Summary
Pantheon is an excellent web platform that caters to the needs of agencies, developers, and marketers. It is not very beginner-friendly in terms of its cost and features.
For
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One-click WordPress and Drupal installation
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Advanced redundancy options
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Redis database caching
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Free SSL certificates
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Advanced website monitoring
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Free limited trial
Against
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No website builder
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High annual prices
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No money-back guarantee
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Not designed for beginners
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Low support quality
Introduction
To help you establish an effective web presence, we have compiled a list of the Best Web Hosting Companies. Pantheon provides tremendous value for developers with unique deployment and development options, redundancy possibilities, and round-the-clock live customer support.
Pantheon.io is a website management software made originally for the Drupal content management system and then adapted to handle WordPress sites. Its resources have been ported over to the WordPress ecosystem, giving rise to a leading managed hosting provider for developers and enterprises. Because of Pantheon’s flexibility, it can adapt to developments in either Drupal or WordPress.
In this review, we’ll dive into Pantheon and see if this specialized web host is a good fit for your site. Checking out Pantheon’s pricing, features, user interface, and level of support can help you decide if it’s a good fit for you.
Plans and pricing
Pantheon is a web-ops platform designed to remove friction for agencies and developers and allow them to quickly spin up and publish websites. As part of that strategy, Pantheon only offers a couple of plans:
Basic plan
Pantheon’s Basic plan ($41/month when paid annually) offers:
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20 GB SSD storage
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25.000 monthly visits
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125.000 monthly served pages
Pantheon’s basic plan is suitable for most small businesses and smaller websites. It comes with 20GB of storage, a 25.000 monthly visits cap, and 125.000 served pages which should be sufficient for most websites.
The basic plan includes one-click installations and core updates for WordPress and Drupal, automatic launch checks, multi-developer environments and agile structured workflows, automated backups, global CDN, and integrated version control.
Performance plans
There are four plan types: Small, Medium, Large, and Extra Large.
Small – $160 per month
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30 GB SSD Storage
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25.000 monthly visits
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125.000 monthly served pages
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1 app with the load balancer
Medium – $275 per month
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50 GB SSD Storage
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50.000 monthly visits
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250.000 monthly served pages
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2 apps with load balancers
Large – $550 per month
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100 GB SSD Storage
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150.000 monthly visits
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750.000 monthly served pages
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3 apps with load balancers
Extra Large – $916 per month
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200 GB SSD Storage
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300.000 monthly visits
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1,500.000 monthly served pages
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4 apps with load balancers
In addition to all tools and features that the Basic plan offers, performance plans include Redis application cache (an excellent database caching solution), infrastructure redundancy using load balancers for applications, advanced website monitoring, and full-text search using Apache Solr technology.
These plans are designed for developers and system administrators, i.e., experienced IT people, and aren’t very suitable for regular website owners and beginners.
Core features
Pantheon’s core features are the DNA of the company. Thanks to its container-based architecture, it may be easily configured to scale automatically in response to unexpectedly high traffic volumes. It also allows building and testing code in isolation in the dev, stage, and live environments before deploying it to production.
Additionally, customers have an environment that supports numerous developers working in parallel without having to set up different, distinct development environments.
If you want to use Pantheon’s servers, you must register a domain name elsewhere (like NameCheap) and point it to Pantheon since they don’t provide domain registration services. In addition, there is no website builder included.
A global content delivery network (CDN) with links to your clients on every continent is only one of the elements that help to speed up website loading times. The granularity of caching can be set at various levels, all under your control.
Pantheon’s redundant server, located in a different geographic area, ready to take over in the event of a primary server failure, is an excellent failover and security measure. If there is ever a problem, you will be notified immediately because the system is constantly monitored.
Interface
Pantheon does not support cPanel but provides a control panel that allows one-click installations of popular CMSes like WordPress and Drupal. Websites built with WordPress or Drupal may be easily updated, backed up, and managed with a single click from a centralized dashboard.
The Pantheon interface is so well designed that I never needed to consult the documentation, and every Pantheon account receives a free sandbox to use for development purposes.
Developers in multi-dev environments can create a fork of the primary source and host it independently. In case you’re interested in more advanced metrics, they’re also included.
Accessing the platform, creating user accounts, viewing live sites, and migrating new ones have all been simple processes. I have a straightforward way of determining who can access a particular website and what actions they can take there. The Pantheon control panel is functional, and I had only a few minor hiccups before I learned my way around.
Nonetheless, there are a few issues with the system overall. While the platform’s multi-dev environments provide great flexibility, they also mandate that all code be moved from development to staging to live environments. While I see the rationale behind this decision (to promote a development pipeline), I can see how it could cause some confusion on large teams if multiple projects go online simultaneously.
Support options and quality
Pantheon prioritizes immediate channels for customer care, such as phone, tickets, and chat. It is accessible 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Web hosting, WordPress, Drupal, and other platform-related questions can also be found in their knowledge base.
In addition, Pantheon also offers a Slack channel in case you need to contact their engineer in real time.
The Pantheon Dashboard provides quick access to all available support settings and features.
During our evaluations, we encountered help that was not always reliable. Only three times out of ten did we receive a response from Pantheon’s live chat in less than three minutes. Not only that but when we had issues with WordPress, we got almost no help in some cases.
However, Pantheon’s live support agents are helpful and kind when you finally reach them. If they cannot resolve an issue, they will forward it to a team of senior technicians for further investigation. So, you will get a response; however, it may take a few hours or days to get a reply, contingent upon the complexity of your issue.
The competition
Pantheon is a developer-friendly host with many functions and features available to use in a multi-dev environment, an agile development pipeline, and premium features such as global CDN, automated backups, and load balancers.
Skystra is an excellent alternative because it prioritizes fast load times, reliable support, and reliable performance for WordPress and WooCommerce websites and stores. Hosting 1 WordPress site will set you back as little as $4.95 a month, and all of their hosting plans include free email, free SSL, free CDN, premium caching, and other advanced features that can increase your site’s speed by as much as 125%.
Skystra stands itself from Pantheon regarding support quality and the absence of an annual price. To find out more about Skystra, check out our review.
HostGator is another excellent option if cost is a consideration; their shared hosting plans begin at $2.75 per month, and they provide a website builder for $4.95. HostGator offers unlimited storage, a free domain name in the first year, and live chat assistance at all hours. To learn more, check out our in-depth review of HostGator.
Final verdict
Pantheon is a bit more expensive than its rivals, but it more than makes up for it with its outstanding performance, developer-friendly tools, integrated optimizations, and great customer service.
While there are cheaper hosts that can match Pantheon’s performance, you should expect to receive subpar service in terms of support, features, and overall quality of experience.
Because of its multi-dev environment and developer-friendly tools, Pantheon is the best option for those in need.
Your site will load quickly, and you’ll get extras like automatic backups and a worldwide content delivery network (CDN) with no further effort on your end. Additionally, you get access to support anytime, which can help you with almost any problem.
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