| Pantheon | Acquia | |
|---|---|---|
| Developer productivity | Up to 4x team productivity with WebOps tooling: Dev, Test, Live, Multidev, Autopilot, GitHub Integration. | Script-heavy workflows require manual maintenance and troubleshooting. Slow deployments that often introduce instability push releases to off-hours. |
| Platform flexibility | Supports all versions of Drupal. | Platform for “Acquia CMS” can only support Modern Drupal. No solution for those with legacy (Drupal 7) sites in their portfolio. |
| Technology ecosystem | Includes the best of open WebCMS and modern front-end frameworks, with no limit on integrations. | Aging suite of add-on acquisitions being sunset in favor of white-labeled exclusive partnership offers. |
| Content velocity | Real-time collaboration and staging for content and campaigns. | Updates are slow, high-friction and often require dev or IT to unblock. |
Your Acquia migration, handled end-to-end
Making the move from Acquia to Pantheon? You're joining hundreds of teams who've successfully migrated to reduce costs, improve performance, and simplify their operations. Our dedicated migration team handles the technical complexity while you focus on your business.
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Tens of thousands of web teams run on Pantheon
Perforce
"Our issues were solved overnight."
– Jeremy Pieper, Web Development Manager, Perforce
Before Pantheon:
Frequent outages, inefficient workflows and inflexible multisite management with Acquia’s Site Factory.
After switching:
Perforce's dev team found a silver bullet with Pantheon’s Upstreams for multisite management. Bot traffic, cache issues and deployment delays are gone, and marketing and IT teams are now free to focus on growth.
"Pantheon’s support team has been incredible… Compare that to Acquia, where tickets of even medium to high importance would take seven days for a response if we get a response at all.” – Tom Trench, Drupal Developer, Perforce
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Martin County, FL
"We haven’t had any problems with cyberattacks and I think that’s due to Pantheon’s tight security and fast security patches and updates."
– Jennifer Hagedorn, Web Content Analyst, Martin County
Before Pantheon:
The team struggled with slow updates, outages and unreliable support on Acquia during hurricane season and COVID-19 traffic surges.
After switching:
With Pantheon’s Multidev workflows and real-time performance alerts, Martin County now delivers reliable, secure updates during emergencies without downtime or delays.
“We didn’t have [Multidev] on Acquia and sometimes we had problems with content getting erased. Now, on Pantheon, we have a more agile process for the Promet Source team to set up environments without impacting our weekly sprints and releases. It’s super helpful!” – Jennifer Hagedorn, Web Content Analyst, Martin County
Recent successful migrations
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North Dakota State University
NDSU unified 300 sites on Pantheon, boosting performance, governance, usability.
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Vertafore
Modernized their legacy Drupal footprint and consolidated workflows onto Pantheon.
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Travelopia
Migrated large, multi-brand sites to gain faster performance and operational efficiency.
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Monotype
Reduced hosting complexity and improved global reliability by moving to Pantheon.
What to expect
Your migration timeline.
A clear, low-risk path from your current Acquia environment to Pantheon. Most teams complete the full migration in under 14 days.
Week 1: Kickoff & Assessment
• Technical audit of your Acquia configuration
• Compatibility check for modules, integrations, and workflows
• Finalized migration plan with milestones and owners
Week 2: Automated Migration
• Code, database, and files transferred with automated tooling
• All content, users, and configurations preserved
• Fully staged test environment ready for validation
Week 3: Validation & Go-Live
• Your team reviews and signs off
• Edge cases resolved together
• Zero-downtime cutover to production
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We've got you covered
Migrate with confidence.
Your content, integrations, and workflows come with you, and your operations get an upgrade.
What stays the same
✓ All content and structured data
✓ User accounts and permissions
✓ URL structure and SEO value
✓ Custom modules, themes, and workflows
What gets better
✓ Streamlined Dev/Test/Live environments
✓ Automatic updates and security patching
✓ Built-in performance monitoring
✓ 24/7 support included in every plan
Every Pantheon migration includes:
- A dedicated migration specialist
- Automated tooling for speed and consistency
- Performance benchmarking before and after
- 30 days of post-migration support
- Rollback guarantee
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Why teams choose Pantheon over Acquia
Pantheon
- Serverless architecture that is truly elastic and fits sites of all sizes.
- Native AI-first platform with comprehensive DrupalCMS AI integration and deep integration with the Google ecosystem.
- Support for sites of all shapes and sizes across an enterprise portfolio.
- Elite support for Drupal and other leading web technology from tenured subject matter experts.
- Full Platform support for Drupal, WordPress and NextJS, as well as integration with Google Docs.
Acquia
- Fixed Kubernetes (EKS) infrastructure is slow and costly to scale.
- AI capabilities primarily through third-party integrations and partner solutions. Limited to specific modules with no integrated LLM framework.
- Site Factory forces monolithic one-size-fits-all approach to portfolio governance.
- Service and support teams replaced with low-cost call center, significant expertise drained from the organization.
- Acquia Source CMS is a SaaS version of Drupal.
FAQs
Will we lose Acquia-specific features?
Every major Acquia capability has a direct Pantheon equivalent or a more modern alternative. We map feature dependencies during the assessment.
Does Pantheon match Acquia’s Drupal expertise?
Pantheon’s Drupal team includes core contributors and long-time maintainers. We’ve supported Drupal sites for more than 14 years.
How much will our migration cost?
It varies by site complexity. Many customers qualify for free migration. Our team can walk through what applies to your organization.
Can we test before going live?
Yes. We migrate a full staging copy first so your team can validate performance, integrations, and workflows long before production cutover.