Pantheon Agency
The WordPress and Drupal team behind your Pantheon sites.
Pantheon runs the infrastructure. It does not build your templates, fix your forms, or decide what the site should do next. COLAB is the agency organizations bring in for that work, from migration onto Pantheon through WordPress and Drupal development and the support that continues after launch. We are a Pantheon Strategic Partner and WebOps certified, with more than a hundred web properties built on the platform.
Who we work with on Pantheon
We work with organizations where the website carries real weight day to day, and where a hosting account on its own was never going to be the answer.
- Organizations already hosted on Pantheon who need a development team, not another hosting account
- Marketing and communications teams whose site was built by an agency that has since moved on
- Healthcare systems, credit unions, and nonprofits moving off shared or legacy hosting onto managed infrastructure
- Teams running several related sites, or a mix of WordPress and Drupal, under one Pantheon organization
- Organizations on Drupal 7 or another version past its support window, deciding what comes next
- Organizations Pantheon has pointed toward an agency for build, migration, or support work
What we do on Pantheon
Scope varies by engagement. Most start with one of these and grow into the others as the relationship settles.
Migration onto Pantheon
We move sites with the content model, redirects, integrations, and DNS accounted for, not just the files and the database. Everything lands in a Dev or Multidev environment first and gets verified before the cutover.
Performance work
Caching, query, and asset tuning measured against field data, so the numbers hold up on the pages people actually visit rather than on a single test run.
WordPress development
Custom block themes, patterns, and plugins built for the Pantheon environment, with Git deploys moving through Dev, Test, and Live on a review process your team can actually follow.
Ongoing Support
Core, module, plugin, and theme updates, uptime and performance monitoring, bug work down, and steady improvement on a retainer sized to how much your team wants to keep.
Drupal development
Custom modules, configuration management through Composer and Drush, and upgrades from older versions, built the way Pantheon expects Drupal to be built.
Accessibility
WCAG standards review and remediation handled as part of the build, with documentation your compliance and legal teams can use.
Why teams pair COLAB with Pantheon
Good hosting removes a category of problem. It does not remove the need for someone who knows your site.
- A partner Pantheon vouches for. COLAB is a Strategic Partner in the Pantheon Partner Directory, WebOps certified, with more than a hundred web properties delivered on the platform.
- We run on it ourselves. teamcolab.com is hosted on Pantheon. The workflow we recommend is the one our own team uses every day, which is a different kind of confidence than a partner badge.
- Both CMS, one team. Most agencies pick a side. We build and support WordPress and Drupal, so the platform recommendation can follow your requirements instead of following what we happen to build.
- One accountable team. We manage the Pantheon relationship alongside the code, so when something breaks there is no argument about whether it is a hosting problem or a development problem.
- We build so your team can run it. Editors get patterns and a content model they can use without opening a ticket. Reducing what you depend on us for is the point of the work, not a risk to it.
- A team that stays. The people who migrate your site are the people who support it afterward. Most of our development relationships run for years, not for one project.
Why we recommend Pantheon
Pantheon is a managed platform for WordPress and Drupal that enforces a development workflow rather than leaving it to habit. That is the part we care about, because it is what keeps a site maintainable years after the people who built it have moved on.
Built in compliance you can’t skip
Separate Dev, Test, and Live environments, with Multidev branches for work in progress, so review happens somewhere other than production.
High performance by default
A global CDN, edge caching, and object caching give us a faster baseline to tune against instead of a deficit to make up.
One platform, two CMS systems
WordPress and Drupal run on the same workflow, which matters when an organization has both and does not want two hosting relationships.
Updates that stay routine
Autopilot applies and visually tests updates, so routine maintenance stops competing with the work you actually planned.
Traffic without a warning call
Autoscaling infrastructure absorbs surges, so a campaign, a news cycle, or an open enrollment period does not need a heads up to hosting.
Tooling that saves real engineering hours
Terminus, WP-CLI, Drush, and Composer with Git based deploys, which is less glamorous than it sounds and worth more than it sounds.
Who handles what
The line between hosting and agency work is where most of the confusion lives. Here is how we draw it.
| Area | Pantheon handles | COLAB handles |
|---|---|---|
| Uptime and infrastructure | Managed container infrastructure, autoscaling, failover | Deployment practices and monitoring that make use of it |
| Performance | Global CDN, edge caching, and object caching | Theme, module, query, and asset tuning, benchmarked against field data |
| Environments | Dev, Test, Live, and Multidev provisioning | Git workflow, CI/CD, release process, and QA gates |
| Updates | Autopilot automation for core, plugins, and modules | Reviewing what Autopilot flags, plus the updates it cannot safely apply on its own |
| Security and backups | Platform hardening and automated backups | Access policies, plugin and module audits, and tested restores |
| CMS choice | Runs WordPress and Drupal on the same workflow | Recommending which one fits, and building or migrating to it |
| Support | Platform support and documentation | Roadmap, code review, editor training, and the work inside the site |
When to bring in a Pantheon agency
If two or three of these describe where you are, a conversation is probably worth having.
- Your site runs on Pantheon and nobody on staff writes WordPress or Drupal code
- You are moving off shared hosting or a legacy CMS and want the migration handled rather than attempted
- You are on Drupal 7 or another version past its support window and the decision keeps getting deferred
- The agency that built your site has moved on, and updates stopped some time after that without anyone deciding they should
- Pantheon support has answered the hosting question and the remaining problem is inside the site
- You are consolidating several sites under one Pantheon organization
- An accessibility audit, a security finding, or a slow page has landed on someone’s desk with nowhere to send it
Pantheon Questions
Yes. COLAB is listed as a Strategic Partner in the Pantheon Partner Directory and holds WebOps certification. We have built more than a hundred web properties on Pantheon. We can buy, provision, and administer Pantheon plans on your behalf, or work inside an account you own. Hosting comes bundled with the development and support work we do on the site itself rather than sold as a standalone product.
Yes, and it is a common way for these relationships to start. We begin with a structured review of the code, the Pantheon configuration, the content model, and accessibility, so we know the real condition of what we are taking on. That review occasionally turns up work that has to happen before an ongoing agreement makes sense, and we will tell you if that is the case rather than absorb it without saying so.
Yes. Most agencies pick one. We have teams in both, which is part of why Pantheon suits us. The platform runs the same workflow underneath either CMS, so an organization with a WordPress marketing site and a Drupal application can keep one hosting relationship and one development partner. It also means the platform recommendation can follow your requirements instead of following what we happen to build.
No. We build and support sites on Pressable, Acquia, WP Engine, and other managed platforms, and we have clients on each. Pantheon is what we recommend for a lot of work because of the workflow it enforces, but the hosting decision should follow the requirements rather than lead them. If Pantheon is the wrong fit for your integrations, compliance posture, or traffic profile, we will say so.
We start by inventorying what is actually running: plugins or modules and their licenses, integrations, forms, redirects, DNS, and anything scheduled. The site is rebuilt or moved into a Pantheon Dev or Multidev environment first, where we verify content, functionality, and performance against the current site. Once it holds up, we schedule the cutover with DNS and redirects prepared in advance and stay on it through the propagation window. Most single site migrations run a few weeks. Larger portfolios take longer.
Two, generally. Move to current Drupal, or move to WordPress. Which one fits depends on how complex your content model is, what the site integrates with, and who maintains it day to day. A site with heavy structured data and custom workflows usually stays in Drupal. A marketing site that a communications team needs to edit without help is often better served by WordPress. We look at the site before recommending either, and the migration onto Pantheon happens as part of that work.
You do. We can hold the account and manage it for you, or you can own it directly and give us access. Either way the code, the content, and the site are yours, and we will hand over documentation and credentials whenever you ask. Building toward the point where you could run it without us is the intent, not a contingency.
Migrations and builds are scoped as projects, priced against the number of sites, the integrations involved, and the condition of the existing code. Ongoing support runs as a monthly retainer sized to how much of the work your team wants to keep in house. Pantheon hosting is passed through inside that arrangement rather than marked up as a separate line of business. We give you a number after a scoping conversation, because a number before one would be a guess.
Launch is the midpoint of a website, not the end of it. Most of our Pantheon clients move onto an ongoing support engagement covering updates, monitoring, accessibility review, bug work down, and iterative improvement. The level is set by how much your team wants to own, and it gets revisited as that changes.
Let’s talk about your Pantheon site.
Whether the site is already on Pantheon, headed there, or still being decided, a short conversation usually clarifies what the work actually is. Tell us what you are running and what is getting in the way.