Drupal and WordPress Website Hosting on Pantheon
Pantheon provides tools for building and maintaining Drupal and WordPress-based websites and applications. Berkeley IT has partnered with San Francisco-based Pantheon to provide development tools and hosting plans with enterprise-grade security, and hosting support.
Guidelines and Requirements for Berkeley.edu Websites
Campus website owners must comply with campus and systemwide policies in order to use a berkeley.edu domain. These policies include (but are not limited to): privacy, brand protection, security, and accessibility. See the following pages for more information:
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 several Pantheon plans that can be paid via a campus chart string.
UC Berkeley customers receive price discounts off Pantheon's public pricing (see Table 1, below), paid via campus chart string (see "Upgrade to Paid Plan," underneath table below).
For the following UC Berkeley plans, there is no need to get a purchase order (PO) to pay for a site hosted on Pantheon.
- Basic ($42/month)
- Performance Small ($107/month)
- Performance Medium ($175/month)
- Performance Large ($329/month)
- Performance X-Large ($536/month)
- Performance 2XL ($769/month)
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 to clarify any details).
To compare the below prices to Pantheon's public pricing, see Pantheon's Pricing page (UC Berkeley sites get a discount per the table on this page). For Pantheon support, see the Pantheon support page.
Site Traffic Limits and Plan Upgrades
The following plans and rates (Table 1, below) are available as of July 1, 2023. Pricing was updated on November 1, 2024.
Pantheon enforces the published traffic limits for their hosting plans, and the traffic limits (monthly pageviews) are also provided in Table 1, below. See Pantheon Hosting Rate Increases (published March 10, 2021). This means that if sites exceed the traffic limits for their chosen hosting plan, they will be upgraded to the applicable hosting plan, and billing will be updated as well.
Monitor Your Site Traffic and Request to Downgrade
If your site is upgraded to a higher plan due to exceeding Pantheon's traffic limits, you may downgrade your hosting plan at a later date if your site's traffic goes back down for two consecutive months. If this happens, please submit the Change Hosting Plan form.
For more information on how to monitor your site traffic, see Pantheon Site Traffic.
Hosting Plan Costs/Descriptions
The UC Berkeley Pantheon hosting plans are outlined in Table 1, below.
| Plan | Monthly Cost | Plan Description |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | $42 |
|
| Performance Small | $107 |
|
| Performance Medium | $175 |
|
| Performance Large | $329 |
|
| Performance X-Large | $536 |
|
| Performance 2XL | $769 |
|
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
- About Pantheon
- Using Pantheon: Pantheon Knowledge Base
- General Drupal Resources
- General questions: Email web-platform@berkeley.edu for questions about billing and plans
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.
Protected Data
Sites hosted on Pantheon cannot include protected data. For more information, see "Protected Data" on the Hosting Your Site on Pantheon guide.