Hi, my name is Federico Parra, I have been designing websites for the last 10 years, the last few in Drupal.
Some of my websites are www.garrahand.com, www.federicoparra.com, www.sweetstream.org,
and others.
I decided to give a try to Pantheon (www.getpantheon.com) as an alternative to both Amazon
EC2 and Hotdrupal.
I want to share here a few really bad aspects of their service that you will not find advertised
on their website and that can make you lose money, like it happened to us.
To begin with, let me say that Pantheon framework for Drupal developers is invaluable,
rich, clever, dynamic, and pretty much the best framework I've found (although I've never
tried Acqua, which I imagine may be even better, but too expensive for us at this point).
Now, that said, their offering is deceitful.
The main problem: they market themselves as being a cloud-based hosting/framework all-in-one solution for your
Drupal websites. Sounds great!
What comes to mind when somebody say cloud-based these days? Exactly. Something like Amazon EC2.
Something that can grow infinitely, something without size/bandwidth limitations (a priori).
That's exactly how Pantheon promote themselves, as having "DROPS" machines that can chain with one another
to take as much of a traffic peak as your site might receive. Wow! One may think.
Not so fast.
On Wednesday May 9th, we were streaming a live event (which is the main purpose of our website) using Flex
technologies from our Drupal site and out of the sudden the whole site went down. Nobody could access, an ugly
ASCII text from Pantheon would tell our dozens of clients wanting to access the time-sensitive, real-time stream
that the site was no longer available.
The rain of emails didn't take long to arrive.
A few hours earlier, during the testing of camcorder and sound for the live stream, we've noticed that the
site worked but that there were long delays to get any page printed/showed. I've sent emails to Pantheon support announcing
a potential problem and explaining that in a few hours we would be streaming so to please check on their servers.
But once the streaming actually started, and when I started receiving emails complaining that people couldn't access (to the already streaming event that they payed money for!) I got this weird email from Pantheon team, declaring that
my website was simply turned off, for they "discovered" that it was my site the one that was somehow throttling the server.
I said "Whhhhaaat?". Our site is composed of a login page, then an index/welcome page, and then the streaming page; nothing else. The streaming is done from an Amazon hosted instance, and it is peer to peer so it doesn't use any resources from Pantheon at all.
They've claimed that an MP3 file, played as music in the background on the Welcome! page was actually causing their whole "cloud-server" to collapse. !!!!!!!!!!
I asked them to remove/rename the mp3 file as needed, for the most urgent was to get my desperate clients onboard with the already started live stream.
They did modify the mp3…and another mp3, and 2 swf files that are crucial for the site, including the animated backgrounds of the site itself. They've basically mutilated the whole site. I've never give them permission to do that nor I understand why those few megabytes files would apparently "collapse" a true cloud-based server!!!!
They kept saying, even after-the-fact, that the fault wasn't theirs; that they do not need to put out an explanatory text warning users about maximum file size / bandwidth allowed; that I went too far by hosting that mp3 file in their service. etc.
So here I share the info specifics with you guys, intelligent people, so that you decide for yourselves:
There are a few conclusions you can draw from this:
1) Pantheon is not a professional service. Is a bunch of people trying to do their best without any clear policy, and will take down your whole site if they experience a problem.
2) Their "cloud-based" hosting is not what one thinks of when we read those words! It's actually a rather slow hosting system that can literally collapse with a few dozens of people listening to an mp3 hosted in it!
3) Therefore, not even dream of hosting ANY media file in their server; if you are going to use Pantheon because of their framework, which is by the way rather expensive, add to your numbers the price of a dedicated media hosting (like Amazon S3) as a separate cost; one may ask if the framework worth it for doing all this investment!
With all of these said, I think Pantheon may become a great service in the future.
Their framework is great. My suggestions to them are:
1) Change to Amazon hosting. Put all files of the Drupal system in S3 automatically.
2) Don't claim things you cannot actually support. No lies about supporting great traffic peaks!
3) Never put down a website, and if you need to do so, let the webmaster know by PHONE CALL,
with a few hours of anticipation, and prepare yourselves for compensation in the case those are money-sensitive hours.
4) Try to understand that your support service is for SUPPORTING clients. I felt abandoned
by your support team, and scammed by the whole thing.
We lost 200+ dollars that evening directly and our clients got mad at us.
Our whole site was taken down, and if our site would be bigger, God knows
how much money we could have lost.
I hope this post make people aware of current limitations at Pantheon,
and eventually that it also fosters a better service on their part.
best,
Federico Parra
Comments
Thank you for this detailed
Thank you for this detailed post. Once I was thinking about their offer, but eventually I want to wait for more opinions about this company. I always prefer to go with stable, well-tested hosting.
For me critical is your information about modifying files on your account. Does their term of service allows this?
Hi Xelos. As I think I
Hi Xelos. As I think I described on my original post, once my clients were desperate emailing me
to see what was going on, I received an email from Pantheon team informing me that they turned
my website off. I responded with questions to which they answered that there was one mp3 file
that was overwhelming the server. I didn't understand but told them that if they needed they could
rename/delete that only file if that would in turn recover my site.
They went forward and disabled that file, and 3 more that were not big and that I didn't give
them permission to modify.
To this day they haven't responded about those 3 other files.
Best,
Federico
Get your maths right.
I'm not related to Pantheon in any way. But you should seriously do the math.
At minimum, this means
(85 + 10 + 10) * 100= 10,5 GigaBytes of unconditionally loaded background animation/sound files, which means at least 100+ MB for each client request, which most certainly are not cached....and you even expected to get some more traffic?
You can't be serious.
Daniel 'sun' Kudwien
makers99
dear Daniel, I think it was
dear Daniel,
I think it was clear in my post but just in case:
the website is ONLY for streaming a class. So all traffic goes straight to the streaming link, which has
no background. The ONLY place where our site uses those heavy backgrounds is in the home page, where
people have only one option: to click on the streaming link.
So with rare exceptions (like somebody forgetting the site opened in their browser, but why would they even
open it other than to see the streaming, which occurs only once a week at a particular time?) almost nobody is streaming
those backgrounds.
Also, it is important to point out that our website, by the time this happened, had already been online for months with the same
backgrounds and the same amount of traffic without either a problem or any comment by the PAntheon team.
What happened that day was something else - and the "solution" to turn a website off - was completely irresponsible.
Worst were the communications that followed, that were stressful, virulent, and even included threats (check on my new message below).
In May I think I said I would not recommend them for their communications but that their system was excellent.
Today and after all this stress I really would not recommend it at all (their system is still very good, but it's clearly not worth the
stress). I would go with Amazon services that would not even blink with any amount of load and which customer service is easy
to deal with (and professionally trained for that end).
Best,
Federico
If you had gone with Amazon
If you had gone with Amazon you would have been hit with very large bill. User error is not their fault, Pantheon saved you from massive bandwidth charges caused by your own ignorance.
THIS
It's a real shame this page remains a highly ranked Google search result when looking for information on the hosting service in question. (PRO TIP: the more everyone says their name, the more Google likes this page.)
@sun is exactly right – this is a very unusual situation (read: poorly designed website) that doesn't reflect on the quality of their Drupal hosting at all.
The original poster sent an 85 MEGABYTE mp3 file to EVERY visitor as background music? What was it, an entire Grateful Dead concert recording? And this is on an interstitial welcome page that the visitor is just supposed to click through to get to another server? Why even use Drupal at all?
The absurdity of this situation is surely why the sysadmins suspended the account first and asked questions later. I take this as a sign of their proactive approach to maintaining the health of the system for all the other users, and I would rest easy knowing my sites were being hosted by people who will notice and take quick action on unusual server activity like this.
Of course the poor design choices evidenced in the original post are obvious to a web developer, but I felt the need to chime in for any non-technical readers that might unfortunately stumble across this page. Move along, nothing to see here, unless you are looking for a service to host 85MB music files.
Working on this with Pantheon CEO
After going back and forth with Pantheon support I am now working directly with the CEO. I will have an update for you in the next couple of months.
sub
sub
Ain't it great....!
Need to know what happened next
Hello, I am actually thinking of buying a hosting provider for a relatively high bandwidth site. Can you tell me what happened after this?+
FWIW
Mr. Parra still a customer and is developing more sites on Pantheon.
In terms of why this was an issue for us, I would refer you to sun's post above. He got the gist of it. It's a very uncommon thing to have 100MB+ page payloads and we had to take quick action to keep the network interface the site was using at that time in a good state.
We've also update our "known limitation" Doc page to specifically point out that we're not an ideal host for streaming media.
------
Personal: Outlandish Josh
Professional: Pantheon
Why are you serving static
Why are you serving static assets from your web nodes anyway? Surely these should be served via a CDN? Parra is right- it should not have affected your infrastructure.
Founder @ Glass Analytics
Large mp3 files aren't cached at the edge
It doesn't make sense to try and cache large binary assets in our Edge, so they stream off the web nodes. CDN implementation is up to the user. If he'd used one (or just stored the files in S3 and referenced them there) it wouldn't have been an issue. Instead, the big binaries were committed to the version control repository and referenced there directly by javascript on the front-end.
------
Personal: Outlandish Josh
Professional: Pantheon
You don't get it.
As I write this pantheon.io is down AGAIN. Can't access my pages AGAIN. your service is the worst I have ever used and am now dropping your service. Our company (a fortune 100 company) has now decided to stop using painintheass...I mean pantheon. My school (one of the top web coding schools in Portland OR have now stopped using it). This should show all of you that Pantheon is the worst service you can use. Save yourselves the hassle and use Amazon Web Services. They actually know what they are doing. Unlike this moron who cant tell his ass from a whole in the ground.
Also considering Pantheon
Hi, I'm seriously considering Pantheon but your experience is worth knowing about. Mr. Parra, can you update us on how it went with Pantheon to resolve your issue / potential compensations / overall attitude? Please don't let us hang after your alarming post :) Thanks!
My review of Pantheon
I've since had a bit of time to review Pantheon, and I think it's great. I've done a bit of a write-up here:
http://blog.chriscentral.com/2013/02/06/a-review-of-pantheon-for-drupal/
I was very very skeptical about it in the beginning (I like to configure everything), but the set and forget Pantheon offers is liberating; I'm delighted with it.
Founder @ Glass Analytics
Pantheon does not yet support Streaming
Another major challenge with Pantheon is that it does not yet support Streaming media. Such as videos. According to Pantheon Support team:
Hopefully they will add that feature later
Thanks to Brad for the tip :)
Thanks for the helpful post
Regardless of the technology issues, I found the review of Pantheon helpful. I am very big into customer support and am looking for another host provider BECAUSE the support went downhill when they off-shored this functionality. Thanks so much for detailing how the company responded in your time of need.
I'm not associated with
I'm not associated with Pantheon in any way, but when researching them, this is one of the top posts. Which is a shame because the issues he describes are entirely the fault of the user, I would report this as spam but I don't think it would count as such. Ludicrous blaming of Pantheon really who saved him a massive bill for the bandwidth he would have used.
Pantheon Blows
As I write this pantheon.io is down AGAIN. Can't access my pages AGAIN. your service is the worst I have ever used and am now dropping your service. Our company (a fortune 100 company) has now decided to stop using painintheass...I mean pantheon. My school (one of the top web coding schools in Portland OR have now stopped using it). This should show all of you that Pantheon is the worst service you can use. Save yourselves the hassle and use Amazon Web Services. They actually know what they are doing. Unlike the morons at Pantheon.
A glitch in the matrix?
^ @agon024 you are repeating yourself.
What?
I'm repeating myself really. You didn't even bother to elaborate. "you are reapeating yourself"...How so?
What he means is you're
What he means is you're repeating yourself because you replied to another comment with the exact comment from before, which you didn't even bother to check.
Yup
Thanks, I had not even noticed that he had replied to it. Grumpy little chap isn't he? :D
Appears that way. As someone
Appears that way. As someone testing the pros/cons between Pantheon, Acquia Cloud & Platform.sh right now between a few different Drupal builds, it is clear to me that this thread is a substantial overreaction based on user error more than anything.
This thread should be deleted
This thread should be deleted, it serves no purpose
Know when to use it.
As this is the top post on Drupal around Pantheon I think it would be useful for new users to understand the Pros and cons of Pantheon. I have used it for a while now and I have a love-hate relationship with it.
It's a tool so know when to use it and when not too.
Pros.
Cons.
I also should add that I have used Platform.sh which I can also recommend, they are a great bunch of guys, the servers are local and have great features like Pantheon. But I would say it's mostly aimed at the larger sites and would not be cost effective for smaller business sites.
This is why I think it's a
This is why I think it's a poor quality thread, the initial post is not helpful. It's based on the experience of someone who was not realistic with their expectations and so is quite a negative review of a very decent service. You'd have to look down the thread to find useful information that you can find elsewhere. This is top on Google for Drupal pantheon.
Documentation page?
Agreed, It would be better to move to a documentation page and create a list of pages of various hosting providers giving balanced pros and cons on each then let users comment below.
Great post. I have been using
Great post. I have been using Pantheon for roughly 8 months on my own, and my agency has been transitioning clients to Pantheon slowly. I am personally very happy with their service, and the couple of times that I have had a problem they were prompt in providing assistance.
I know this string is old,
I am building a map app for a nonprofit using vanilla HTML, CSS js, and the mapping library leaflet. The nonprofit has a current web dev who uses Pantheon with Drupal.
I want to put my map on the same server as the nonprofit site. The web dev said I would have to send the files to him to upload them because Pantheon didn't allow direct FTP uploads.
I thought this is a big pain.
I now see there is FTP access to Pantheon using FileZilla,
https://pantheon.io/docs/filezilla/
So I did a bit of research on Pantheon. I took pages and pages of search results to find anything that was not just a glowing review of Pantheon. No comparison reviews with other Druple Hosting server service. weird.
This tells me that there is a lot of SEO happening to push the positive reviews above the negative. Just try to find reviews on kitchen stoves and you'll see how another product category has been gamed with search engine optimization. Anyway...
What I am going to do is host my files on my server and use CDN to host video files on youtube.
That said, with the bad customer service and bad live video streaming federico.parra had, and the apparent SEO rigging, I will try
my best to work around Pantheon. I don't need to risk it.
I have had a serious customer
I have had a serious customer service issue with my FIRST transaction with Pantheon. Evidently, if you have some kind of credit card issue, there's no way to contact the department that can help you, except for the "ticket system".
You can't call. You can use chat, but the support engineers there can't help you.
My ticket is now 5 DAYS old, and has not yet been acknowledged by the "Finance team", much less resolved.
I've been publishing my site network since 1998 and have decades of experience dealing with hosting companies. NEVER have I had to wait for DAYS to deal with a billing issue. Never.
Caveat emptor.
Customer Service is SERIOUSLY lacking at Pantheon
I have had a serious customer service issue with my FIRST transaction with Pantheon. Evidently, if you have some kind of credit card issue, there's no way to contact the department that can help you, except for the "ticket system".
You can't call. You can use chat, but the support engineers there can't help you.
My ticket is now 5 DAYS old, and has not yet been acknowledged by the "Finance team", much less resolved.
I've been publishing my site network since 1998 and have decades of experience dealing with hosting companies. NEVER have I had to wait for DAYS to deal with a billing issue. Never.
Caveat emptor.