Pantheon negative review #34627 by https://twitter.com/nextgenthemes
Pantheon got a negative review on
https://twitter.com/nextgenthemes ( -hidden- )
Extreme caution if you need support!
Pantheon hosting review.
I have moved my WP site to them after maintaining my own VPS because I wanted piece of mind and lost already to much time being a server admin rather then getting stuff done.
Good things first:
1. That git system can actually be very useful to stage and test a site properly and risk free.
2. Have not done any benchmarks but I assume their servers and caching system is solid. I have actually used some latency and page loads tests on their main site before signing up and their site was faster then many others to I figured the sites they host may be like this maybe even on the the systems.
3. Automatic backups for all this environments (I personally only have setup live but still something positive to have)
The bad:
1. Their system is VERY specialized and you can not expect plugins to work, more on that later.
2. Get this: Their $25 per month lowest plan claims to have 256MB of application memory. But guess what your WordPress install has available - 40MB! I actually found out about this because a plugin told it to me. I was actually able to set the WP_MEMORY_LIMIT or what the wp-config define value is called to 256 MB BUT: This is a so claimed high performance premium WordPress host that is in this business for years. I call this either purpose or just lack of paying any attention, this should be set automatically for you when you setup a site, like all the other wp-config values with environment variables. So it could upgrade automatically for you if you upgrade your plan. But my install had 40 MB! I would not call that managed hosting.
3. The learning curve is quite a lot of you first get confronted with their specialized git staging system. It would be very well worth it to learn if everything else would be fine but its not. And it not ends with the git staging or their "terminus" their wp-config, upload folders ... you name it its all different then elsewhere. For example they have their own config for restricting folder access and things like that you have to learn.
4. Their specialized system is very in-transparent and its proprietary and thats also what concerns me as a open source enthusiast. You learn their system but if you move to another host you cant reuse what you have learned, you can not study what goes on in their system exactly.
5. I found out by trial and error that you actually can open a support ticket when you want but you have to contact the support chat first and basically beg for them to open a ticket for you. That can be extremely annoying. Its nice to have a chat and they actually respond within minutes. My experience is about 8+ minutes and its seems that it was ofter longer then the average they display. So the chat in its own is a nice little feature to have, you can ask them simple questions, they may point you to FAQ and doc entries thats all fine but that chat window is extremely small and amplifies this annoying feeling of being restricted. I think its more higher ranked technicians who handle the support tickets. The chat support is supposed to determine what is worth a ticket I guess. But the issue is if you KNOW you don't want to have this tiny little annoying chat window where you can barely type your issue in, when you know your problem is supposed to be a ticket that may take some time some back and forth, something not for a chat. You have to ask them first so you open a chat wait 5-20 minutes is what I got I think. And then they ask you a question and they their response time is again many minutes. They do not stay with you so to speak, they probably chat with many people at the same time. If all you want is for them to open a ticket for you its quite annoying to have this back and forth multiple times for no reason whatsoever. They artificially restrict support tickets so only the $100 plans can open them themselves. But the support lead told me "we always open tickets for you, just ask". That makes no sense to me, probably not even for them! Because its wastes time of chat support persons. Not to be fair their chat is not as temporary as I first thought, the sessions are actually saved and you can resume and things get emailed to you. Still annoying for anything that exceeds a simple question.
Now to make things clear I do sometimes take multiple days to respond to my customers but they can open a ticket and write as much as they want and be done with it and move on in their day and come back later. I cant to that on pantheon. I would trade that chat in for real tickets any day even if response times are slow.
6. And lastly my experience with the support, dodging dodging dodging.
I had a problem with easy digital downloads. And and tried getting help from them, they first ask me to provide them with steps to reproduce, I did quite resistively provided them with a perfect debugging env to then after all of that get a their support policy "we do not touch your code" quoted. I tried to fight for my support, narrowing it down making it more easy for them to debug. They repeatedly refused support. I argued that I do not care if they touch my code, with on itself is a intentionally vague phrased policy because everything is your code. Your entire site is your code, even your wp-config is your code and they actually cloned by site and tested around and helped me figured out another issue before by actually touching my code so to speak. They cloned my site into a multidev env, that is also a feature for the higher plans only. I guess I am supposed to be grateful because basically everything they do it actually something they do not need to if you think of it from that angle.
Anyway I fought and they spend quite some time arguing with me quoting their policy again and again instead of actually listening to me, giving me maybe hints to their NGINX config, symlinking or anything why the downloads failed. So they essentially let you lose on their highly specialized system but if you have any issues they will not help you even if related to that very system. Here a direct quote:
"This might turn out to be one of those plugins that just doesn’t work well on the platform. You’ll need to continue debugging. Let us know if you’re able to get to the root cause and if there is a work around we’ll happily add that to our problematic plugins page." So this so called premium WP managed hoster is actually not interested in helping you in any way when it comes to their in-transparent system. You don't even know what NGINX configs they use ... they just let you stand in the rain. And you have to pay 25$ for that!
Oh I forget to tell you that I actually already needed a special plugin to make PHP sessions work in their system. I mean no big deal but it at the same time something that is not native and may be error prone ...
And it turned out I was right, the EDD support debugged hours on my site and through trail and error, without knowing the NGINX config their found the issue and I now need a second special plugin that does something with headers to make downloads work. And the EDD people need special code that they will include in the next versions. And now I am supposed to present pantheon with the solution they did not help in any, even so small way. Literally not one hint. For a so called specialized WP host I think this is absolutely unacceptable! If you take this much money, have a that much specialized system you are supposed to actually help when issues arise instead of just refusing to help.
And now I have to use another special plugin
7. In no way is this service worth $25 a month! If I would know all this before I would have staying on my VPS and invested the time to manually roll a staging system.
I feel very uncomfortable now because other plugins I may need may also fail in the future.
Pantheon hosting review.
I have moved my WP site to them after maintaining my own VPS because I wanted piece of mind and lost already to much time being a server admin rather then getting stuff done.
Good things first:
1. That git system can actually be very useful to stage and test a site properly and risk free.
2. Have not done any benchmarks but I assume their servers and caching system is solid. I have actually used some latency and page loads tests on their main site before signing up and their site was faster then many others to I figured the sites they host may be like this maybe even on the the systems.
3. Automatic backups for all this environments (I personally only have setup live but still something positive to have)
The bad:
1. Their system is VERY specialized and you can not expect plugins to work, more on that later.
2. Get this: Their $25 per month lowest plan claims to have 256MB of application memory. But guess what your WordPress install has available - 40MB! I actually found out about this because a plugin told it to me. I was actually able to set the WP_MEMORY_LIMIT or what the wp-config define value is called to 256 MB BUT: This is a so claimed high performance premium WordPress host that is in this business for years. I call this either purpose or just lack of paying any attention, this should be set automatically for you when you setup a site, like all the other wp-config values with environment variables. So it could upgrade automatically for you if you upgrade your plan. But my install had 40 MB! I would not call that managed hosting.
3. The learning curve is quite a lot of you first get confronted with their specialized git staging system. It would be very well worth it to learn if everything else would be fine but its not. And it not ends with the git staging or their "terminus" their wp-config, upload folders ... you name it its all different then elsewhere. For example they have their own config for restricting folder access and things like that you have to learn.
4. Their specialized system is very in-transparent and its proprietary and thats also what concerns me as a open source enthusiast. You learn their system but if you move to another host you cant reuse what you have learned, you can not study what goes on in their system exactly.
5. I found out by trial and error that you actually can open a support ticket when you want but you have to contact the support chat first and basically beg for them to open a ticket for you. That can be extremely annoying. Its nice to have a chat and they actually respond within minutes. My experience is about 8+ minutes and its seems that it was ofter longer then the average they display. So the chat in its own is a nice little feature to have, you can ask them simple questions, they may point you to FAQ and doc entries thats all fine but that chat window is extremely small and amplifies this annoying feeling of being restricted. I think its more higher ranked technicians who handle the support tickets. The chat support is supposed to determine what is worth a ticket I guess. But the issue is if you KNOW you don't want to have this tiny little annoying chat window where you can barely type your issue in, when you know your problem is supposed to be a ticket that may take some time some back and forth, something not for a chat. You have to ask them first so you open a chat wait 5-20 minutes is what I got I think. And then they ask you a question and they their response time is again many minutes. They do not stay with you so to speak, they probably chat with many people at the same time. If all you want is for them to open a ticket for you its quite annoying to have this back and forth multiple times for no reason whatsoever. They artificially restrict support tickets so only the $100 plans can open them themselves. But the support lead told me "we always open tickets for you, just ask". That makes no sense to me, probably not even for them! Because its wastes time of chat support persons. Not to be fair their chat is not as temporary as I first thought, the sessions are actually saved and you can resume and things get emailed to you. Still annoying for anything that exceeds a simple question.
Now to make things clear I do sometimes take multiple days to respond to my customers but they can open a ticket and write as much as they want and be done with it and move on in their day and come back later. I cant to that on pantheon. I would trade that chat in for real tickets any day even if response times are slow.
6. And lastly my experience with the support, dodging dodging dodging.
I had a problem with easy digital downloads. And and tried getting help from them, they first ask me to provide them with steps to reproduce, I did quite resistively provided them with a perfect debugging env to then after all of that get a their support policy "we do not touch your code" quoted. I tried to fight for my support, narrowing it down making it more easy for them to debug. They repeatedly refused support. I argued that I do not care if they touch my code, with on itself is a intentionally vague phrased policy because everything is your code. Your entire site is your code, even your wp-config is your code and they actually cloned by site and tested around and helped me figured out another issue before by actually touching my code so to speak. They cloned my site into a multidev env, that is also a feature for the higher plans only. I guess I am supposed to be grateful because basically everything they do it actually something they do not need to if you think of it from that angle.
Anyway I fought and they spend quite some time arguing with me quoting their policy again and again instead of actually listening to me, giving me maybe hints to their NGINX config, symlinking or anything why the downloads failed. So they essentially let you lose on their highly specialized system but if you have any issues they will not help you even if related to that very system. Here a direct quote:
"This might turn out to be one of those plugins that just doesn’t work well on the platform. You’ll need to continue debugging. Let us know if you’re able to get to the root cause and if there is a work around we’ll happily add that to our problematic plugins page." So this so called premium WP managed hoster is actually not interested in helping you in any way when it comes to their in-transparent system. You don't even know what NGINX configs they use ... they just let you stand in the rain. And you have to pay 25$ for that!
Oh I forget to tell you that I actually already needed a special plugin to make PHP sessions work in their system. I mean no big deal but it at the same time something that is not native and may be error prone ...
And it turned out I was right, the EDD support debugged hours on my site and through trail and error, without knowing the NGINX config their found the issue and I now need a second special plugin that does something with headers to make downloads work. And the EDD people need special code that they will include in the next versions. And now I am supposed to present pantheon with the solution they did not help in any, even so small way. Literally not one hint. For a so called specialized WP host I think this is absolutely unacceptable! If you take this much money, have a that much specialized system you are supposed to actually help when issues arise instead of just refusing to help.
And now I have to use another special plugin
7. In no way is this service worth $25 a month! If I would know all this before I would have staying on my VPS and invested the time to manually roll a staging system.
I feel very uncomfortable now because other plugins I may need may also fail in the future.
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