NodeSquirrel Service End of Life
Pantheon Integrates Drupal and WordPress Backups Into Core Offering

Pantheon & NodeSquirrel
In 2015, Pantheon and NodeSquirrel joined forces in order to help make Drupal backups a free and easy experience. Since then, we’ve integrated this simple backup process seamlessly into the Pantheon dashboard, making this a regular part of your Pantheon service. To ensure our product team is supporting and enhancing the integrated backup tool, we’ve made the decision to fully retire NodeSquirrel as a secondary service offering, including as a backup option for non-Pantheon customers.
Why shut down NodeSquirrel?
To be frank, we haven’t done a great job of keeping the legacy NodeSquirrel service running to our standards. There have been a series of incidents in the last year (e.g. DNS problems) that have caused customers to receive error messages instead of free backups. These problems have exposed the fact that we haven’t been maintaining the service with the same expectations - or resources - that we expect of Pantheon. Shutting down NodeSquirrel acknowledges this reality and allows us to focus fully on our core offerings.
Frequently Asked Questions
When Will NodeSquirrel Go Away?
NodeSquirrel will stop accepting backups after September 30, 2019.
How Long Will Backups be Stored?
Users will be able to download backups through November 1, 2019.
But Backups are Important!
We agree. Backups are built into Pantheon. If you’re running a website that needs backups, Pantheon is a great choice. We encourage you to give us a try.
But Pantheon Isn’t Free!
Correct. That’s a big part of the reason we haven’t prioritized NodeSquirrel with additional resources. Reliable infrastructure costs money. There isn’t really a way around that fact.
I Can’t Afford Pantheon. What Now?
There are lots of options out there for pretty cheap storage, including Amazon S3. While it’s not free - it shouldn’t be too much for individual websites to cover. Tractorbeam is another DIY option worth looking into.
I Can Afford Pantheon. What Now?
Cool! Contact us today. We’d be happy to help you get started.
Contact Us
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