A platform upgrade brings with it all sorts of bright, shiny promises. It accelerates your plans to grow, rise above your competitors and provide your customers with the best experience possible. But for most e-Commerce business owners, making the move from one one e-Commerce platform to another (otherwise known as replatforming) can be extremely risky and costly.
Without right planning and technical know-how, crucial customer data could be lost in the move, your hard-earned SEO rankings could disappear, and who knows what else. However, Adobe’s announcement 2018 of Magento 1’s end of life this year, has very well made a ‘nice-to-have’, inevitable for many online businesses.
So it’s a no-brainer that the move is imminent. Though, as the reality of switching from Magento 1 to Magento 2 came into focus, it’s clear that this wouldn’t be a simple upgrade. To move from one to the other correctly, the steps required looks pretty much like a full migration.
Does this End of Life (EoL) spell the end for its businesses, too?
After the official date of June 30, 2020, Magento will no longer support Magento 1 (both Magento Commerce 1 and Magento Open Source), ending all support services, security patches and quality fixes for these systems. E-Commerce stores that choose to stay will suffer the risks of security hacks, spelling disaster for their hard-earned customer trust and loyalty. What else? Keep reading for the full list.
- No Security Patches
It goes without saying – the digital landscape is changing at the break-neck speed, forcing every linked system to change with it. When developers stop maintaining systems (in this case – Magento 1), the system will be more and more vulnerable to security breaches and with no solutions – it basically becomes a ticking time bomb.
- Missing out on upgrades and other e-commerce innovations
Magento 1 doesn’t come packed with the updated features that Shopify or Magento 2 have. People have set expectations from their eCommerce platforms, like speedy load time, real-time analytics, easy integration with other applications, extensive community, being able to scale easily etc. Magento 1 is like living in the past. The future may be uncertain, you should at least allow yourself a fighting chance in the present.
- Lack of support
When there’s an emergency and you break the glass, usually some relief follows knowing that help is on the way. Sticking to Magento 1 means you’re left in the cold. You could be missing out on so many sales if your online store had to be put on the brakes just so you can fix one glitch and worst of all….you’ll be doing the troubleshooting blindly on your own.
- Routine updates will start taking longer
As time goes on after the EOL, extension developers will stop maintaining their own plugins, meaning no updates, meaning…no edge over competitors, no enduring traffic and no more innovation for your store. A glitchy checkout process is never a good sign for customers. Not only will this add costs to your business but will also damage your brand reputation.
- Goodbye, mission-critical third-party extensions
The 90s vibe may be trending aesthetically…however, if a store seems like it’s still operating on dial-up, it loses its appeal fast. The majority of developers who contribute to the ever-growing Magento Marketplace will eventually stop releasing Magento 1 extensions and themes. This leaves you in a position where you’d have to maintain, audit and fix any third-party extensions and themes – which isn’t a viable option for most busy business owners.
Are you one of the estimated 200,000 companies stuck in Magento 1? Need a migration without the migraine? Get in touch with us now.