The Complete Acquia Alternative Evaluation Framework

Image

As organizations grow and evolve, their technology stack must be flexible enough to accommodate change. For many enterprises that rely on Drupal, the decision to leave Acquia can feel like a daunting one.

While Acquia is a popular choice for Drupal hosting, it’s worth remembering that Drupal itself is open source, which means there are several enterprise-grade platforms that support it. Whether it's due to rising costs, vendor lock-in or a desire for greater control over the platform, businesses need an alternative that better meets their unique needs.

In this post, we’ll walk you through a comprehensive framework for evaluating Acquia alternatives and help you identify the best solution for your unique situation.

Why organizations leave Acquia

There are several common reasons why organizations leave Acquia, each of which speaks to a deeper need for greater flexibility, control and cost-efficiency:

• Vendor lock-in: Acquia’s platform is deeply integrated with its proprietary tools and infrastructure, which can create a sense of vendor lock-in. Over time, organizations may find themselves overly dependent on Acquia’s ecosystem, limiting their ability to innovate, customize or switch to a different technology stack without significant disruption.
• Site Factory workflow constraints: Site Factory imposes rigid development workflows such as limited on-demand environments, sequential deployments, Drush version conflicts and tightly controlled subtheme structures. This slows teams down and restricts modern DevOps practices.
• Multisite cost escalation: Acquia’s multisite and Site Factory pricing often scales faster than expected, driven by per-environment charges, per-request billing and high minimum licensing fees. Because resource usage can’t be consolidated across sites, organizations struggle to control total costs as their portfolio grows.
• Flexibility and customization limitations: While Acquia provides a robust platform, it may not offer the level of flexibility that some organizations need. Whether it's a desire to integrate more specialized tools, optimize performance or scale infrastructure more efficiently, the need for more granular control often leads organizations to explore other options.
• Innovation fatigue: When it comes to digital experience platforms (DXPs), staying ahead of the competition means continuous innovation. Some organizations find that Acquia’s offerings, while solid, are not always at the cutting edge of technology. This can lead to a search for platforms that provide more innovative tools, greater developer autonomy and the freedom to experiment with new solutions.
• Support and service concerns: While Acquia’s support is generally highly rated, some organizations find that the level of support and service they need doesn’t align with the standard offerings. This can lead to frustration, particularly for organizations that require personalized, rapid-response assistance.
• Pricing complexity: Acquia offers a range of packages that vary by product, feature set and level of support. Many organizations find it difficult to determine exactly what’s included in each tier or discover they need to upgrade to access capabilities they assumed were standard. This lack of clarity can make it hard to forecast costs accurately, prompting teams to look for alternatives that offer more transparent or predictable pricing models.

Ultimately, the decision to leave Acquia is driven by the desire for a more cost-effective, flexible and innovative solution. Organizations looking for a change want more than just a hosting provider – they want a platform that empowers them to grow, scale and innovate on their terms.

Four proven paths away from Acquia platform lock-in

There are several paths organizations can take to escape this lock-in while still leveraging the benefits of Drupal.

Path 1: Keep Drupal, change the hosting layer

If your organization is already heavily invested in Drupal and you don’t want to move away from the platform, the most straightforward alternative is to explore different hosting options that allow you to retain the flexibility and power of Drupal while removing the reliance on Acquia’s managed services.

This path offers:

• Cost efficiency: Hosting your Drupal site on alternatives like Pantheon can significantly reduce costs compared to Acquia’s premium offerings, all while maintaining high performance, security and scalability.
• Flexibility and customization: These platforms often offer greater flexibility in terms of configuration, allowing you to tailor your hosting environment to your specific needs. You can also have more control over scaling, performance tuning and the ability to add or remove services as your needs evolve.
• Smooth Drupal integration: Services like Pantheon are designed to work smoothly with Drupal, providing optimized hosting and development environments that make it easy to manage your site, deploy changes and scale up as necessary.

Keeping Drupal and changing the hosting layer is best suited for organizations that want to retain Drupal and need more control over their hosting environment or want to cut costs without sacrificing quality.

Path 2: Switch to a different DXP entirely 

For those requiring a DXP, Sitecore and Adobe may be solid alternatives for organizations that need more than just content management and want to streamline their operations.

These platforms are significantly more expensive when compared to hosting solutions like Pantheon. They also come with a steeper learning curve and require more specialized resources to manage and optimize.

Keep in mind that migrating away from Drupal entirely can be a major undertaking, requiring significant time and effort to move content, data and processes to a new platform. However, this approach may be the best option for enterprises seeking an integrated, enterprise-grade solution that goes beyond content management and requires advanced marketing, personalization and analytics tools.

Path 3: Unbundle into specialized tools 

Acquia’s platform is designed to keep everything under one roof – from hosting and site design to marketing automation and personalization. While that integration can be convenient, it also creates deep platform lock-in.

For example, Acquia Convert (Acquia’s migration service) helps organizations migrate their Drupal sites and data into the Acquia Cloud ecosystem. While it simplifies onboarding, it also commits your infrastructure and workflows to Acquia’s proprietary environment, which makes it harder and more expensive to leave later. If your long-term goal is flexibility, consider using open, platform-agnostic migration tools that keep you in control of your data and infrastructure choices.

Organizations that don’t need the full suite of features provided by Acquia or a full-fledged DXP, unbundling your technology stack into specialized tools could be the most flexible and cost-effective solution. This approach involves separating your needs into smaller, more targeted solutions for hosting, content management, marketing automation and other services.

By unbundling, you can select the best tools for each specific task. This allows you to get the best performance and functionality for each aspect of your digital experience without paying for an all-in-one solution.

For instance, teams seeking similar functionality to Acquia’s Site Studio but without lock-in often look to alternatives such as:

• Layout Builder (Drupal core): A native, open-source option that offers flexible drag-and-drop layout management directly within Drupal.
• Paragraphs: A popular Drupal module that provides structured, component-based editing with full control over content modeling.
• Third-party design systems: Tools like Pattern Lab or Storybook allow teams to manage reusable design components independently from hosting platforms.

However, managing multiple specialized tools can become complex, especially when integrating them into a cohesive ecosystem. It requires careful planning and coordination to ensure that your stack works smoothly. You'll need more internal resources or external support to handle the integrations, updates and troubleshooting of multiple systems.

Path 4: Migrate from Drupal to WordPress

For some organizations, the best way to escape Acquia and its lock-in is to leave Drupal entirely and move to WordPress. This becomes especially relevant for teams still on Drupal 7, which reached end-of-life on January 5, 2025, and now face a major replatform decision either way.

In this path, you treat the migration as both a CMS change (Drupal → WordPress) and a platform change (Acquia → a more flexible hosting layer, such as Pantheon that supports WordPress as well as Drupal).

WordPress offers a much larger and more affordable talent pool and a modern block-based editing experience (Gutenberg) that empowers non-technical teams. Instead of paying Acquia’s premium for tightly coupled Drupal services, you can pair WordPress with a WebOps platform like Pantheon (which is also optimized for Drupal) to get optimal performance.

Also, instead of being bound to Acquia’s prescribed workflows and proprietary services, teams can standardize on their preferred CI/CD, observability and security tooling around WordPress.

You’ll need to plan for a full content and template migration, retrain teams on WordPress and rebuild any custom integrations or workflows.

This path is best suited for organizations that don’t necessarily require the intricacies of Drupal itself and are ready to treat the Acquia exit as an opportunity to simplify the management of their online presence.

Building your platform requirements assessment

Creating a platform requirements assessment ensures that your team has a clear understanding of what the new platform must deliver and it helps eliminate any potential guesswork during the selection and migration process. By breaking down your needs into key categories, you’ll be able to systematically evaluate potential alternatives and ensure a smooth transition.

Step 1: Define core functionalities and features

Start by listing the core functionalities and features that your organization absolutely needs in a new platform. These are the non-negotiable aspects that must be supported, no matter which alternative you choose. Some of the most common areas to consider include:

• Content management capabilities: What are your content management requirements? Do you need robust media management, versioning, multilingual support or an intuitive editorial interface?
• Personalization and user experience: Will you need to deliver personalized content based on user behaviors, demographics or interactions with your brand? Consider if your platform needs advanced features for dynamic content delivery or personalized experiences.
• Marketing automation: Is your team relying on automation for workflows, email campaigns or audience segmentation? Determine the level of marketing automation needed and whether it needs to be integrated with other systems.
• E-commerce integration: If your organization runs an e-commerce operation, identify any specific integrations with e-commerce platforms or features such as cart management, product catalogs and secure checkout.
• Multisite support: If you manage multiple sites or a network of subdomains, consider whether multisite management is essential and what tools you need for centralized governance, content sharing and updates across multiple properties.

Step 2: Evaluate performance and scalability requirements

For your new platform, determine what level of performance is required and ensure that the platform can scale to accommodate future growth:

• Traffic and load handling: How much traffic do you expect the platform to handle? Will it need to scale rapidly in response to high traffic spikes (e.g., product launches or seasonal campaigns)? Look for providers that offer scalable infrastructure that can grow with you.
• Global reach and latency: If your business operates globally, consider how the platform will perform in different regions. Does the platform provide global delivery networks (CDNs) to ensure low latency and fast load times across all geographies?
• Reliability and uptime: Define your uptime and reliability expectations. What level of service level agreement (SLA) guarantees do you need and how critical is uptime for your business operations?

Step 3: Assess integration and customization needs

An important part of your platform migration will be understanding how well the alternative solution integrates with your existing technology stack and third-party services. The more easily your new platform integrates with your existing tools, the smoother your transition will be.

Consider the following:

• Third-party tools: List the external tools and services your organization currently uses or plans to use, such as CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot), marketing automation platforms, analytics (Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics), e-commerce solutions (Shopify, Magento) and more.
• Custom development: Will you need a platform that supports extensive custom development? If your organization relies on custom-built functionality or unique business workflows, ensure that the new platform supports custom modules, APIs and flexibility for integration with bespoke systems.
• Data migration: Think about how your data – content, user profiles, product catalogs, etc. – will migrate from Acquia or your existing system to the new platform. What level of data transfer, transformation and integration support do you need during the migration?

Step 4: Consider security and compliance requirements

It’s crucial that your new platform adheres to industry standards and compliance requirements relevant to your business. Look for features such as encryption (in transit and at rest), role-based access controls, multi-factor authentication and proactive security monitoring to safeguard your data and infrastructure.

If your organization is subject to regulatory standards such as GDPR, HIPAA or PCI-DSS, ensure that the platform can support these compliance requirements. This includes data storage, audit trails, consent management and other regulatory needs.

Also, ensure that the platform has robust backup systems and disaster recovery plans in place to minimize the risk of data loss in case of a failure.

Step 5: Identify support and service requirements

Determine what level of support is necessary for your team. Does your organization require around-the-clock support? Some platforms offer 24/7 support with a dedicated account manager, while others may have limited support hours.

Look for a platform that provides robust documentation, training materials and community support, ensuring your team can self-service when needed.

Additionally, decide if you need a fully managed service, where the provider handles most of the technical management or if your team can take a more hands-on approach with a self-managed platform.

Step 6: Establish budget parameters

Establish clear budget parameters, considering initial migration costs and long-term operational costs, including:

• Licensing and subscription fees: Determine the ongoing cost for platform licensing or subscription.
• Implementation and migration costs: Assess the cost of migrating to the new platform, including development, consulting and data transfer.
• Support and maintenance fees: Consider ongoing support and maintenance costs, especially if the platform requires a high level of support.

Plan your migration strategically

Migrating away from Acquia to a new platform can be complex, but with a clear plan, the process can be streamlined and successful:

1. Set clear objectives and key results (OKRs): Start by defining what success looks like for your migration. Set measurable goals for performance, cost savings, user experience improvements and operational efficiency.
2. Develop a detailed migration plan: Create a roadmap that breaks the migration process into distinct phases, such as discovery, content migration, development, testing and go-live. This includes planning for technical architecture, hosting setups and ensuring that teams have the expertise they need.
3. Prepare for content and data migration: Conduct a content audit, removing outdated assets and prepare for data mapping between your old and new platforms. Use automation tools to speed up the migration process and minimize human error.
4. Build and test on the new platform: Develop necessary integrations and configurations and ensure everything works as expected. Thoroughly test all functionalities, including content, user workflows and integrations, to ensure the new platform meets your requirements. Running a parallel environment with the old and new systems can help identify issues early on.
5. Plan for cutover and go-live: Schedule the DNS switch, database migration and other technical transitions to minimize downtime. Communication is key – ensure internal stakeholders and customers are informed about the timing. Post-go-live, provide support to handle any immediate issues.
6. Post-go-live monitoring and optimization: After going live, continue to monitor the new platform’s performance. Track site speed, uptime and error logs. Collect feedback from internal teams and users and use it to fine-tune features and fix any issues.

The best alternative to Acquia: Pantheon

Making the decision to leave Acquia doesn’t mean sacrificing quality or performance. It’s about finding a platform that aligns with your needs, offers flexibility and supports your long-term digital goals – without the enterprise tax and vendor lock-in.

Pantheon stands out as an ideal alternative for organizations looking to maintain the power of Drupal while enjoying better control, scalability and cost-efficiency. With its developer-first platform, optimized for performance and ease of use, Pantheon provides all the tools you need for smooth hosting, rapid deployment and exceptional site performance. For example:

• High-performance hosting with automatic scaling: Pantheon offers optimized infrastructure for Drupal, ensuring fast load times and reliable uptime even during traffic spikes. With automatic scaling, your site can smoothly handle growth without worrying about performance bottlenecks or manual intervention.
• Developer-first workflow and CI/CD integration: Pantheon is built for developers, providing tools like integrated Git workflows. Its WebOps workflow allows for faster, more reliable updates – keeping your team focused on innovation rather than maintenance.
• Comprehensive security and automated backups: Security is built into Pantheon’s platform, with features like SSL support, automatic updates and proactive monitoring with New Relic. Regular automated backups ensure that your data is protected, giving you peace of mind as you scale and evolve your digital presence.
• Scalable multi-site management: Pantheon provides a flexible, modern approach to managing large site portfolios through Upstreams, which gives teams centralized governance without the constraints of Drupal’s traditional multisite architecture or Acquia’s aging Site Factory model. Unlike Site Factory – which enforces rigid templates, sequential deployments and high operational overhead – Upstreams enable each site to inherit shared code while still allowing local customization, parallel development and independent releases. This empowers organizations to scale dozens or hundreds of sites efficiently, with far greater agility and far lower operational friction.

Ready to migrate to a platform that supports growth, flexibility and performance? Start with Pantheon today and unlock the full potential of your Drupal sites!