Pantheon hosting alternative for Craft CMS

Question

I'm coming from a WordPress background and use Pantheon for all my client websites. I love the service they provide, especially easy migrations and multi-environments (Multi-dev feature branches, Dev, Test, Live) they provide out of the box. It helps a small company off load all the dev ops work.

We also love Craft CMS, and would like to start using it more, but are struggling to find a host that provides the same/similar amount of features and support.

I've checked out Recommended hosting company for a Craft site? but none of the recommendations include features that I'm looking for.

Here are the main features I'm looking for:

Dev, Test, & Live - Run a continuous integration workflow out of the box. Every site you create includes a Dev, Test, and Live environment connected by version control. Each has its own database, file system connection, and URL.

Cloud development environments - Multidev allows you to fork your entire stack (code and content), work independently, then merge changes back into the master. Each branch is an entire development environment with the same configuration as the live site. Spin up cloud environments for feature branching, per-dev sandboxes, QA environments, and more. Multidev makes it easy to manage your development workflow and keep your team’s work in sync.

Answer 1

From what I understand it is possible to host a Craft site on Pantheon but they will not offer the same level of support that you would get using WordPress or Drupal. This is what I've been told by Pantheon technical support, at least.

The workflow you're looking for could be mostly set up on Heroku using review apps, however, to my knowledge they don't have the same workflow where new branches can be created with cloned content from whichever environment or branch you'd like.

I think that this would be possible by running postdeploy script from app.json, which fires once when the review app is created. You could write a script that pulls production content and clones an S3 bucket into a new one, giving you a Pantheon-esque workflow.

If you're going to go down this route you might want the AWS CLI Buildpack, the ability to use environment variables in Craft (see Matt Stauffer's site for this) and you'll probably want to use Jaws for MySQL since, in my experience, it's much faster than ClearDB.

I'm in the same boat as you, coming from a WP heavy background and very reliant on Pantheon, so currently looking into a similar set up myself. Hope this provides some direction.

It would be amazing if Pantheon just offered Craft support out of the box.

Answer 2

AFAIK there is no hosting for Craft with a Multidev toolset similar to Pantheon.

At fortrabbit.com (full disclosure: I'm one of the partners) you use multiple Apps to model a multi-stage setup for your project. You basically control the entire flow with git branches, but it's not a one-click solution like with Pantheon.

However, this does solve the biggest pain point with CMS multi-stage-development: Content Migrations. Craft 3 has a solution for that. For Craft 2, there is the nerds-and-company/schematic plugin to export/import structures.

• Craft 3: https://craftcms.com/news/craft-3-content-migrations
• Craft 2: https://github.com/nerds-and-company/schematic

Further, I suggest having a look at the Andrew Welch's craft-scripts https://github.com/nystudio107/craft-scripts

Answer 3

I know this is an old post but Hyperlane has Craft-specific hosting with dev/stage/prod environments and a similar workflow to Pantheon. I haven't used it but came across it while looking for the same thing as the OP.

UPDATE May 2020: I've been using Hyperlane for about 6 months now and I'm pretty happy with it. Overall it seems like a solid system. Performance has been great and the dev/stage/prod workflow has worked flawlessly so far. I only have two complaints:

1. Working on localhost can be a challenge. If you're just pulling/pushing code then it's effortless. But copying assets and content between localhost and dev can be a bit tricky. I have copious notes on how to correctly set up localhost to work with Hyperlane, so feel free to reach out if you need help.
2. Support is pretty limited at this point. The docs are sparse and unless you pay for the Elite plan you only get email support, which hasn't been great so far. Luckily the system has generally been reliable and easy to work with so far, so I've only had to contact support a couple times.