Pantheon P1
One of ten founding charter agencies building on Pantheon's P1, and migrating Drupal and WordPress sites into it.
P1 is Pantheon's AI-native web composition layer: pages built from reusable components, AI-assisted editing, and review and publishing workflows around it. We are in the beta building real client sites, starting with a Drupal 7 migration for Sterling College.
Pantheon P1 work we do
Pantheon opened the P1 beta to a small group of agencies willing to build real production sites on a product that is still taking shape. We are one of ten founding charter agencies in that group, which means we are working with P1 and the people building it now rather than reading the release notes later. Everything we build for you, both code and design, is yours. You paid for it, you own it.
Our first P1 project is a migration of Sterling College from Drupal 7, launching in the coming months. That is the shape most of this work takes: an organization on an aging CMS that has to move anyway, deciding where to land. Twenty years of Drupal and WordPress migrations is what we bring to it.
Building on P1
P1 builds pages from reusable components on a Next.js and React foundation, which means the quality of the component set decides what your editors can do later. We design and build that layer: the components, templates and design system your team composes pages from, rather than a theme they work around.
- Component Libraries
- Page Templates
- Design Systems
Migrations into P1
Moving to P1 is a content problem before it is a design problem. We audit what you have, decide what is worth carrying across, map it onto a structure that suits how your team actually publishes, and move content, users and functionality without losing URLs or search equity along the way.
- Drupal Migrations
- WordPress Migrations
- Content Modeling
Governance & AI
P1 puts AI-assisted building and direct editing in front of marketers and editors, with protected workstreams, review and publishing steps around it. We set up those guardrails so people can move quickly on the parts that are safe to change and nothing reaches the live site unreviewed.
- Review Workflows
- Editorial Guardrails
- AI-Assisted Editing
Support After Launch
A site on a product this new needs someone paying attention to it. P1 is still developing, which means workflows and implementation patterns can shift under a live site, and being in the beta is how we see those changes coming. We offer retainer and as-needed plans, and we support sites whether or not we built them. Every plan includes dedicated hours beyond the update work, so you can spend them on whatever matters most that month.
- Component and template development
- Content model and structure changes
- Integrations with existing systems
- Editorial workflow and permissions
- Performance and Core Web Vitals
- Accessibility review and remediation
- Training and documentation for your team
- Ongoing feature work after launch
Why work with us on P1
P1 is new, and being early with a product is only worth something if it comes with knowing the systems people are leaving behind. Both are true here, and we will tell you plainly when P1 is not the right destination for a particular project.
A short line to the product team
Charter agencies are in the beta to build real sites and feed problems back to Pantheon while the product is still forming. That means we hit the rough edges early and know where they are, rather than discovering them on your project.
It does not force a rebuild of everything
Pantheon describes P1 as an additional creation path rather than a replacement, and P1 front ends can draw from existing WordPress, Drupal or other API sources. Where a CMS is working and your team knows it, it can stay.
Built on the same Pantheon platform
If you already host with Pantheon, P1 sits alongside the workflows and environments your team uses now. The hosting, deployment and environment model you know does not change underneath you.
We know what you are leaving
Most P1 migrations start from Drupal or WordPress, which is the work we have done since 2008. Knowing the old system well is most of what makes a migration land cleanly.
Considering P1 for your own site?
Most organizations looking at P1 are not shopping for a platform. They are on something that has to move, usually a Drupal or WordPress site that has grown hard to change, and P1 is one of the options on the table.
We will look at what you run now, what your editors actually need to be able to do, and where P1 fits against Drupal, WordPress or a modern platform like Payload. Being a charter agency does not mean we think it is the answer every time.
- An honest read on whether P1 suits the project
- A content model built around how your team works
- Migration planned so URLs and search equity survive
- Documented and handed over, so you are not locked to us
Sterling College
A Drupal 7 site for a four-year college in Sterling, Kansas, moving to P1. Drupal 7 is past end of life, so the move is necessary rather than optional, which is the position a lot of higher education sites are in right now.
- Drupal 7 end-of-life replatforming
- Content audit and restructuring
- Component and template build-out
- Launching in the coming months
Questions about P1
What is Pantheon P1?
P1 is Pantheon's AI-native web composition layer, built on a Next.js and React foundation. Teams build pages from visual, reusable components and templates, with AI-assisted building and direct editing available to marketers, editors and developers. Protected workstreams let people work in parallel without touching the live site, and changes go through review, merge and publish steps before they go out.
What does being a founding charter agency mean?
We are one of ten agencies Pantheon brought in at the start of the P1 beta. The beta is deliberately limited and aimed at partners who will build real, production sites on the product and feed what they find back to Pantheon while it is still developing. In practice it means we are working with P1 and its product team now rather than after general release.
Is P1 ready for a real project?
P1 is in beta, and Pantheon is clear that capabilities, workflows and implementation patterns may still change. It is usable for production sites, which is precisely what the beta is for, and our first P1 project is a live client migration. For a given project, the honest answer depends on your timeline and how much change you can absorb, and we will tell you if waiting is the better call.
Can you migrate our Drupal or WordPress site to P1?
Yes, and that is where most of this work starts. Our first P1 project is a Drupal 7 migration for Sterling College, launching in the coming months. Drupal 7 is past end of life and no longer receives security coverage, so those sites need to move regardless; P1 is one of the destinations worth considering.
Do we have to abandon our current CMS?
Not necessarily. Pantheon positions P1 as an additional creation path rather than a replacement for existing WordPress, Drupal or Next.js experiences, and a P1 front end can pull content from an existing CMS or another API source. Whether that is the right approach for you depends on how well your current system is serving your editors.
Should we use P1, or Drupal, or WordPress?
It depends on what your team needs to do without a developer. P1 suits organizations that want visual page composition with real governance around it. Drupal still wins on deep content modeling, complex permissions and heavily custom functionality. WordPress remains a good fit for straightforward publishing. We work in all three, so the recommendation is not a sales pitch for whichever one we happen to do.
Is P1 the same as headless?
Not exactly, though it shares ideas with it. P1 front ends run on Next.js and can pull content from external sources the way a decoupled build does, but P1 is a composition and governance layer rather than purely a content API. The practical difference is that editors compose pages visually inside it instead of handing content to a separate front-end team.
Who owns what you build on P1?
You do. Clients get full access to every piece of code and every design asset we produce, the same as on any other project we take on. You paid for it, you own it.
How do you work with our team?
However suits you. We work in whatever your team already uses, whether that is Slack, Teams, email, or a project tool like Monday, Wrike, Teamwork or Asana. For some clients we are effectively the web team: their editors and staff come to us directly with requests rather than routing everything through one point of contact, and we take in, prioritize and run that work ourselves. For others a single contact is simpler. Either way the developer doing your work is the one managing it, so there is no account layer between you and the person writing your code, and none to pay for. We fit how you already work rather than asking you to adopt our process.