The End of Life for Magento 1 was on June 30, 2020. It’s done! Magento 1 is no longer supported, and a lot of merchants are freaked out. It is more than obvious that this didn’t happen overnight. The merchants were informed about Magento 1 EOL back in September 2018. However, there are a lot of business owners who are still pondering over the ‘How’ and ‘If’ of Magento 1 to 2 migration.
What happens if you stay on Magento 1?
Current Magento 1 users have two simple options: staying on Magento 1 or migrating to Magento 2. It goes without saying that Magento 2 is a better platform than Magento 1, but a lot of business owners are still using the abandoned version of Magento.
E-commerce businesses that are still using the old version of Magento must find ways to make their online store secure. End of life for Magento 1 literally means that the company will no longer provide the security patches that make your online store safe. You are at the mercy of third parties for the provision of the required security patches. Some merchants consider it a promising option, but this cannot be the same as official support.
Official support means that the company will provide a patch whenever an exploit is discovered. Third parties claim to do the same, but you can’t ignore the fact that the demand and supply rule always governs the market. It is very likely that in the near future, only a handful of merchants are still using Magento 1. This will drop the demand for Magento 1-related security patches and as a result, the third-party providers will step back.
It is not that your business will collapse if you don’t migrate to another platform today. Your online store would still be live and if you happen to have made a deal with a trusted security provider, you are good to go for some time. However, it is not worth the risk to stay on Magento 1 forever.
How is Magento 2 Better?
Official Support
Since we are past the End of Support deadline, the first and foremost thing to mention in this section is that unlike Magento 1, Magento 2 is a supported platform. As discussed earlier, an eCommerce platform that has official support is very secure but that’s not it! Magento will not only provide security patches for Magento 2 from time to time but will also add advanced features like PWA integration, code automation, advanced reporting, and extended cache support.
Better Architecture
Magento 2 houses many new technologies that were not included in the previous version. It supports the newer versions of MySQL, CLI, Composer, Apache, Symfony, and NGINX in addition to the default support of Memcached, Redis, and Varnish. Another important upgrade in the architecture of Magento is the minimized JavaScript that translates to a significant reduction in unnecessary browser operations.
Faster and Efficient
Customers hate it when the page they are trying to view is taking ages to load. Keeping this in mind, Magento 2 is so designed that the pages load no less than 30 to 50% faster as compared to Magento 1. Moreover, the stores built on Magento 2 are capable of handling as much as 39% more orders within 60 minutes as compared to Magento 1. This means that even with higher traffic, the pages will load faster so that no customer is left disappointed.
Why Aren’t People Migrating?
It seems that merchants are finding it hard to believe that the company has actually abandoned the 12-year-old Magento 1. Business owners are even claiming that it is very insensitive and cruel of them to cut off support for such a widely used eCommerce platform. However, the company has something to say in its defense.
The company released Magento 2 back in 2015 and announced that they will provide support for both; Magento 1 and 2 for a period of 36 months. The merchants had complete freedom to choose either Magento 1 or 2 to build their eCommerce store. Fast forward to three years, in September 2018, it was announced that the support for Magento 1 will cease on 30th June of the year 2020. Thus, the previously announced 36 months support window was extended to 55 months.
The users were informed almost 2 years before the cessation of support so that they have ample time to migrate to Magento 2 but a lot of merchants deliberately waited till the last moment. Many others have been trying to make all the necessary arrangements required to migrate to Magento 2 but are still not ready.
Is Migration Difficult?
Some people wrongfully considered Magento 2 an upgrade of the previous version, but this is far from the truth. Migration is used instead of “upgrade” when migrating from Magento 1 to 2. This is simply because switching to Magento 2 is not a simple upgrade. It is just like migration. In simplest terms, you will have to carry all of your data and take it to a different platform. A lot of things will have to be designed again.
This migration will also affect your SEO setup. Once you migrate to Magento 2; the metadata templates, cross-links, and custom URL formats might get completely lost. This means that the entire SEO setup will have to be re-optimized. In order to get things back in place, you can take help from an SEO specialist.
Lastly, it must be mentioned that the process of migration is expensive. Many merchants are just not in the position to make such a big investment at the time.
Conclusion
Magento is one of the highly sought-after eCommerce platforms globally. This powerful Content Management System is running the online businesses of more than 250,000 merchants worldwide. It was smart of you to choose Magento in the first place.