Pantheon Search powered by Elasticsearch
Detailed information on using Elasticsearch with your Pantheon WordPress site with ElasticPress.
Elasticsearch on Pantheon gives WordPress teams a fully managed search service that goes beyond basic site search — offloading database queries, handling traffic spikes, and delivering features like fuzzy matching and autosuggest without the overhead of managing an external provider.
This documentation describes support for Elasticsearch that is under active development and is available to customers who are participating in our Beta program.
Overview
Pantheon provides integrated Elasticsearch support for WordPress sites through the ElasticPress plugin. Elasticsearch is a powerful search and query engine that offloads demanding WP_Query requests from your database, delivering faster search results, superior search features, and improved overall site performance for your visitors.
By bringing Elasticsearch directly onto the Pantheon platform, you get a fully managed search service without the operational burden of maintaining an external search provider.
Which Plans Can Use Elasticsearch?
Elasticsearch is available for WordPress sites on Performance and Elite site plans. Every environment on your site (Dev, Test, Live, and Multidevs) receives its own Elasticsearch endpoint. Elasticsearch is not available on Sandbox sites.
Elasticsearch and Solr
Pantheon also offers Solr-based search. You can have both Solr and Elasticsearch activated on a site at the same time, which is useful during migration. However, running both simultaneously in production is not recommended. For new search implementations, Elasticsearch with ElasticPress is the recommended path.
| Feature | Elasticsearch | Apache Solr |
|---|---|---|
| CMS Support | WordPress | WordPress, Drupal |
| Plan Availability | Performance, Elite (not Sandbox) | Sandbox (dev only), Performance, Elite |
| Plugin | ElasticPress | Solr Power (WordPress), Search API Solr (Drupal) |
| Fuzzy Search | Yes | Limited |
| Instant Search | Yes | No |
| Autosuggest | Yes | No |
| Faceted Search | Yes | Yes |
| WooCommerce Support | Yes | No |
WP_Query Offloading | Yes | Yes |
| Related Content | Yes | Manual |
| Status | Beta | Generally Available |
Known Issues
There are currently a few known issues with the Elasticsearch integration on Pantheon in the Beta phase. If you find any others, please let the team know in the #beta-elasticsearch channel in the Pantheon Community Slack.
ElasticPress WP-CLI commands require full URL flag
Currently, when running ElasticPress WP-CLI commands through Terminus, you must include the --url flag with your site's URL for the command to work properly. This is due to how ElasticPress detects the host connection and how the Pantheon hostname is read on the platform. For example:
Elasticsearch instance is not reachable on Pantheon platform domains (*.pantheonsite.io)
Currently, if your environment has a Pantheon platform domain (e.g. <env>-<site>.pantheonsite.io) and that is not the domain configured in the Elasticsearch instance (during Beta this is the one that you would have given to the team for the site you are testing on), then requests to the Elasticsearch instance from the site will fail. This is because the Elasticsearch instance is configured to only accept requests from the domain you provided, and the Pantheon platform domain does not match that.
This means that multidev environments are not currently able to connect to the Elasticsearch instance, since they use the Pantheon platform domain, and Dev and Test environments will only work if you have attached a domain to those environments in the Pantheon dashboard (e.g. dev.yoursite.com, test.yoursite.com).
Support
During Beta, please report any issues or questions to the Pantheon team in the private #beta-elasticsearch channel in the Pantheon Community Slack. To participate in the Beta, simply toggle the Elasticsearch (beta) add-on in your Site Settings.
For ElasticPress plugin-specific questions, refer to the ElasticPress documentation.