Magento 1 End Of Life Ultimate Guide: Support, Migration, Upgrade, Options, Prices
We have two news: one good and one bad. Let’s start with the latter: support for your free version of Magento ends in 2020 (and for the paid one as well)! But don’t be afraid: we are talking about 1.x. And yes, you have more than one year to do something. Otherwise, you will be stuck with the abandoned platform, or not? Magento 1.x won’t disappear in 2020, you will still be able to get some extensions and tools, but Adobe won’t do anything with it. So, what is the good news?
We’ve prepared this material to help you understand all nuances of the Magento 1 end of life and choose how to behave after it. Also, follow this link to learn more about data migration from Magento 1 to 2:
Table of contents
- 1 Intro: Magento 1 End Of Life Date
- 2 Magento 2 Upgrade
- 3 Magento 1 End Of Life Extended
- 4 Leaving The Ecosystem
- 5 Adobe Impact & Magento Ecosystem Future
- 6 Magento 2 End Of Life
- 7 Final Words
Intro: Magento 1 End Of Life Date
Long ago, Magento announced the second version of its platform. Away back, 2.0 became available and the company informed everyone that it will stop supporting 1.x one day. Then, Magento was purchased by Adobe and the plan to end the first platform version wasn’t canceled. Merchants were always informed about the desire to bury Magento 1 in the past and completely replace it with a better offer. But they’ve never been forced to do that. Therefore, only are based on Magento 2. It is just 4.4% of the entire amount. What do other 95.6% of merchants think?
The following three reasons explain the ratio:
-
- It is quite hard to run the migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2. While you can seamlessly transfer all entities, it is necessary to reinstall all the extensions (purchasing their Magento 2 versions), rebuild all design features, and recreate customizations.
- You have to spend a decent amount of time and money to completely move from Magento 1 to Magento 2. The bigger your e-commerce website is, the more headaches you have.
- Adobe continues supporting Magento 1.
What aspect prevents merchants from the migration most of all? Of course, the availability of support. Adobe doesn’t force merchants to move to Magento 2, except constant reminders in the Magento admin which is not the most efficient way to motivate 1.x users. As a result, they try to delay the inevitable expenditures and headaches waiting for a more friendly opportunity to run the transit. But all the best tools are already here and it doesn’t seem that a game-changer will soon appear. The only game-changer is the Magento 1 EOL.
For Magento 1 Enterprise Edition, software support ends in . Depending on your version, it may include both quality fixes and security patches, but you have a year to move to Magento 2; unless, you want to face multiple new issues and security vulnerabilities.
As for Magento 1 Community Edition, the Magento 1 End Of Life date is also . Thus, the time to upgrade to Magento 2 is now.
What to expect before Magento 1 EOL
If you want to delay the migration to Magento 2 as much as possible, we’ve prepared a list of provided services for each supported 1.x version below.
Magento Commerce (Enterprise Edition)
Dear Magento EE merchants! You can still expect a stable e-commerce environment for 1.9-1.14 until June 2020. But some of you will be more stable than the others.
The range of six Magento Commerce versions will get different support levels. Of course, the last two – 1.13 and 1.14 – will be entirely supported. It means that Adobe will provide all security patches and quality fixes.
If your store version is 1.9, 1.10, 1.11, or 1.12, you won’t get any quality fixes – only security patches are provided for four older versions of Magento Commerce. You can still solve the problem by upgrading to 1.13 o 1.14, but why don’t you jump straight to Magento 2?
Magento Open Source (Community Edition)
Dear Magento CE merchants! Don’t expect any quality fixes. The time of full support is left behind. If your store version is between 1.5-1.9, you will still get security patches before the Magento 1 EOL in June 2020.
PHP
It is also necessary to mention that support for older PHP versions is always depreciated and PHP 5.6 is not an exception. Deadline for this version is the New Year eve of 2019. To prolong the normal existence of the platform, Magento merchants will get a new patch which enables support for PHP 7.2 for the Magento 1.x versions mentioned above. But its deadline is November 2020. Yes, you will still have some time after the Magento 1 End Of Life in June, but we don’t recommend you to delay the migration that much. And monitor your mailbox to be informed regarding the patch (or move to Magento 2)!
Extensions
And what about third-party extensions? The provided support depends on each particular vendor. For instance, OneStepCheckout is going to support its product for Magento 1 after EOL, but the company only works with checkout page improvements. What about vendors who offer dozens of modules? It doesn’t seem that they are going to focus much on their extensions oriented towards 1.x. However, we decided to share our Magento 1 extensions for free on GitHub. Check them here: .
What to do before EOL
There are basically 3 options for every Magento 1 merchant to choose from. You can select one before the Magento EOL and switch to another one after the deadline or switch between them in the future. Everything depends on the complexity of your e-commerce project. So, what should you do to meet the Magento EOL head-on?
Migrate to Magento 2
Adobe wants you to migrate to Magento 2. The new platform version offers tons of new features and improvements in comparison with 1.x, but the migration procedure is quite complex. As we’ve already mentioned, you can transfer all Magento 1 entities to Magento 2 within just a few clicks but third-party extensions and customizations have to be reinstalled and recreated manually. The more unique your e-commerce website is the more problems you will face!
But if you own a big company, all the built-in features can dramatically improve your admin experience and the experience of your clients. As a result, you will reduce expenditures caused by daily backend work and increase revenue due to higher customer engagement. Reminds your business case? Don’t hesitate to migrate to Magento 2 before the Magento EOL! Below, we will explore the procedure.
Stay on Magento 1 (Magento 1 vs Magento 2)
Let’s be honest, not everyone needs the beneficial Magento 2 features. If you are a small merchant who has less than 1k products in a catalog, you won’t feel much difference between the two platform versions. Yes, the backend interface of Magento 2 is way more user-friendly, but all its built-in complexity is not for the smallest market players. You can even read some thoughts that Magento 1.9 is faster in terms of small projects than the latest version. Even OneStepCheckout – one of the most popular checkout providers – and don’t want to upgrade to Magento 2 in the nearest future.
Thus, staying on Magento 1 is still an option for businesses who won’t benefit from the latest features and feel comfortable with what they already have. Furthermore, we believe in third-party initiatives and non-indifferent specialists who will provide community-based improvements to the platform after the Magento 1 EOL.
Therefore, if you think that less is more, keep using Magento 1. If things become tough, you will be always able to migrate from Magento 1 to Magento 2. And since small businesses usually use fewer customizations and third-party solutions, the migration procedure won’t be as complex, painful, and time-consuming as the one that takes place when a market giant starts its moves. However, it is a good reason to migrate to Magento 2 right now!
You will find more fact about the Magento 1 vs Magento 2 stand further in this post.
Leave the ecosystem
For some merchants, the Magento 1 End Of Life seems a good reason to leave the ecosystem. Although they represent a small minority, their opinion happens to be. If the lack of official support looks frightening, third-party initiatives are still in the clouds, and Magento 2 is too complex and expensive, you can freely migrate to another e-commerce platform. Luckily, there is a reliable export solution that helps to transfer all Magento 2 entities to any external sources. You can switch to WooCommerce, Shopify, or any similar platforms that suit your business needs.
Below, we will describe each option in more detail focussing on various nuances.
Magento 2 Upgrade
Let’s explore some truly unique opportunities of Magento 2 and describe how to migrate from Magento 1 to Magento 2.
Reasons to migrate
You can find a comprehensive list of Magento 2 features in this PDF document: . As for the Community Edition, it has a slightly limited set of tools. Both platforms are compared here: . Also, check our guide to Magento 2.3 Open Source & Commerce Features.
Magento 2 PWA and endless customizations
But what really makes Magento unique is its DIY opportunities. You can hire freelancers or agencies or choose official to implement a custom project of any complexity.
Magento 2 provides the ability to create a headless website on top of its backend. It means that you take the platform as a basis and build a frontend of your choice. From the developer side, there is an official tool that simplifies the procedure – Magento PWA studio. We describe all the possibilities of this approach in the following article: PWA & Headless Magento 2.
If you only want to transfer your old 1.x website to Magento 2, we also have some good news!
Official data migration tool
is designed to help you efficiently move products, order data, customers, store configurations, promotions, and other entities to Magento 2. But it cannot move extensions and customizations. You can install the instrument here: .
The pros of the Magento 2 Data Migration Tool are that it is official, free, and up to date. The downsides include the following aspects:
- Complex Installation – you need lots of special skills not only to master the migration using the official tool but to install it. There is a huge list of prerequisites to be followed, and installation via GitHub or the official repo is required. How many merchants want to deal with that?
- CLI Only – there is no user interface where you can select the necessary option and start the migration. The whole process should be controlled from a command line, but there is no single Magento 2 migration command that solves the problem.
- Coding Skills – you won’t master the migration procedure using the official tool unless you are an experienced Magento developer. You need to be familiar with both Magento 1 and 2 as well as the way their databases work.
- Limited Entities – the Magento 2 Data Migration Tool lets you import many entities but not all. For instance, you can transfer customers from 1.x to 2.x, but their passwords won’t be saved. At the same time, orders can be moved only without related documents.
- Performance – speed on large data assets is very small when you use the Magento 2 Data Migration Tool;
- Limited Directions – the tool lets you move from Community and Enterprise to Commerce, from Enterprise to Commerce, and from Community to Open Source, but you cannot migrate from Enterprise to Open Source;
- Magento 2 Data Migration Tool Tutorial – you need a detailed guide to activate the official instrument and perform the easiest steps of the migration. Even with the tutorial, it is too complicated for merchants who have no technical skills.
But we have some good news:
Improved Import M1 Migration Add-On
Here at Firebear, we are also concerned about the migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2. That’s why we’ve developed our own solution which is more powerful and feature-rich. Meet the Magento 1 Migration Add-On for the Improved Import & Export Magento 2 extension. It represents the easiest way to transfer your current Magento 1 store to Magento 2. Why is this Magento 1 to Magento 2 data migration extension better than the official tool?
The Magento 1 Migration Add-On supports all entities of both Commerce and Open Source editions. Furthermore, it is designed to transfer a bunch of customizations. Thus, you can easily move products, orders (include invoices & shipping), customers (with saved passwords!), taxes, shipping rates, CMS and static blocks, settings, and custom attributes for products, orders, and customers from one store to another. The add-on fixes all the downsides of the Magento 2 Data Migration Tool described above:
- Both Improved Import & Export and Magento 1 Migration Add-On are easy to install – just like other extensions.
- The extension offers a user-friendly interface right in the admin section of your Magento 2 website.
- No coding skills are required to run the migration from 1.x to 2.x with the add-on!
- The extension imports all entities and related customizations that the official Magento 2 Data Migration Tool cannot.
- It is much faster than it comes to large data assets;
- And you can move between any Magento editions!
Besides, you can dramatically reduce the Magento 1 to Magento 2 migration cost using this tool. And you also get the assistance of your team! Looking for the Magento 1 to Magento 2 code migration tool? Contact us and we will provide answers to all your questions regarding the migration.
The only downside of the Improved Import & Export extension and its add-on is that you have to purchase the tool. But in the case of the free Magento 2 Data Migration Tool, you have to spend a decent amount of money on a developer or a team of specialists depending on the complexity of your e-commerce website.
You can also discover more facts about the migration in our article here: Migration to Magento 2.
Note that both the add-on and Magento 1 to 2 Migration tool work equally well with Magento 2 Commerce and Open Source, so the two platform versions are in the same conditions when it comes to the migration, but which one to choose?
Migration to Magento 2 Open Source (Community Edition)
What is the main argument for choosing Magento 2 Open Source? The former Community Edition will always stay FREE and OPEN SOURCE! Even the Adobe acquisition didn’t change the initial order of things. Despite Magento is a part of Adobe Experience Cloud, you can still get a free version to run your e-commerce store upon.
Community
Even if it is abandoned by Adobe, there is a huge community of enthusiasts who always participate in every new version providing constant improvements and updates. The impact of the community is rising. These images from Magento Imagine unveil the trend: the number of created pull requests for Q1 2018 was 1303, but in Q1 2019, it has an incredible bump up to 2861. The same is about processed requests: 1497 in Q1 2018 and 3052 in Q1 2019.
Jason shares the incredible accomplishments of the community.
— Richard ☕️ B a i k (@richbaik)
Active development
Active GitHub development and vivid community are very attractive factors. For many people, they are even more valuable than the free price. Don’t forget to check several important community-driven projects on GitHub here: . Magento MSI, support for PHP 7.2, Magento Bulk API, Composer, and other tools are available there. Also, follow the initiative on Twitter: .
Open roadmap
The open roadmap of Magento 2 Open Source is a living document with a public backlog! All the big-ticket items that represent changes in products, features, and functionality for the entire Magento product suite are collected here. In the spirit of transparency and open dialogue, we are making this backlog public. The document is in a constant state of evolution and doesn’t represent a promise or guarantee.
All information in the open roadmap is provided for informational purposes only, so don’t view it as a binding commitment, especially due to the fact that Magento makes no guarantees regarding the information contained in it.
The development, release, and timing of any products/features/functionality are made at Magento’s discretion. Therefore, it is always subject to change, but you can follow this link to get a better understanding of what’s going on in the community: .
Architecture discussions
As you might have already guessed, all cool things regarding the Magento community happen on GitHub. And there is a repository created by the initiative of Magento architects to discuss any open questions with the Magento community regarding the Magento 2 architecture.
Nobody guarantees that even the approved changes will be delivered to the Magento code base, but at least you can freely discuss architectural concepts of the Magento 2 platform. The project is available here: .
PWA Studio
You can find the almighty tool here: . Feel free to create headless stores on top of Magento Open Source. The platform doesn’t prevent you from the implementation of the craziest ideas!
Other benefits
We’ve already reviewed multiple important aspects of Magento Open Source. Check the following articles to get a better understanding of why this version suits your specific needs:
- Magento 2.3 Open Source & Commerce Features and Release Notes
- Magento 2 Multi-Source Inventory
- PWA & Headless Magento 2
- Magento 2 Enterprise Edition Features On A Community Website
- The Power of Real Magento Community
Migration to Magento 2 Commerce/Cloud/Adobe (Commerce Edition)
If you don’t want to deal with GitHub and community projects, Magento offers several commercial offers: Commerce, Cloud, and Adobe. The two most important questions when it comes to Magento Commerce are:
- What am I paying for?
- What is the final cost?
Let’s provide the answers.
Features
Check this document – – to discover all features of the platform (version 2.2.2). You can also find important information about characteristics that are available in Commerce only here: Magento 2 Commerce & Cloud Specific Features. These are just some of them:
- Shared Catalogs – the ability to set special price rules for different companies or users who can see specific categories and products via public and custom catalogs;
- Negotiation Quotes – you can control and process quote orders;
- Companies – your business partners can create company accounts on your e-commerce store that include multiple individual user accounts;
- Page Builder – create custom store pages without any specialists using drag and drop functionality and grid system;
- Requisition Lists – improve order placement by introducing the ability to create multiple lists of frequently-purchased items;
- Visual Merchandiser – a set of tools for product management that enable products positioning and conditions adjusting regarding the category listing structure;
- Gift Cards – built-in gift card functionality;
- Content Staging Data – create, preview, and schedule various content updates more efficiently;
- Store Credits – the corresponding functionality without any third-party extensions;
Magento Commerce offers some outstanding B2B functionality and numerous B2C improvements out of the box. However, You can recreate everything on an Open Source e-commerce store using third-party extensions. Let’s take a look at the price system of Magento 2 and then proceed to the comparison.
Price
The Magento 2 Enterprise license is quite expensive making the platform inaccessible for small merchants. Being based on a revenue model, the license cost rises with your gross sales revenue. The more you earn – the more is charged, but there is one important nuance: the license costs are fixed. Therefore, the more you earn, the less percentage of your revenue is charged. According to , you have to deal with the following license costs for Magento 2 Commerce:
- $0 – $1 million – $22,000.00 – from 2.2%;
- $1 – $5 million – $32,000.00 – from 0.64%;
- $5 – $10 million – $49,000.00 – from 0.49%;
- $10 – $25 million – $75,000.00 – from 0.30%;
- $25 – $50 million – $125,000.00 – from 0.25%.
As for the license costs of Magento 2 Commerce Cloud, the situation here is absolutely the same, but you have to pay more:
- $0 – $1 million – $40,000.00 (+18k) – from 4%;
- $1 – $5 million – $55,000.00 (+23k) – from 2.75%;
- $5 – $10 million – $80,000.00 (+31k) – from 0.8%;
- $10 – $25 million – $120,000.00 (+45k) – from 0.48%;
- $25 – $50 million – $190,000.00 (+65k) – from 0.38%.
Note that the license costs may be changed from the time this article was created. And don’t forget about implementation and hosting expenditures that also occur. They increase the final Magento 2 migration costs as well.
Commerce (EE) vs Open Source (CE)
Now, let’s compare free and paid versions of Magento 2. A huge article in the explores the differences between Magento 2 Open Source and Commerce. Note that all tests were performed on 2.1.3 EE and 2.1.3 CE. Since that time some core aspects may have been changed, but the provided information illustrates the key tendencies and helps to decide which platform to choose:
Performance & Scalability
The key benefit of Magento 2 Commerce is the Split Database solution which dramatically increases the performance of your e-commerce store by enabling the ability to utilize up to 3 master databases simultaneously. The feature affects orders, checkout, and product data speeding up the performance at key segments of the interaction with customers and order management routine. Thus, you get better user experience increasing customer satisfaction and possible revenue. At the same time, various backend processes are sped up decreasing time and, as a result, money necessary for your employees to finish them.
Besides, the following Magento 2 Commerce specific improvements are offered:
- Varnish Page Caching;
- MySql Cluster;
- Faster JS calls;
- Job Queue Mechanism;
- Deferred Inventory Updates for faster checkout.
What results did the performance test show? According to Shero, both versions got Grade B. With Open Source, they achieved even higher results: the overall performance score was 82, while Community’s result was 81. But don’t make hasty conclusions. Such results were caused by testing conditions. While Magento 2 Commerce is optimized for better performance with higher loads, Open Source performs much worse under the same circumstances.
Besides, the nature of the commercial version is designed to handle the needs of rapidly growing businesses. You can the number of products in your catalog without damaging the performance and user experience of your store. In its turn, Magento Open Source requires multiple additional actions to handle the rapid growth.
Both Magento 2 Open Source and Commerce let you engage your visitors with the advanced shopping experience, but the paid version provides more features out-of-the-box. Magento 2 Enterprise Edition features related to shopping experience include:
- Personalized Content
- Layered Navigation
- Improved Search
- Out-of-the-box Responsive Design
- Short and Fast Checkout
- Improved Merchandising
- Advanced Content Management
What really makes Commerce websites faster and more customer-friendly in terms of navigation is support for Solar with its advanced search capabilities. As for Open Source, you can get this functionality only via third-party extensions: Magento 2 Search Engines.
Loyalty
Magento 2 Commerce lets you manage customer attributes out of the box while the Open Source version enables only basic features in this area.
At the same time, you can streamline MQF – a Magento Commerce system that enables message queuing. The platform provides mechanisms for sending, receiving, and storing messages more efficiently.
As for loyalty features, you can leverage reward points, in-store credits, gift cards and registries, private sales, bulk ordering, shared catalogs, negotiation quotes, requisition lists, and several more features designed to improve the provided shopping experience and make your customers more loyal.
Loyalty features are not available in Magento 2 Open Source, but you can add them to the platform using third-party extensions:
- Magento 2 Reward Points Extensions
- The Best Magento 2 Store Credit Extensions
- Magento 2 Gift Card Extensions
- MageDelight Quick Order Magento 2 Extension
- Magento 2 Request A Quote Extensions
- Amasty Customer Group Catalog
Content Management
With Magento 2 Commerce, you can forever forget about boring processes of content creation. The platform provides numerous tools that dramatically improve your daily duties. Creating a stunning and engaging page without any specialists is no longer a problem since the 2.3 version, which includes a powerful page builder. The default CMS module has been improved dramatically so that you can create and customize pages in the most intuitive way with no coding skills.
Page Builder offers a vast variety of options to modify multiple content types from product pages to blog articles. The first vital improvement that dramatically simplifies the way you customize the design of your store is the drag and drop functionality. It lets you customize headers, images, products, and anything else within a few clicks.
The grid system of Page Builder is another useful feature that lets you divide any store page into various segments to spread content. You can freely customize the number and size of page cells.
Multiple visual effects are also under your disposal as a part of Page Builder.
In addition, Magento 2 Commerce offers automated e-mail messaging for sending reminders, flexible pricing rules, customer segmentation, rules-based related products, up-sells, and cross-sells, etc.
Unfortunately, nothing similar is represented neither in Magento 2 Open Source nor among third-party extensions.
Analytics
Advanced analytics in Magento 2 Commerce is enabled due to the Google Tag Manager support. The new functionality enables you to integrate your e-commerce store with an external system without any third-party specialists to get extended reports on what’s going on on your website.
In the case of Magento 2 Open Source, you can use one of the extensions described in this article: Extended Analytics and Reporting Solutions for Magento 2.
Support
Magento 2 Commerce offers technical support 24/7 while Open Source lacks it at all. But you can always rely on the community forums in both cases. It is also possible to be consulted by agencies if you want to get more specific recommendations.
Price
As you can see, the price of Magento 2 Commerce starts at $22,000 per year. And it is a basic license only. Don’t forget to add the expenditures for implementation, maintenance, and hosting, which are usually higher than the ones related to Open Source.
In its turn, the Open Source version is free, you have to pay less for implementation, maintenance, and hosting, but it is necessary to install Magento 2 extensions to get the missing features. Of course, you won’t even spend half of the minimum license cost on installing the necessary modules. Thus, the Magento 2 migration costs are much lower when you move to Open Source.
Check our old exploration on how to get the missing features: Magento 2 Enterprise Edition Features On A Community Website. A lot of things changed since that time, but you can get an understanding of how simple is the upgrade.
Conclusion
How much do you sell per year? The answer to this question will help you choose the platform. If your revenue is about $100,000, are you ready to spend almost a quarter on the license only? It seems that there are better ways to use this money.
How about $500,000? $22,000 still look a frightening amount but it is only 4.4% of your annual revenue.
Even if you are a bigger merchant, there is no need to choose Magento 2 Commerce just because you can. Here are a few reasons to select the expensive option:
- Your business is scalable and you have a lot of online transactions;
- You catalog include thousands of products;
- You need reliable support that works 24/7;
- You want to get rich merchandising functionalities and effective management tools out-of-the-box;
- You need a secure platform that prevents data loss, downtime, and other problems (buy nobody guarantees 100% security);
- You don’t want to deal with extension installation and research.
If the basic features of Magento 2 Open Source are enough, you can choose this platform. If one day you feel that it is too tight for your business, move to Commerce. What about implementation expenditures necessary for both transitions? You have to calculate the budget to understand how much money you will save staying with Open Source.
For instance, you migrate from 1.x to Open Source and spend 3 years on the platform. This decision helps you save at least $66,000 of license fees. Let’s imagine that the transition from 1.x to Open Source costs $20,000 and the migration between Open Source and Commerce is $30,000 (both are random amounts). Thus, you spend $50,000 during the 3 year period saving $16,000 ($66,000 – $50,000).
Depending on your particular e-commerce project, the price of the migration may vary a lot, so you have to calculate your own budget to understand whether it is cost effective to choose Magento 2 Open Source and then migrate to Magento 2 Commerce or not. Let’s explore the downsides of the Magento 2 migration to find out if you should do it at all.
Downsides of Magento 2 migration
What are the problems that prevent Magento 1.x merchants from the migration to Magento 2? They include the Magento 1 to Magento 2 migration steps and several issues caused by the difference of versions.
SEO
The biggest downside of the Magento 2 migration is related to SEO. While other problems can be solved with the existing tools, it is quite hard to transit without any loses in terms of search engine rankings. The problem is caused by:
- the necessity to changed URLs for store pages;
- duplicate content issues caused by improper canonical URLs;
- new page structures;
- broken internal links.
All these issues can decrease your SERPs dramatically. To reduce the negative impact, you should replace the existing 404 error pages with proper 301 redirects. Use webmaster tools to find the sources of the problem and fix them.
Also, be careful with canonical URLs. They must be handled properly for product sorting, layer navigation, and pagination. Thus, you will avoid duplicate content issues.
And you can edit internal links according to Magento 2 rules. Yes, it is a painful and boring routine, but no one wants to decrease SEO attractiveness, right?
We also recommend to implement a comprehensive site audit after the migration and install Magento 2 SEO extensions.
But you won’t solve all SEO issues caused by migration. Also, note that search engines require time to analyze your new website and start providing it among search results with the efficiency of your old store.
Extensions
You Magento 1 extensions cannot be transferred to Magento 2. No exceptions are possible. Thus, you have to purchase their 2.x versions and reinstall everything on a new website, which makes the migration more expensive. The “convert Magento 1 module to Magento 2 online” search query leads to no helpful results, sorry.
Themes
The same situation is actual for Magento 1 themes. Luckily, you usually need only one theme to be repurchased and reinstalled on a new website. If you have a custom solution, get ready to spend more time and money on recreating it.
Databases
Data migrations often lead to disorder and loss. The bigger your e-commerce website is, the higher the probability of failures you get. And losing database assets can be a tragedy, especially when the customer and product information is lost.
As for disordered data, it often turns product descriptions, metadata, and other page content into an unsolvable mess. And you have to fix everything manually unless a backup is available. Both issues might provide a serious negative impact on your store operation.
Your Magento 1 website
You still want to run your Magento 1 website during the Magento 2 migration. Unfortunately, the website speed might be influenced negatively so that your customers might face some inconveniences. To prevent this issue, you have to optimize your old store (Magento Performance Ultimate Guide + Ultimate Guide to Magento SEO), choose a season of low sales for the transit, and inform your visitors regarding possible inconveniences.
Time
The migration might take up to several months on average. Smaller stores can transit faster, while a giant website will require a more significant amount of time to move everything from 1.x to Magento 2. You only have to wait and invest.
Money
Depending on the size of your e-commerce website, the migration procedure can be quite expensive. As mentioned above, there is a necessity to purchase Magento 2 versions of your 1.x modules and themes. And the construction of a new website is not free: you have to hire third-party specialists to do everything.
Solution
When the information about Magento 2 was unveiled for the first time, we understood that it is necessary to prepare the Improved Import & Export extension for a new task – the migration from 1.x to 2.x. Currently, it is the most powerful tool that solves multiple issues of a standard migration procedure.
- It dramatically speeds up all data transfers even in case of substantial data assets.
- No data is lost or transferred in disorder.
- You can move all data from Magento 1, including custom entities, business processes, and even various configurations.
- The performance of your Magento 1 website is not affected that much.
- The extension costs less than a team of developers, and you can use it for other Magento 2 integrations.
Yes, it cannot transfer your extensions and themes or fix SEO issues caused by new URLs, but in other aspects, it is the number one migration tool. to get more information regarding the Magento 1 Migration Add-On for Improved Import & Export.
Get Improved Import & Export Magento 2 Extension
Official Position
The official position of Adobe regarding the Magento 2 migration is described in this article: . The author highlights the following benefits of 2.x over 1.x:
- Improved Performance;
- Streamlined Checkout Process;
- Better Admin Interface;
- Mobile Friendly.
But if your Magento 1.x store is perfectly configured, the only real advantage is its backend interface.
At the same time, the article highlights security problems caused by the end of official support. Continue reading the article to see how wrong the official position is.
Magento 1 End Of Life Extended
The Magento 1 End Of Life is only an official construct designed to force 1.x merchants to migrate to Magento 2. Yes, there won’t be any official updates and security patches after June 2020, but there is still a massive community of enthusiasts willing to keep Magento 1 alive for years. Thus the Magento 1 End Of Life is extended!
Many small merchants cannot afford the migration not only to Magento 2 Commerce with its huge license costs but also to Magento 2 Open Source. Luckily, they can still use 1.9.x for years. If you belong to this category or just cannot understand the necessity of the migration (but can afford it), the following solutions are for you.
Mage1
offer permanent support for merchants who want to continue using Magento 1 professionally. The project will provide security updates and technical adjustments so that you don’t need to hurry up with the migration.
Another goal of the platform is to enhance Magento 1 with the latest technology.
Besides, the Mage1 team will perform security checks of the existing Magento 1 source code. You can also participate in this process. Note that Mage1 offers monetary rewards to developers who identify security vulnerabilities and help to fix them.
Mage1 offers:
- Experienced PHP development
- Cost efficiency
- Professional web development (JavaScript, Prototype, and jQuery)
- Security screening
- Innovative technologies (latest Apache, MySQL, PHP, and JavaScript)
OpenMage
is a fork of Magento that accepts bug fixes, is backward compatible, and drops in a replacement for official Magento. If you want to stay on Magento 1 after June 2020, you can also try this version.
The GitHub repository is a home for an unofficial community-driven project designed to become an alternative to Magento Community Edition (Open Source). This solution integrates improvements directly from the community but maintains a high level of backward compatibility to the official releases. Also, note that pull requests with unofficial bug fixes and security patches are warmly welcome! You can read more about the project here: .
Conclusion
It seems that there is nothing wrong with using Magento 1.9.x after June 2020. There will be enough community-driven projects designed to provide your Magento 1 website with all the necessary fixes and updates. Don’t want to migrate right now? Magento 1 still satisfies your e-commerce needs? Keep using it! Alternatively, you can choose another platform.
Leaving The Ecosystem
If you don’t want to migrate to Magento 2 and the alternative of using unofficial Magento 1 doesn’t seem attractive, it is always possible to leave the ecosystem. Just take a look at some popular e-commerce platforms:
- WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin with 58,792,536 downloads. It powers from 24% to 28% of all online stores according to different sources being the most popular e-commerce platform on the web with 600,351 websites all over the world.
- Shopify is a cloud e-commerce solution that charges transaction fees. With $82B in total sales, it has a prominent place among other e-commerce platforms. The system combines all the necessary e-commerce and POS features providing everything you need to start, run, and grow your business.
- PrestaShop is a freemium, open source e-commerce solution that introduces an efficient and innovative platform with all the features you need to create an online store and grow your business. The system is available in 60 different languages and used by thousands of merchants worldwide.
- OpenCart is easy-to-use, open source, and supports multiple online stores from a single back-end. You launch an e-commerce website right after installing the OpenCart store without any specialists due to complete documentation and tutorial.
- osCommerce doesn’t offer something extraordinary when it comes to e-commerce functionality. The platform provides tools to create an online website to start selling products and services to customers worldwide. Also, note that osCommerce is available for free via its Open Source licenses.
- Spree Commerce is based on Ruby on Rails and offers simplicity and relatively rich functionality. You can also leverage many extensions designed to improve its out-of-the-box functionality. The ability to add custom features, scalability, flexibility, and the modular structure of the platform makes it easy to explore, configure, and upgrade. And don’t forget about a one-page checkout!
- Zen Cart is a free, user-friendly, and open source shopping cart software developed by shop owners, programmers, and designers. The platform requires only basic skills in website building to create a simple online storefront.
- Drupal Commerce introduces basic e-commerce options that can be enabled on a Drupal website only. The limited conditions can be extended with the “Commerce Kickstart” package which contains the most necessary add-ons with missing features.
- VirtueMart also introduces only basic e-commerce options. It offers support for multiple currencies and languages, provides numerous integrations with payment gateways, accounting platforms, fulfillment services, social networks, but sets a limit on the number of possible products and categories.
- BigCommerce offers quite decent e-commerce opportunities for merchants of all sizes. The platform lets you customize your e-commerce website as well as manage such business aspects as shipping and payments. Another great opportunity is related to the integration with external systems: you can provide products to eBay and Amazon or connect your store with Facebook.
None of these platforms provides better e-commerce functionality than Magento 2, but if you don’t need the extra features, they can be considered as a platform for the migration.
Adobe Impact & Magento Ecosystem Future
Alex Levashov describes the future of Magento as a brand in the smallest details. Adobe purchased multiple companies over the past six years, and each one has its own status. What is waiting for Magento? Find the answer here: .
Joshua Warren talks about the impact of Adobe acquisition as well as provides past facts as examples of how the new changes implement the platform. The history of Magento repeats itself, so there is nothing to be afraid of. Or the future is not so bright? Read this article: .
Karen Baker shares thoughts about Mark Lavelle’s (CEO of Magento for the past 3+ years) departure from Magento and the impact on the ecosystem. Will something bad happen? Follow the link to find the answer: .
And these are our thoughts on Adobe acquisition and the existence of Magento as a part of Adobe Experience Cloud.
Magento 2 End Of Life
The Magento 1 EOL is not the only problem: the Magento 2.2 end of life is announced for December 2019. It seems that Adobe is going to force merchants to update their stores more aggressively:
Magento 2.2 will be abandoned sooner than 1.13 and 1.14! Furthermore, Magento updates support policy starting with 2.3!
For Magento Commerce 2.3 and subsequent releases, Magento will provide quality fixes for a minor release for a minimum of 12 months from the general availability announcement date of the next minor software release. The same period for security patches is a little bit longer – 18 months. Both quality and security patches will not be backported to previous minor versions. For example, while 2.2 and 2.3 are currently supported minor releases, quality and security fixes will be released as 2.2.X and 2.3.Y, but not for prior minor versions that are out of support – 2.1.E, or as patches to previous patch releases – 2.2.1.B).
Thus, the company provides an extra layer of motivation to force merchants to update their e-commerce software to its latest supported version. This approach should help to avoid a situation when 2.9 is released, but there are still lots of merchants using 2.3.
updates support policy starting with 2.3.
— Sergii Shymko (@SergiiShymko)
Final Words
There is still more than a year before the Magento 1 End Of Life. Although it is a tremendous amount of time, you already have to decide what to do with your Magento 1 store. As you can see, there are three options to choose from: migrate to Magento 2, stay on Magento 1, or leave the ecosystem. Each one has its benefits and downsides, and there is no universal answer regarding which path to choose. Everything depends on multiple factors, such as the size of your company, your budget, and the necessity to utilize the new functionality. Think twice before making the far-reaching decision.