SPS Commerce Modernizes with Next.js on Pantheon

SPS Commerce is a leading supply chain network connecting retailers, brands, manufacturers, and logistics providers. Focused on omnichannel retail and e-commerce, they offer a suite of solutions to their 50,000+ customers in 60 countries, processing $1 trillion in orders annually.

When SPS acquired SupplyPike in 2024, it inherited a product called SupplierWiki, a central reference guide for supply chain professionals. As a long-standing Pantheon customer, SPS Commerce chose Pantheon's new Next.js web platform over Netlify to bring SupplierWiki into the fold.

Ryan Walker, Development Manager at SPS Commerce, leads the team responsible for SupplierWiki. His challenge was familiar to anyone who has managed a post-acquisition tech stack: find the operational wins and standardize fast without disrupting a product already serving customers.

"We've been using Pantheon for over 12 years, and that boosted a lot of our confidence. When Next.js became available on Pantheon, having that opportunity to consolidate our services was a no-brainer for us." 

— Ryan Walker, Development Manager, SPS Commerce

Challenge: From Netlify to Pantheon

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When the SupplierWiki team joined SPS Commerce, it brought its own web platform setup: a Next.js frontend running on Netlify, separate from SPS's existing WordPress marketing site, which had been hosted on Pantheon for over 12 years. The team had something that worked. But "working" wasn't the same as "ready for what's next." Three gaps stood out:

1. Platform sprawl. Before consolidation, SPS Commerce's website ran on two separate web platforms: WordPress hosted on Pantheon, and a Next.js frontend hosted on Netlify. That meant two dashboards, two support relationships, and two billing arrangements — all to manage a single user-facing site that includes roughly 1,600 pages across five languages. On top of an already complex cloud footprint, adding another vendor for the web layer compounded operational overhead without delivering anything new.
2. No proper deployment pipeline. SupplierWiki's content changes constantly, maintained by a team of writers and content managers who treat every update with the same rigor engineers apply to code. What the team needed was a structured Dev, Test, Live workflow to ship those updates safely, and a clear way for writers and engineers to collaborate without introducing production risk.
3. Two products sharing one website. SupplierWiki and SPS Commerce's existing marketing site live on the same domain but are built on different technologies — SupplierWiki on Next.js, the marketing site on WordPress. That meant caching, authentication, and domain routing all had to be coordinated across both systems before the team could safely send real traffic through.

For nearly a year after the SupplyPike acquisition, the status quo was adequate, and a migration could wait. But the gaps surfaced on closer look. The site was live on Netlify, customers were using it, but the workflow around it wasn’t working. What SPS Commerce needed wasn't a reason to leave Netlify. It was a reason for consolidation to make sense. Pantheon's Next.js launch was that reason.

There's always risk in being an early adopter. But the alternative was staying on two platforms indefinitely. The consolidation case was strong enough that we were willing to work through the unknowns, and Pantheon made sure we didn't have to work through them alone."

 — Ryan Walker, Development Manager, SPS Commerce

Technical Approach: From Familiar Dashboard to Lightning Fast Caching

What the SupplierWiki team lacked was a structured Dev, Test, Live workflow to ship changes safely, and a clear way to ensure content writers and engineers could collaborate without introducing production risk. Here’s how they made it work.

One dashboard for everything. Next.js sites are fully integrated into the Pantheon Dashboard, which SPS Commerce's team already knows. Dev, Test, and Live environments are available from day one, the same structured deployment pipeline SPS Commerce has relied on for WordPress for years.

GitHub-native code management. Pantheon's Next.js platform uses GitHub for code management, right where SPS Commerce's engineers already work. Pull requests automatically spin up Multidev environments, giving the team isolated, branch-specific preview environments without any manual setup.

Getting caching right, including auth. Caching is fundamental to any Next.js deployment. SPS Commerce integrated the Pantheon Cache Handler (available on NPM) to coordinate cache invalidation between the WordPress backend and the Next.js frontend, so content updates appear on the frontend quickly and reliably.

Domain masking on every environment, not just production. SPS Commerce's setup relies on domain masking, so WordPress and Next.js share a single domain seamlessly. Walker's advice: apply domain masking to the test environment from the start, not just production. If authentication can only be fully tested in production, that's a serious risk. Making dev match prod eliminates it before it becomes a problem.

Secrets management, built in. Pantheon's native Secrets Management system, now included in Terminus Core as of version 4.2, gave the team a centralized, encrypted place to manage API keys and tokens across environments, replacing scattered local .env files and the sync headaches that come with them.

Our second favorite feature — maybe my favorite feature — was being able to jump into the Pantheon Community Slack channel and communicate with all the other engineers when we had questions. The amount of practical suggestions and help was really good, really inspiring. It totally changed our minds. Within the first week, we felt like we were steered in the right direction." 
 

— Ryan Walker, Development Manager, SPS Commerce

Results: Benefits of Platform Consolidation

SPS Commerce launched SupplierWiki on Pantheon's Next.js platform with active users from day one. Traffic is monitored, analytics are routing correctly, and the team runs everything from a single dashboard.

One platform. WordPress and Next.js now live on the same platform, under the same support relationship, with a single billing arrangement and no context-switching between hosting dashboards. Running a smaller backend plan for the WordPress site alongside a scaled plan for the traffic-facing Next.js frontend keeps costs sensible, too. But the real winner is organizational clarity: every new vendor means another surface to manage, another relationship to maintain, another place where something can go wrong at the worst possible moment.

A proper pipeline. Dev, Test, Live environments give content managers and engineers a safe, structured path to ship without pushing directly to production.

Standardized workflows. SPS Commerce applied the same institutional knowledge, tooling, and processes they'd built over 12 years on Pantheon to an entirely new product, acquired mid-year. For a team managing two products on a single website, with dynamic content, live authentication flows, and real customers, that foundation matters.