What the Acquia-Pantheon dispute says about CMS marketing

I enjoyed this rebuttal from Acquia’s Tom Wentworth against claims by Pantheon about their Drupal hosting.

I take no sides in this dispute, but Tom’s point-by-point refutation makes a larger point: marketing in this business is all about framing.

Pantheon is comparing apples with oranges by measuring the difference between having or not having a CDN. Pantheon bundles in a basic CDN with all their sites, so of course a Pantheon site using their default CDN is going to be faster than an Acquia site without a CDN.

I’m not saying who’s right or wrong, but if you’re in tech marketing, it demonstrates the nooks and crannies that let you frame an argument. It’s hard to level-set products to make equivalent comparisons.