for your own lack of effort. Shame on you.

   PANTHEON IS STILL THE BEST OPTION
   I’ve been using Pantheon for all of my client sites for over a year and, as this article proved, they are indeed THE VERY BEST option for either Drupal or WordPress. You can always get something more expensive and have similar results as Pantheon but…why would you?

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3. Thomas Zickell March 9, 2016 at 2:13 AM

   I have to agree with Sean I have been using pantheon great amount of time considering their age. Excellent. He is the only word I have to describe them. I’m sorry if you are a large corporation that does not have the capability to understand who software you are buying honestly you should make backups on any hosting companies most impact do not give you a back up that’s 100% on your IT department. Amphion is one of the best host if not the very best on the market. There an event they offer a lot of money fast so much better than many of the other same old same old hosting. It’s a shame that the lack understanding by your TechTeam kept you from utilizing some of the best money can buy.

   I honestly wonder what you would say for you on a hosting dollars with some other hosting that is $25,000 do you really think I don’t know if you’re doing? No everyone was doing what they’re supposed to be doing except for your team unfortunately. Best for speed, redundancy and support

   I love pantheon they are groundbreaking company with more options for abilities to branch out they are amazing

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4. John Doe March 21, 2017 at 5:15 PM

   Jim,

   Hope you get this message. I am suffering similar fate at pantheon and looking for a more responsible host. Who did you end up going with? Pantheon has the worst support and defaults I have seen. We are forced to go with by someone who was let go for obvious reasons. But, I finf Pantheon to be in dark ages with ease of use and support. Sites can go down for hours and their support would respond with cryptic one liners. Pls send me an email with who you went with.

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5. eddy G May 29, 2017 at 8:14 AM

   Pantheon has also been a nightmare for me, and their speeds are nothing like advertized. 200ms server response time on WHAT PACKAGE?! More like 1.9 seconds from a test site in the same state. Stay away

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6. Thomas Zickell January 11, 2018 at 1:49 AM

   Eddy G,

   I’m seeing sub 100 ms server load time on 15 sites. Running from $25 , $100, $400 & elite at $2,000 they run faster with Redis at $100 but I think you could be confusing server load time and full page rendering load time. You said from a server in your state so you’re using something like Pingdom or New Relic Synthetic to get your full page load time.

   To look at your servers speed go to New Relic APM it will show your server speed & where you can make your site faster.

   I hope this is of help.
   Tom

   You are mad you’re site load time is 1.9 Second’s? Because you need to understand Anything below 2 seconds is a fast site. vs what was your old site load time as most sites can’t do 1.9 sec.

   You also need to understand that you’re sites code can and will play a large part in site speed.

   You have New Relic a $400 tool that will show you what is slowing down your site.

   Can you look and confirm that you are running I cannot promise anything but I can try and help you.

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