Upsun Development for Drupal Applications
When it is an application, not a website.
Upsun, the platform formerly called Platform.sh, clones an entire environment — code, services and data — for every branch. That is a convenience for a content site and close to a requirement for an application with assessment scores, seat limits and a payment gate in it.
We run Brave University on Upsun — a custom Drupal learning platform with assessment, seat-based commerce and certification, live since early 2026 and under a standing support engagement since.
Upsun clones an entire environment for every branch: code, services and data, with the infrastructure defined in files committed beside the code. The difference between hosting a website and hosting an application is what you need in order to test a change safely. A content site can be reviewed on a branch with an empty database, because the thing under review is a template. An application cannot — a scoring engine, an eligibility gate, a seat limit and a checkout are all logic that only misbehaves against real data in a real shape. Upsun’s model — every branch gets a full environment cloned from production, with the infrastructure itself defined in files committed beside the code — is built for exactly that case. It is a heavier tool than a content site needs and the right one the moment the thing you are shipping keeps score.
Our Work with Upsun
How the Work Splits
Git-driven environments where every branch clones production code, services and data; infrastructure defined in version-controlled configuration rather than a console; managed PHP, database, cache and search services; and a Drupal-aware stack maintained by the vendor.
The application engineering that makes any of it worth having — custom Drupal built well past its contributed foundations, assessment and commerce logic designed to be testable, third-party integrations that fail safely, and a release practice that uses per-branch environments as a review surface rather than a formality.
An application a research organization can sell and run. Brave University is a custom Drupal learning platform on Upsun — fifty-question pre- and post-assessments across eight question types, a learning path that sequences itself from each clinician’s own answers, seat-limited groups with self-service owners for clinics, Stripe checkout behind an eligibility gate for individuals, and a completion certificate at the end. It launched in early 2026 and has run under a support engagement since.
The work in practice
Most Drupal work does not need Upsun. A content site is well served by a simpler host and a review branch with an empty database, because what is under review is a template and templates do not hold state. The calculation changes the moment the thing you are shipping has users, scores, seats and a card payment in it — at which point “can I test this against data shaped like production” stops being a nicety.
The engagement, named
We run one platform here. Brave University is a custom Drupal learning platform for PARC Innovations, the commercialization spin-out of the Pediatric Anxiety Research Center at Bradley Hospital. It went from signed scope to acceptance inside 2025, launched in early 2026, and has run under a standing support engagement since. Everything below is what that build actually required.
What the application needed from its host
Assessment logic that only breaks against real data. Fifty-question assessments run before and after the course, across eight question types from Likert scales to drag-and-drop matching, auto-scored with admin review. A dynamic learning path reads the pre-assessment — including whether the clinician is licensed — and sequences the modules from the answers. None of that can be verified on an empty database; you need learners, responses and scores in the shape production has them.
Commerce with two different buyers. Clinics buy seats: organizational groups carry limits and self-service owners who invite their own teams. Individual clinicians buy a single course through Stripe, behind an eligibility gate that screens before it sells. Payment paths and seat math are precisely the logic where a staging environment with fabricated data tells you nothing useful.
Third-party services in the request path. Text-to-speech through OpenAI generates the course voiceover in three voices — clinician, patient, parent — so the audio revises when the curriculum does. An integration like that needs somewhere to fail visibly before it fails in front of a paying clinic.
Measurement as the point of the product. Every question is tagged to one of three constructs — beliefs, knowledge, self-efficacy — and progress is reported by construct rather than by completion. The platform exists to answer whether training changed a clinician, which means the data model is the product and a schema change is never routine.
What we bring to it
The host supplies environments; it does not supply the application. Brave University is built on Drupal’s group and quiz foundations with substantial custom engineering on top, because an off-the-shelf LMS treats a course as content with a quiz at the end and this one had to treat the quiz as the whole point. That is the work: knowing which contributed modules to build on, where they stop being enough, and how to write the part beyond them so it stays maintainable by someone who is not us.
If you are choosing a host
Ask what you need to reproduce in order to review a change with confidence. If the answer is “the templates”, you have a content site and cheaper options are fine. If the answer includes a database in a particular state — scores, entitlements, transactions, anything the application keeps — then per-branch environments cloned from production are not a luxury, and paying for them is cheaper than the release you have to roll back.
Practice leadership
Matthew O’Bryant
Matthew O’Bryant’s specialty is federation-scale platforms — the ones with enough moving parts that a change has to be provable somewhere safe before it is real.