Likelihood to Recommend I'm not sure what scenario it would not be suitable for. I have it up all day, though I do use the mainframe emulator to go back to the old 'green screen'. We have tools that we must use there. There is very little I can't do on the workbench. I'm trying to get some of our new developers to use it, as when I'm using it and talking to them on the phone, they don't know what I'm talking about.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Pros Extract/load data from one DB or table to another masking the data for testing. Compare extracts against each other to ensure good baselines. Read full review 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. Read full review Cons We use CA Librarian here, and the workbench doesn't play well with that. I can't view the library my source is in; I have to copy it to a PDS. I frequently make some copies of files on my own. I do each file at a time. The ability to create a macro to do all of them at once would be nice. Currently, I click the file and click 'copy to', then fill out the info for each file. Read full review 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) Read full review Likelihood to Renew The environment is stable and we have not had any issues/downtime. The annual cost is reasonable.
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review Support Rating Support has been amazing compared to
Optim . Further, new features are very regular with File-AID - I can't remember the last time
Optim had a significant update. File-AID support is very receptive to feature requests and reported bugs, including sending out hotfixes quickly.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Implementation Rating Once the environments were up and running, the implementation was easy to synchronize with latest data prior to switchover.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Optim is more user friendly in how it operates, in my opinion. It's less obtuse to figure out how to extract and mask the data required compared to File-AID. Further,
Optim is easier to gather related tables, by far. I do prefer using File-AID via the Topaz GUI much more than using
Optim via its GUI. Finally, I personally believe that File-AID is significantly faster to run than
Optim - this could be a configuration issue.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Return on Investment I can debug (expeditor) much faster and more efficiently. In fact, I was asked yesterday to run their job through Workbench Expeditor. I can also view data movement much better. Code analysis lets me give a quicker explanation of what a program may do, as it provides a graphical interface showing processing and data movement. Read full review 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. Read full review ScreenShots