Magento has announced that support for Magento 1 will be ending in June 2020. Does this mean that operators can remain on their existing platform through the end of the year?

The short answer is, “No.” And here’s why:

Critical Support Only

Although it sounds reassuring, the support that Magento will provide from here on out is limited to critical security issues only and perhaps a functional update or two for the Enterprise (Commerce) version. If your business experiences any disruption, it will probably be on you to foot the bill for writing any code necessary to keep the orders flowing. With the frequent changes in online commerce, one needs to protect the ability to fight the tide of obsolescence or to adapt to recent trends in order to maximize profitability. Critical changes in hosting environments and web technologies can pop up unexpectedly, threatening the ability of your site to perform – leaving you with declining orders and rising costs.

Our Magento commerce experts help you leverage Magento Business Intelligence to fit your specific needs and requirements at any level, from SMB to Enterprise, and beyond.

Aging Code Base

The bulk of custom code in the average Magento 1 website was written years ago by people who are now unavailable.  In the years since, many people may have come-and-gone leaving a myriad of surprises waiting to be discovered if the site should go down.

Additionally, many Magento 1 sites are still running on older versions of hardware, servers, and programming languages.  The farther out we are from today’s technologies, the more likely that the next problem or crash for a Magento 1 site will be a “special snowflake” that is just not a common-enough problem for Magento to address at the highest levels.

Third-Party Support

Most authors of community extensions and plug-ins have moved on to supporting Magento 2 and rarely support their legacy Magento 1 extensions anymore.  Critical functions necessary to the livelihood of a Magento 1 site can become obsolete overnight due to changes in shipping, taxes, security protocols, integration standards or countless other factors.

As many Magento professionals say from time to time, “nobody wants to work on Magento 1 anymore!”  As fast as Magento 2 has moved in its first few minor versions, along with the growing demand following the Adobe acquisition and the need for thousands of developers to re-certify, it is getting increasingly difficult to find qualified support for Magento 1 sites.

Leadtime to Migrate

Although it seems as if Black Friday 2019 is hardly behind us, site operators that want to have a stable, performant website ready for the 2020 holiday buying season must start planning today, and they need to have their new platforms ready and launched by the end of summer.

Sign up today for the latest news about your Digital Transformation. || Learn how our certified experts will guide in selecting the best Digital Commerce platform for your business.

Quite a few businesses made the decision to defer upgrading their Magento sites last year for one reason or another. However, it is simply unavoidable this year; waiting until 2021 to upgrade to Magento 2 means that the existing Magento 1 sites will reach end-of-support while they are still running. This leaves a very risky transition (not only of website but of the operations built around them) to occur right into the peak buying season, a scenario that has proven disastrous for many site operators in years past. Don’t be one of them!

Download our full offerings summary for more information on how TA Digital offers complete site migration to the latest version with no risk by providing a fixed-rate, fixed-duration project solution.

Get Help From Our Experts

Over the past 20 years, we have completed thousands of digital projects globally. We have one of the largest and deepest multi-solutions digital consulting teams in the world. Our Commerce Martech services can help you deliver effective multichannel commerce campaigns that increase sales. We can help you deploy chatbots to serve as a concierge for your customers, providing them with a high touch personalized shopping experience and seamless low-cost customer journey. Talk to our team of Digital Commerce Experts today.

DesignRush has recognized TA Digital as a top Magento Development Agency.

About TA Digital

TA Digital is the only global boutique agency that delivers the “best of both worlds” to clients seeking to achieve organizational success through digital transformation. Unlike smaller, regional agencies that lack the ability to scale or large organizations that succumb to a quantity-over-quality approach, we offer resource diversity while also providing meticulous attention to the details that enable strategic success.

Over the past 20 years, TA Digital has positioned clients to achieve digital maturity by focusing on data, customer-centricity, and exponential return on investment; by melding exceptional user experience and data-driven methodologies with artificial intelligence and machine learning, we enable digital transformations that intelligently build upon the strategies we set into motion. We are known as a global leader that assists marketing and technology executives in understanding the digital ecosystem while identifying cultural and operational gaps within their business – ultimately ushering organizations toward a more mature model and profitable digital landscape.

Recognized in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2019, 2020 and 2021 Inc. 5000 list as one of the fastest growing companies in the United States, TA Digital is pleased also to share high-level strategic partnerships with world class digital experience platform companies like Adobe, SAP, Acquia, commercetools, Sitecore, and Elastic Path.

WRITTEN BY:

Commerce Practice Team