Magento 1 End of Life - Everything You Need to Know
Wednesday, January 22, 2020Eric Zegarski
Everything You Need to Know About Magento 1's End of Life
Back in 2018,
Magento announced that it would be ending support for its Magento 1 platform. As June 2020 approaches, you might still be scrambling to migrate to Magento 2 before Magento stop supporting Magento 1. Luckily for you, eBridge has numerous agency partners who can help you with your transition to Magento 2. Below you’ll find everything you need to know about Magento 1’s impending end of life. Sit back and queue a tune from your favorite emo band, as we explore Magento 1's upcoming death. We recommend something from My Chemical Romance or Jimmy Eat World to set the right mood.
Evaluating Your Options
Magento 1 users have several options, including but not limited to, changing to a new platform, migrating to Magento 2, or choosing to remain on Magento 1. Before you start looking into alternatives like
Shopify and
BigCommerce, here are a few things you should consider before making the jump:
Moving to a Magento Alternative
Moving to a new platform isn’t as simple as packing your bags and moving. You might require help from an agency that specializes in that platform to get you up and running. Here are a few additional hiccups that might occur from migrating to a Magento alternative:
- Transitioning to a new site might affect your domain authority, which in turn has a negative impact on your SEO
- Any link structures you have built could be broken during the migration
- The migration and fees associated with your new platform of choice will probably be greater than a Magento 2 migration
Moving from Magento 1 to Magento 2
Moving to Magento 2 might seem like a big endeavor before June 2020, but transitioning to the platform does give the merchant benefits such as:
- Offer personalized shopping experiences
- Faster web response and loading times
- A streamlined checkout experience
- Improved search to allow shoppers find products faster
- Extensive functionality for B2B businesses
- Improved admin experience with enhanced backend operations
However, Magento 2 isn’t a simple upgrade that is done via a download wizard. Magento 2 is a whole new eCommerce platform that Magento spent years developing and testing in order to offer a world-class eCommerce solution. In addition to an improved front end experience for both shoppers and merchants, Magento 2 also boasts impressive updates to its backend. Here are a few updates to Magento’s backend:
- Magento 2 requires less training, therefore less dependence on developers and time managing the platform
- No need to rely on coding, build pages with drag-and-drop functionality
- Increase average order value (AOV) with cross-selling, bundling, and upselling features
- Built-in B2B functionality with custom catalogues, pricing, quoting, and 1-click reordering
- Stage content in a preview environment and create, preview, and schedule campaigns
Timeline of a Magento 2 Migration Project
There’s still time to migrate to Magento 2! Most if not all Magento 1 to Magento 2 migration projects can be completed in under 6 months. Planning for a migration project can seem as a daunting task at first, but there are a few preliminary steps you can take to ensure your migration is on budget and on time. It all begins with evaluating your current Magento site. Ask yourself what’s your current functionality, what you want to add and what you want to get rid of. Secondly while chatting you’re your preferred agency of record, make sure to provide them with a list of 3rd party applications your current Magento site uses. This will allow them to proactively plan for any additional integration projects.
Let’s dive into the nitty gritty and explore how a Magento 1 to Magento 2 project might look in a 6-month timeframe. The first month is the planning phase. At this stage you work with either your internal e-commerce team, or agency partner to scope out the migration project and make sure all your ducks are in order before the project is launched. Depending on the complexity of your Magento store, the migration phase might take up-to 4 months. At this stage, you and the stakeholders involved work together on the project. Finally, the last month is dedicated for quality assurance and launch. Before you go live, it’s crucial to ensure that your new Magento site is up to par with what you envisioned. In addition, run Q&A to ensure your 3rd party apps are properly integrated.
Risks Associated with Not Migrating to Magento 2
Since Magento is stopping support for Magento 1, there are numerous risks that you as a merchant open yourself up to. Most of the risk are security based, meaning your website will no longer be complaint with industry regulations and be prone to malicious attacks or treats. Below you’ll find several major security threats your Magento 1 store will be vulnerable to:
No More Magento Security Patches
Hackers are always on the hunt for eCommerce websites they can take advantage of. Several of their nefarious strategies include executing DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks and running spam registrations. Once Magento stops supporting Magento 1, the Magento 1 framework will be exposed to hackers. The Zend framework that Magento is built on will also be exposed. For their supported Magento 2 platform, Magento rolls out regular security patches to prevent these exposures.
Increase in Hosting Costs
In addition to Magento 1 reaching its end of life in June 2020, CentOS 6 will be reaching its end of life come November 2020. It’s a popular hosting software that many Magento 1 users rely on. It will also be open to malicious attacks by hackers. Therefore, merchants still relying on Magento 1 will have to find a secure alternative for hosting.
Lack of 2-Factor Authentication
2-Factor Authentication is an industry standard for ensuring your data is secure. Magento 2 has enhanced authentication features that ensure your Magento 2 platform will be safe. For those staying on Magento 1,
JetRails, who are a hosting provider for Magento, have an app in the Magento marketplace. This extension allows you to have your Magento admin users use an authenticator app like Google Authenticator. This mitigates the risk of your Magento account being hacked, should a hacker get their hands on someone’s login credentials.
Running Out of Date Extensions for Magento
Extension developers are no long developing or supporting apps for Magento 1. They have shifted their focus to develop extensions for Magento 2. This is due to the simple economic rule of supply and demand. As a result, any extensions that are Magento 1 specific will no longer receive security patches or feature updates. If one of these extensions is essential for your Magento site, then you place yourself at risk of losing that important functionality.
Loss of PCI Compliance
Being PCI compliant is essential for every eCommerce business. Payment card industry (PCI) compliance refers to the technical and operational standards that businesses must follow to ensure that credit card data provided by cardholders is protected. If your Magento site isn’t PCI compliant, you can receive steep fines from the PCI Security Standards Council. In addition, without PCI compliance, Google will place a nasty red “not secure” memo in front of your URL and change your URL colour to a nasty bright red. Potential and returning customers will be instantly aware that your site is at risk of being hacked and compromising their financial information.
How eBridge Fits Into a Magento 2 Migration Project
Your back-office ERP system is the backbone of your operations and finance department. We work alongside you and your eCommerce team, be they in-house or outsourced, to ensure your ERP will be sending data bi-directionally with your new Magento 2 site. Therefore, by choosing eBridge Connections, you can rest assured your Magento 2 site will be a supercharged sales machine come launch day.
We recently were a part of a Magento 2 migration for our existing client Everlast. Everlast has been a valued customer of eBridge Connections for many years now. The original project we completed was a sales order data integration between Everlast’s Microsoft Dynamics AX ERP, to their Magento 1 site. Since then, we’ve been moving orders back and forth from their ERP to their Magento site.
Everlast was proactive with their approach to transition from Magento 1 to Magento 2. Everlast was looking forward to the improvements of Magento 2 but were worried about disrupting their business processes. Many teams, including the team at Everlast, the team at eBridge Connections worked in tandem to see this project come to fruition. Everyone exchanged vital information to set up connections and required data flows for integration to ensure this project went smoothly.
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You’ll be also pleased to know that our ERP integration is universal. We a have pre-built connector for
Magento as well as ERP solutions from
Microsoft,
Sage,
SAP,
NetSuite, and
many more. As a result, we can implement an integration project accurately, rapidly, and on budget. Furthermore, since eBridge is hosted on Microsoft Azure, we offer world class security and can boast a 99.95% uptime.