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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Pantheon

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/APantheon is a WebOps platform where marketers and developers collaborate to drive results. The vendor states that with Pantheon, site owners maximize their capacity to update website design and functionality, responding to market trends, catering to consumer behavior, and adding real value to the business's bottom line. Today, companies compete on the basis of digital experiences, and the best results emerge from an agile build-test-learn process. Whether it's publishing content,…

    $29

    per month

    WP Engine

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AWP Engine is a website hosting service built to host WordPress for companies of any size, with features such as daily backups, firewall,SSL, and proprietary caching technology.

    $29

    per month

    Pricing
    PantheonWP Engine
    Editions & Modules
    Basic
    $29
    per month
    Performance
    $114
    per month
    Elite
    Contact for quote
    Startup
    $25.00
    *Per Month
    Growth
    $95.00
    *Per Month
    Scale
    $241.00
    *Per Month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    PantheonWP Engine
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional Details—*Pricing for annual contract.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    PantheonWP Engine
    Considered Both Products
    Pantheon
    Chose Pantheon
    Pantheon's use of Git is much better than WP Engine, and Pantheon's interface is better. However, Pantheon costs more and would likely suit medium to larger organizations.
    GoDaddy's dedicated WordPress offering is much more restrictive compared with Pantheons and suits …
    Incentivized
    Chose Pantheon
    The differentiating advantage that Pantheon has is the incredibly intuitive workflow UI, with seamless GIT integrations between each environment: Dev, Test, and Live.
    Incentivized
    Chose Pantheon
    A lot of the other providers on this list are different from each other with very different target audiences. The only thing Pantheon can compare with is managed WordPress hosting, WordPress-related support, and hosting on Google Compute Engine. Pantheon wins hands down in …
    Incentivized
    Chose Pantheon
    Pantheon also supports Drupal, which is very useful in the future.
    Incentivized
    Chose Pantheon
    Pantheon is definitely the best, most premium option of any WordPress hosting services I've tried. For simpler WordPress sites I prefer using SiteGround because of it's lower cost and simpler features for the client to manage.

    For sites of any complexity though, Pantheon is the …
    Incentivized
    WP Engine
    Chose WP Engine
    For Acquia and AEM the major differentiator was the cost for WPEngine was significantly lower and we could use the more common WordPress CMS. AEM is better for large marketing sites that integrate with the Abobe Marketing Cloud and we didn't feel we could support Drupal on …
    Incentivized
    Chose WP Engine
    If DIY hosting is your thing, you are 100% better off on Linode or Google Cloud. Pantheon ultimately won our business and respect with 100% uptime.
    Incentivized
    Chose WP Engine
    WP Engine was cheaper than the alternatives, and our site was already present on their servers. It wasn't so much a choice of WP Engine over another hosting company as it was a choice to stay with WP Engine rather than invest the time required to switch to another provider. All …
    Incentivized
    Chose WP Engine
    I selected Kinsta to replace WP Engine because their performance statistics, security configuration, and technical support prowess reminded me of WP Engine circa 2012 - top-notch.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    97%
    Would buy again
    59 Answers
    93%
    Would buy again
    13 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    55 Answers
    86%
    Delivers good value for the price
    12 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    60 Answers
    86%
    Happy with the feature set
    12 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    98%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    54 Answers
    85%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    11 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    93%
    Implementation went as expected
    55 Answers
    93%
    Implementation went as expected
    13 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    PantheonWP Engine
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Flywheel
    Score9.9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    Rackspace Managed Hosting
    Score1 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    PantheonWP Engine
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (68 ratings)
    9.9
    (29 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    3.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.8
    (29 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    7.7
    (6 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    PantheonWP Engine
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Pantheon
    Pantheon is excellent for medium-large websites that require high availability and a managed workflow. It would be inappropriate for small websites because of the cost or for situations where more control of the environment is appropriate. We find it useful because we rarely do anything outside of the Drupal application.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    WP Engine
    I am an enterprise user of WordPress and host over 7000 sites with WPEngine. Areas that I think they are well suited for include customers that need enterprise-level support and uptime and have more complex needs than a simple blog. They also manage scale well with a variety of isolated install options that you can scale up or down depending on your contract needs. They also provide premier support for enterprises and have highly knowledgable Technical Account Managers that provide a significant value add. If I were to look at where it isn't as appropriate for usage I would focus on the low-end needs and say while they do support small sites, there are options out there for cheaper hosting that lack the support a WPEngine gives you.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Pantheon
    • Effective use of our codebase deployment and implementation.
    • The dashboard functionality and general stability and security are excellent.
    • The server is quite consistent, and if you need assistance from the support team, they are very quick to respond.
    • Automatic updates let me ensure that my customers have safe websites without increasing my own expense.
    • The team offers excellent assistance and help for chat.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    WP Engine
    • I love the database backups and how quickly & easy it is to restore from an old backup point. This gives me & my clients confidence that any change can be rolled back.
    • The built in caching & CDN mean that I have to spend less time worrying about the speed of the server & site. The caching has some side-effects that take getting used to (on-page dynamic PHP code sometimes needs to be moved to API endpoints), but this is true for most caching systems.
    • They have really good support for multiple environments. It's very easy to have separate production & staging environments. It's also very simple to deploy from staging to production, making product launches and large scale website copy changes much easier to coordinate.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Pantheon
    • Pricing structure has too large of a jump between Basic and Performance plans
    • Have run into issues with prescribed WP updates not working through dashboard and having to do manually.
    • Pantheon site dashboard occasionally is unavailable (the site is never affected though)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    WP Engine
    • I'd like to see WP Engine offer their own monitoring solution. When I say monitoring, I mean specific use cases that may end up being something you could script. This would keep customers from having to pay for additional services like Pingdom, New Relic, etc.
    • I would like to see some proactive analysis done by WP Engine on their customer sites - at least on their home pages, and offer up suggestions. This kind of goes along with the other example.
    • Finally, it would be nice to see a "lighter" offering, perhaps a plan that costs $49 for those who want to host only a few sites, or even 1 site.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Pantheon
    The environment is stable and we have not had any issues/downtime. The annual cost is reasonable.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    WP Engine
    I was in a situation where I had to bolt Wordpress on to an existing infrastructure that could not support it. If I ever end up in that situation again, please kill me. Other than that reasonably common use case, I don't think it offers a lot of value over robust shared hosting, virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated servers.
    Read full review
    Usability
    Pantheon
    Pantheon is an easy system, especially to the users with previous experience with other similar platform and the interface is clear enough to easily understand how things operates. On the Cloud deployment everything also works effectively and the technical team from Pantheon community are very helpful on providing the necessary assistant to their customers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    WP Engine
    It took very little time to learn their dashboard for managing WordPress sites. Their built-in tools are really well done, and the addition of security and CDN tools is great.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Pantheon
    Even tier 1 Pantheon chat and ticket support are knowledgeable, competent, and useful. They routinely understand and promptly resolve urgent, complex, and/or unusual issues that other hosts need to escalate to tier 2 or tier 3 support personnel. I honestly can't think of a truly negative or disappointing support experience in the years I've used Pantheon hosting for client websites.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    WP Engine
    Support is generally great. Enterprise support is fantastic, with little to no wait times. I find that chat support can almost always take care of the problem without escalating to a ticket for a higher level of troubleshooting. The chat support for many other hosting providers can only handle basic issues. This is a big bonus for us to get quick and helpful answers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Pantheon
    Once the environments were up and running, the implementation was easy to synchronize with latest data prior to switchover.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    WP Engine
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Pantheon
    Although it may seem a good fit for a company that needs extra control over the deployment process and development process, for a firm that is mainly concentrating on SEO, it would be an overkill. Pantheon provides that sweet automation that allows us to shed some weight on development and focus on our business activities.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    WP Engine
    While we still use GoDaddy for some services, WP Engine definitely has been a major upgrade for our WordPress hosting. In addition to faster load speeds, WP Engine has been more adept at allowing us to manage a high number of websites without straining the system. We have never used Network Solutions for our own hosting needs, but when we do interact with them on behalf of our clients, their systems always seem to be clunky and hard to use, and they often overcharge customers by selling them products they do not need.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Pantheon
    • Pantheon allows ordinary sites to excel esp if there is consistent development going on behind the scenes.
    • Website management is super easy and the hosting fee gets paid off as you save on developer hours.
    • Expensive for those who are not consistently developing on the platform, there are other options out there at better price points.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    WP Engine
    • WP Engine reduces our time investment and upkeep costs which increases our margins.
    • WP Engine simplifies site management with a built-in development server, which saves us headaches.
    • WP Engine itself is positioned as a premium service, which allows us to use their branding as a tool to close sales.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Pantheon Screenshots

    Screenshot of Find out in seconds if your site is ready to launch. Use Launch Check to get recommendations and discover site issues fast with our report based on over 50 automated checks.Screenshot of Our Developer Dashboard has everything you need to build, launch, and run Drupal and WordPress sites. Interface via SFTP or Git, deploy and scale your sites, and access tools like backups and one-click core updates. Easily add team members and control access.