Drupal and WordPress Sites on Pantheon

Pantheon provides powerful, easy-to-use tools for building and maintaining Drupal and WordPress-based websites and applications. IST has partnered with San Francisco-based Pantheon to provide state-of-the-art development tools and affordable hosting plans with enterprise-grade security, and expert hosting support.

This page is for self-service website builders/developers who are administering their own sites or are working with outside vendors. The site owner must be a Berkeley employee; sites must be created by a Berkeley employee with a berkeley.edu email address, and sites must be hosted at a berkeley.edu domain in order to be billed via campus chart string and be eligible for our discounts and features.

Berkeley Plans

UC Berkeley customers can select from three Pantheon plans that can be paid via a campus chart string: Basic, Performance Small, and Performance Large.

UC Berkeley customers receive substantial price discounts off Pantheon's public pricing (see table below), paid via campus chart string (see "Upgrade to Paid Plan," underneath table below).

For the following three UC Berkeley plans, there is no need to get a purchase order (PO) to pay for a site hosted on Pantheon!

  • Basic ($20/month, previously the Personal plan)
  • Performance Small ($75/month, prevously the Professional plan)
  • Performance Large ($300/month, previously the Business plan)

For sites with exceptional hosting needs, the site owner would need to work directly with Pantheon for an Elite plan, as Elite plan pricing depends on specific requirements beyond the three standard UC Berkeley plans.

Overview and Plan Details

The information provided in the table below is subject to change. Additional information is available via Pantheon; however, please note that some details/features provided on Pantheon's pages might not be applicable to sites within the UC Berkeley organization on Pantheon (please email web-platform@berkeley.edu if any details need clarifying). 

PlanCost (per month after discount)Plan DescriptionTarget Use
Basic $20
  • Up to 25,000 monthly pageviews
  • Up to 20GB storage
  • One-click core updates
  • Up to 5 domains

Small website with modest traffic requirements
Performance Small $75
  • Up to 25,000 monthly pageviews
  • Up to 30GB storage
  • One-click core updates
  • Up to 10 domains

Larger group or department site
Performance Large $300
  • Up to 150,000 monthly pageviews
  • Up to 100GB storage
  • One-click core updates
  • Up to 35 domains
 High-traffic, high-performance site
Elite Depends on scope

Sites with Elite support and resource requirements beyond the above plans will need to be scoped and priced separately as Pantheon Elite plans, as the Elite plan pricing depends on requirements. Billing will be processed directly with Pantheon (not through IST billing). 

Custom web application or mission-critical infrastructure (millions of monthly pageviews)

Hosting Your Site on Pantheon Guide

Hosting Your Site on Pantheon is a detailed guide on how to create, launch, and maintain your Pantheon site, as well as other special topics related to UC Berkeley sites hosted on Pantheon.

Get Started for Free

  • Go to Pantheon registration and create a free Pantheon developer account
  • Use your berkeley.edu email address when creating your account
  • Select "UC Berkeley" as the organizational affiliation when creating a new site

This will give you access to UC Berkeley discounted rates for all levels of hosting service.

When you are ready to upgrade to a paid UC Berkeley plan (which will allow you to launch your site and enable backup scheduling), please complete the Upgrade to Paid Plan form (CAS Authentication required).

Upgrade to a Paid Plan

Upgrade to special UC Berkeley hosting plans (CalNet authentication is required for access to the form) in order to add a domain to your Pantheon dashboard (one of the steps required to launch a website). Filling out this form will allow you to provide the necessary campus chart string in order to pay for your site.

A link to this form is provided from the Pantheon dashboard under the "Settings" tab. You can also submit the form in order to enable automated backups from the Pantheon dashboard (you must select a paid plan before enabling this feature).

Resources/Questions

UC Berkeley-specific Drupal Modules

These two modules are available for Drupal sites.

Terms of Service

Pantheon Infrastructure Details

Database Considerations

Pantheon Database instances are always on a separate server than appservers, in order to reduce single points of failure. However, a Drupal site can only have a single active canonical database performing core functionality.

Enterprise plans have database replication. If an Enterprise database server becomes unresponsive, Pantheon can switch to the replicated server. Other plans require Pantheon to restore the site from backups or fix the server issue.

Sensitive Data

Sites hosted on Pantheon cannot include restricted data. For more information, see "Sensitive Data" on the Hosting Your Site on Pantheon guide.