Home > CMS Software > Craft CMS > Craft CMS vs Pantheon.io

Craft CMS vs Pantheon.io

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Our analysts compared Craft CMS vs Pantheon.io based on data from our 400+ point analysis of CMS Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Overview Pricing Benefits & Features User Ratings Analyst Summary Screenshots
Craft CMS Software Tool
Pantheon.io Software Tool
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Product Basics

Craft CMS is a software to manage content and design websites from a centralized unified interface. Users can create content through attributes like custom fields, image editor, form builder and live preview. It enables digital asset management with files stored in Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud Files and Google Cloud Storage. Users can customize its dashboard and add and resize widgets which include an RSS feed, quick post, recent entries, updates, Google Analytics and commerce reports.

User management with role-based access permissions is available in the Pro version and above. Templates are powered by Twig, with DRY code and flexible, bring-your-own HTML development. For non-public URLs, the licensed plans are available for free so long as the site is not deployed to a public server. The vendor provides a free version.
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Pantheon is a leading WebOps solution used by developers and marketers to build, launch and host their Drupal and Wordpress websites. Its container-based infrastructure enables fast performance and enterprise-grade scalability to host thousands of instances, while simultaneously ensuring website standards and allowing the flexibility of customization. Its centralized management hub supports push notifications and nightly backups and keeps websites up-to-date. Autopilot detects updates automatically, validates them in a test environment and then deploys them on the live environment.

It integrates with New Relic to provide analytics on website performance and areas for improvement. All plans come with two free sandbox sites, Git-based test environments, free SSL certificates and an integrated content delivery network. The vendor offers a free trial.
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$279/Project, Freemium
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$29 Monthly
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Product Assistance

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Product Insights

  • Intuitive Content Management: Craft CMS offers a user-friendly interface that simplifies the process of creating, managing, and updating website content, making it accessible for users of all skill levels.
  • Flexible Templating: With its Twig-based templating system, Craft CMS allows for the creation of complex, dynamic websites that can be tailored to meet specific design and functionality requirements.
  • Highly Customizable: Developers can extend the functionality of Craft CMS through plugins and modules, enabling the creation of bespoke solutions that cater to unique business needs.
  • Robust Security: Craft CMS is built with security in mind, offering features like proactive updates, secure password hashing, and built-in protection against common vulnerabilities, ensuring your website remains safe from threats.
  • SEO Friendly: Craft CMS facilitates SEO efforts with features like automatic generation of SEO-friendly URLs, easy metadata management, and the ability to create sitemaps, helping improve your site's visibility in search engine results.
  • Multi-Site Capabilities: Manage multiple websites from a single Craft CMS installation, allowing for streamlined operations and consistent branding across all your digital properties.
  • Live Preview: The Live Preview feature enables content creators to see how their content will look in real-time before it goes live, ensuring accuracy and alignment with design standards.
  • First-Class Localization: Craft CMS supports multi-language and regional differences out-of-the-box, making it an ideal choice for businesses targeting a global audience.
  • Performance Optimization: Designed with performance in mind, Craft CMS ensures fast loading times and a smooth user experience, even for content-rich sites.
  • Community Support: Benefit from a vibrant and supportive community of developers and users who contribute to the platform's extensive plugin ecosystem and offer help and advice through forums and social media.
  • Content Versioning: Craft CMS automatically saves versions of your content as you make changes, allowing you to easily revert to previous versions if needed.
  • Comprehensive Asset Management: Efficiently manage digital assets like images and videos with powerful tools for uploading, organizing, and editing, directly within the CMS.
  • Granular User Permissions: Control access to different parts of your site with detailed user permissions, ensuring team members can only see and edit what they need to.
  • Scalability: Whether you're running a small blog or a large e-commerce site, Craft CMS scales with your business, accommodating growth without sacrificing performance.
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  • Scalability: Pantheon effortlessly scales to meet the demands of high-traffic websites, ensuring your digital presence remains robust and responsive during peak periods.
  • Security: With best-in-class security practices, Pantheon provides peace of mind by safeguarding your site against threats and vulnerabilities, keeping your data and user information secure.
  • Speed Optimization: Pantheon's advanced caching and content delivery network (CDN) capabilities significantly reduce load times, offering a swift and seamless user experience that can improve search engine rankings and user satisfaction.
  • Developer Workflow: Pantheon streamlines the development process with integrated tools for continuous integration and deployment, enabling teams to collaborate more efficiently and push updates with confidence.
  • High Availability: The platform's robust infrastructure ensures your website remains online and accessible around the clock, minimizing downtime and maintaining your online presence.
  • Automated Backups: Pantheon's automatic backup feature protects your website's data, providing regular snapshots that can be quickly restored, ensuring business continuity even in the face of unforeseen issues.
  • Performance Monitoring: Real-time performance monitoring tools help identify and resolve issues before they impact your users, ensuring a consistently high-quality experience.
  • Managed Updates: Pantheon takes the hassle out of maintaining your CMS by automatically applying security patches and updates, keeping your site secure without manual intervention.
  • Multi-environment Support: With separate development, testing, and live environments, Pantheon makes it easy to test changes and updates without risking the stability of your live site.
  • Global CDN: Pantheon's global content delivery network ensures that your site loads quickly for users around the world, enhancing global reach and user satisfaction.
  • Expert Support: Access to Pantheon's team of experts provides peace of mind, with professional support available to help troubleshoot issues and optimize your site's performance.
  • Flexibility: Pantheon supports a wide range of CMS options, including WordPress and Drupal, offering flexibility to choose the best platform for your needs.
  • Collaboration Tools: Built-in collaboration tools make it easy for teams to work together on projects, streamlining communication and project management.
  • SEO Benefits: By improving site speed, uptime, and security, Pantheon indirectly boosts your SEO efforts, helping your site rank higher in search engine results.
  • Cost Efficiency: Pantheon's comprehensive suite of tools and features can reduce the need for multiple third-party services, potentially lowering overall operational costs.
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  • Field Customization: Manage all custom field types and organize them. Assign bespoke fields to sections, users, tags and more.  
  • Multi-site: Run multiple sites from within a single software installation. Manage content across different regions and use other websites under the same parent company. Configure site-specific settings and employ site groups to keep them organized and define the order they should appear in on the control panel. 
  • Hassle-Free Localization: Target multiple territories and translate different languages by creating new sites to represent the content. 
  • Sharing Page Reviews: Share unpublished pages privately with team members using a link, keeping a tab on the work progress. 
  • Optimized Asset Management: Access built-in desktop-class asset management. Move files and folders quickly between local and cloud-based sources. Create a new transform that sets the parameters to output images at a specific size. 
  • Single-Click Update: Keep the software and plugins up-to-date with bug fixes, security enhancements and the latest features with a single click. 
  • Control Over Publishing: Full control over when to publish changes, along with the option of ‘Post Date’. 
  • Image Enhancement: Use the software’s Image Editor for resizing, rotating, flipping and cropping images. Set focus points, ensuring that every image renders seamlessly on all devices. 
  • Matrix: Split the content into different blocks and use them multiple times in any order. Enjoy the flexibility in creating any number of blocks containing as many fields as required. Change the layout of fields within the Matrix field to save space and give a better experience. 
  • Real-Time Preview: Update changes in the content and preview them even before publishing. Get a better idea of the design and appearance of the content in advance. 
  • Syntax Alert: Catch typos within the template with a helpful error message, along with a snippet of the code highlighting the offending line. 
  • Twig: Compile powerful template engines into optimized PHP files. Access various solutions offered by the language to keep templates DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself). 
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  • Serverless CMS: Keep sites up-to-date with automated detection technology that sends customers the latest core CMS updates, community-made modules and plug-ins. Ensure site integrity by testing updates utilizing Visual Regression Testing (VRT) in a Multidev environment.  
  • Global Content Delivery Network: Provides faster page loading speeds via globally located, strategically placed points of presence powered by CDN partner, Fastly. Guarantees content is delivered as close to users as possible, cutting page rendering time in half. 
  • Hosting: WordPress, Drupal and WooCommerce are supported by the platform's serverless architecture. Ensure high performance with tools such as Varnish, Redis and New Relic. 
  • Security: Compliance with privacy and data protection standards such as SOC 2, GDPR, FERPA and EU-US & US-Swiss Privacy Shield ensures top-of-the-line security. 
    • Container-Based Infrastructure: Facilities in the Linux Kernel allow applications to run safely in an isolated space. 
    • One-Blick Updates: Quickly update WordPress and Drupal with a single click. 
    • Denial of Service: WAF-style rules and DDoS Protection prevent denial-of-service attacks and continuously monitor website traffic to maintain a safe and controlled experience.  
    • Automated HTTPS: Automatically renewed TLS certificates keep sites and customers safe. 
    • Site Monitoring: Networks, servers and applications are monitored over a million times a day, creating accurate reports of current and past uptimes. 
    • SAML Integration: Increase site security using SAML — create multi-step authentication processes, set minimum password strengths and more. 
    • Backup and Retention: Manually prompt or schedule regular backups. All customer data is automatically sent to a cloud-based system as a compressed archive to ensure the protection and retention of data. 
  • Workflows: Work directly on the platform, test new features on identical site environments before going live and utilize on-demand cloud environments to create acceptance tests, feature branching and more. 
  • Multizone Failover: Minimize risk of data loss and website downtime by using a duplicate database, stored in a separate data center ensuring 99.99% SLA. In case of a major system outage, reroute website traffic to a secondary, real-time replica site. 
  • Website Portfolio Management:  Control WordPress and Drupal sites from a central dashboard, manage CMS updates and instill designs and code across over 1000 instances while maintaining personalization. 
  • Page Caching: Deliver repeat page views from the cache rather than from the CMS or origin data center. Granular cache control allows site owners to update pages, categories and assets on the Global CDN. Whole page caching increases page loading speeds. 
  • Search: A full-text website search service is built into the vendor’s site — refine search results by date, price, content type and more. 
  • Debug: Access Relic APM Pro, a free tool for debugging app performance issues. 
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Product Ranking

#57

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#87

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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 34 reviews
Great User Sentiment 626 reviews
83%
of users recommend this product

Craft CMS has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 83% when considering 34 user reviews from 2 recognized software review sites.

88%
of users recommend this product

Pantheon.io has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 88% when considering 626 user reviews from 6 recognized software review sites.

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4.7 (15)
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4.4 (572)
5.0 (1)
4.5 (16)
4.1 (33)
4.7 (10)
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4.5 (4)
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4.3 (9)

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Intuitive Interface: Craft CMS is often praised for its user-friendly interface, making it easy for content editors and administrators to manage and publish content efficiently. The interface is clean, well-organized, and intuitive, allowing users to find what they need quickly and easily.
Flexibility and Customization: Craft CMS provides a high degree of flexibility and customization, allowing developers to create bespoke content models and tailor the system to meet specific project requirements. This flexibility empowers users to build unique and complex websites without being constrained by rigid structures.
Performance and Scalability: Craft CMS is known for its excellent performance and scalability, ensuring that websites built on the platform can handle high traffic volumes and complex content structures without compromising speed or reliability. This is crucial for businesses and organizations that require a robust and scalable online presence.
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Developer-Friendly: Pantheon's platform is built with developers in mind, offering tools like Dev, Test, and Live environments for streamlined workflows.
Strong Security: Pantheon prioritizes security with features like HTTPS by default and regular security updates, giving users peace of mind.
Scalability: Pantheon's infrastructure is designed to handle traffic spikes and growth, ensuring websites can scale seamlessly as needed.
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Steeper Learning Curve: Craft CMS's flexibility and power come at the cost of a steeper learning curve compared to simpler platforms like Squarespace or Wix. Users accustomed to more intuitive interfaces may find Craft's initial setup and content management less straightforward.
Plugin Dependence: While Craft CMS offers core features, extending functionality often requires plugins. This can lead to challenges in maintaining compatibility between plugins and the core system, especially during updates. Additionally, some essential plugins may require a purchase, adding to the overall cost.
Pricing Structure: Craft CMS's pricing structure, which involves a per-project license fee and potential plugin costs, can be a deterrent for budget-conscious users or smaller projects. The initial investment might seem higher compared to open-source alternatives or platforms with freemium models.
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Limited Plugin Ecosystem: Users accustomed to the vast plugin libraries of WordPress often find Pantheon's selection limited, making it harder to find specific functionalities.
Steep Learning Curve: Pantheon's focus on developer-centric tools can pose a challenge for users without technical expertise, requiring a significant time investment to master the platform.
Pricing Structure: While Pantheon offers a free tier, scaling up for increased traffic or storage can become expensive, potentially exceeding the budgets of smaller businesses or individual users.
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Looking to "craft" the perfect website? Craft CMS might just be the tool you need. Craft CMS has garnered a reputation for its user-friendly interface and flexibility. Users appreciate the intuitive control panel, which simplifies content creation and management. The ability to customize the dashboard to individual preferences further enhances the user experience. Craft CMS's flexible content modeling system allows users to design their content structure, making it suitable for various website types, from simple blogs to complex e-commerce platforms. Its headless architecture provides developers with the freedom to deliver content to any platform, offering greater versatility compared to traditional CMS platforms. However, some users find Craft CMS's capabilities less extensive than those of platforms like WordPress, which offer a wider range of built-in features and plugins. Additionally, Craft CMS's flexibility can lead to a steeper learning curve for beginners. Despite these drawbacks, Craft CMS's strengths lie in its ability to empower users to create unique and tailored digital experiences. Its focus on customizability and user experience makes it an ideal choice for businesses and individuals seeking a CMS that can adapt to their specific needs and grow with them over time.

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Pantheon has garnered a reputation for its robust feature set and user-friendly interface. Users praise its flexibility in supporting diverse content types, enabling the creation of unique websites that truly reflect a brand's identity. For instance, Pantheon's support for custom layouts and themes allows businesses to tailor their online presence to their specific needs. Furthermore, Pantheon's scalability makes it a suitable choice for websites experiencing high traffic volumes. However, some users have expressed concerns about the platform's pricing, finding it to be relatively expensive compared to competitors like WordPress or Wix. Overall, Pantheon is best suited for businesses of all sizes that prioritize a powerful and user-friendly CMS, particularly those with high-traffic websites that require robust security features.

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