Pantheon vs. Acquia

Developers, agencies, and large web teams are more successful with Pantheon

Pantheon delivers a better platform, unlimited support, and fewer hassles.

There are two major players in the premium Drupal hosting world: Pantheon and Acquia. Dries Buytaert, Drupal's initial author, is an executive at Acquia and leader of the Drupal project. The founders of Pantheon also have a long history with the Drupal project and have been responsible for many of the innovations which have made Drupal a preferred CMS for businesses, non-profits, and higher education.

We believe there are fundamental and important differences between Pantheon and Acquia's technology decisions, support offerings, and our philosophies about making website teams successful vs. building a traditional enterprise software company.

Feature
Pantheon Logo
Acquia
Drupal Core Updates
Yes
Yes
Guaranteed Launch Success
Yes
No
Dedicated Success Manager
Yes
Available ($)
Free Migration Service
Yes
No
HTTPS Included for Free
Yes
No
DDOS Protection and WAF Rules
Yes
No
Vague Setup Fees
No
Yes
Live Chat Support
Yes (Available 24x7)
No
Expert Drupal Support
Yes (Unlimited tickets)
Yes (Stringent ticket limits)
Hosting Technology
Containers (Since 2012)
Modern Stack
PHP7, HTTP/2, NGINX, Redis, CDN, New Relic
No
Flexible, Git-based Upstream Model
Yes
Uptime Guarantee
Yes (99.95%)
Enterprise Cloud Only
VS

Pantheon

Support Success-focused Support Model: Performance experts are ready to help you from the start. No upgrades or add-ons necessary.

Technology Modern, Optimized Platform: All sites run on a single, well-documented infrastructure that makes it easy to launch sites fast with no surprises, whether your team is new to Drupal or are Continuous Integration Wizards.

Pricing Simple pricing based on pageviews. Unlimited support, Drupal core updates, and a dedicated customer success team included. We don't charge extra when you exceed your limits.

Developer Experience Unified Developer Experience: Developers have access to best of breed tools to do their job. Every site uses the same Dev-Test-Live workflow.

Customer Success Pantheon customer success managers are Drupal technical experts focused on success, not contract renewal.

Acquia

Support Tiered Support Model: Limited support tickets, fee-based onboarding, and fee-based technical account managers. Extra cost and complexity.

Technology Legacy Hosting Technology: Each site is comprised of one or more virtual machines, configured according to items purchased. Moving between Acquia products may require complex migration.

Pricing Complicated pricing combines reselling Amazon virtual machines, support ticket volume, and bolt-on enterprise software. Overage charges can be unexpected and monstrous.

Developer Experience Varied Developer Experience: Acquia offers several different products and each are different in their advantages and drawbacks.

Customer Success Revenue-driven Services: Onboarding and technical account managers are available at significant additional cost.

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Contact Sales or call us at 855-927-9387