Pantheon P1: Our First Look at a New Way to Build Websites
Building a page has become easy. Keeping that page looking and behaving like it belongs on your website and is on-brand? That’s where things get interesting.
At Pantheon’s GoLive summit, we got a look at P1, its new AI-native “web composition layer.” It brings visual page building, reusable components, and AI into an environment designed around governance. For a Drupal agency that spends plenty of time helping clients improve and maintain their websites, that combination caught our attention.
After nearly 20 years of building websites at BigTuna Interactive, we tend to judge new tools by what happens after the demo. Can the marketing team actually use them? Can developers extend them? Will the website still feel cohesive after six departments have had their turn? And most importantly, who owns the data?
Here’s what stood out.
A different relationship between content and design
The “no CMS” idea makes for an attention-grabbing introduction. However, “web composition layer” better describes the opportunity: giving teams a more direct way to assemble and manage web experiences.
Pantheon positions P1 as something that can coexist with existing investments in Drupal, WordPress, and other technologies. Since Pantheon’s “bread and butter” is their Drupal and Wordpress, best of class hosting, it makes sense that any product they build should fit into their clients existing stack. Now, exactly how that works depends on the implementation, but the direction is appealing: improve how teams build without automatically starting over. Workflow and governance has always been what Pantheon is passionate about. Visit one of their boots at Drupal Con or Wordcamp, and after sitting through the presentation and receiving your freshly printed tshirt, you’ll see why they value workflow.
One possibility we’re particularly interested in exploring is connecting existing content sources to a cleaner editing experience. Think product listings, resource libraries, or other structured content that traditionally lives behind a more involved administrative interface.
For our Drupal clients, that raises an intriguing question: could we preserve the content structure that works while making the presentation easier for marketers to manage? Really this question has always been what has separated Drupal vs Wordpress. Drupal’s “coupled” behaviors and ability to use their views is amazing but its often at the expense of the content editor.
Your components, built your way
P1 lets developers register their own React components, with the code living in their repository. Teams can build those components by hand or use AI during development, then make them available within the visual editor. Pantheon also provides starter blocks that developers can install and customize.
That matters because a good component library becomes an investment in your brand. Your product cards, testimonial sections, and campaign layouts should reflect how your business communicates. And, exporting this library to Storybok or another visual display program is how you keep the library in mind and current. Otherwise, its easy to forget or lose context about what you’ve built already.
It’s also worth being precise about the comparison with Webflow. Webflow offers code export, separate CMS data exports, and React component export through DevLink. Its standard code export, however, does not include the working CMS database and functionality.
What interests us about P1 is how your own components become the foundation of the editing experience. P1 also documents content export and import capabilities, although we’d want to evaluate the full portability picture before making sweeping promises about moving an entire implementation elsewhere.
The scaffolding deserves some credit
The interface was another highlight from the summit. The drag-and-drop experience looked clean, approachable, and thoughtfully organized.
That underlying structure matters. A useful builder helps someone assemble a strong page without asking them to become a designer halfway through the process.
In practice, we want marketers thinking about the offer, the audience, and the next action. They shouldn’t have to spend the afternoon negotiating with column widths.
P1’s component-based approach looks promising here. With a well-built design system underneath it, teams can have room to create while maintaining consistency. Responsive behavior still needs to be designed and tested, but reusable components give that work a foundation.
Governance is the feature that gets too little applause
We’ve seen it plenty of times: a beautifully designed website launches, and then the page builder adventures begin.
An extra font here. A new button style there. A landing page that looks like it wandered in from somebody else’s website.
Usually, the marketing team is simply trying to get something done. The system gave them endless choices without enough guidance.
P1 puts approved components, permissions, protected workstreams, and review into its approach to website creation. Teams can make changes within a defined system and move them toward production through a governed workflow.
For businesses with multiple editors, departments, or brands, that deserves attention. Good governance gives people confidence to work independently because the boundaries are clear.
And yes, fewer surprise fonts would be a welcome bonus.
Meet Zappy, the AI built into the workflow
P1’s AI agent, Zappy, can help draft campaign pages for people to review and refine. At GoLive, the broader appeal was seeing AI woven into the building experience, from page creation to copy cleanup.
That’s a useful place for AI to live. A first draft becomes more valuable when it starts with the components and context your team already uses.
We still want a human checking the message, the accuracy, and whether the page gives visitors a compelling reason to act. But getting to that reviewable first version faster? There’s real potential there.
What we want to see next
P1 is in beta, so this is an early impression based on the summit and the product’s documented direction.
Our next questions are practical: How does it handle a substantial content library? How much work is involved in connecting existing data? How does the editing experience hold up when several teams are working at once? And, most importantly, what is the subscription cost?
Those answers will help determine where P1 fits for our clients.
For now, we like the direction. P1 brings together several things we care about: thoughtful components, easier editing, AI assistance, and standards that survive beyond launch. The Pantheon name and brand value bring a lot of credibility to this product. We’re eager to get our hands on the product and gain experience.
