End of Magento 1.x maintenance scheduled for June 30, 2020. What other options do you have?

Magento announced in 2018 the end of Magento 1.x maintenance for June 30, 2020. As such, all merchants using version 1 are advised to upgrade to the latest versions. The end of support date which is scheduled for June 2020 is approaching. What are the different options available to you? How to ensure a safe transition? The purpose of this article is to review all the options available to you. We will also explain what end of life means and all the implications.

Does the end of Magento 1.x maintenance mean that your store will stop working?

The answer to this question is "No". In technical terms, the end of maintenance for Magento 1.x means that the application will no longer receive support from the community. In other words, you will no longer receive any new temporary security solutions or other updates from June 30, 2020. There are many risks associated with outdated and unsupported software. Migrating to Magento 2 will help you with future issues. Many websites that are not supported experience various bugs and security issues. Here are some of the issues you might encounter.

• First of all, the end of Magento maintenance means that you are facing a lot of security vulnerabilities. In other words, a hacker can easily hack into your website with little effort. Also, you might not be able to use some third-party software any longer. For example, most payment gateways require recent system specifications which you can find on outdated versions.
• Second, some features of your website will stop working. As you probably already know, for your website to work well, it needs to use third-party resources. Most of these third-party providers will therefore cease to maintain their extensions or services. Your website or part of your site will eventually be deactivated.
• Third, Google or some search engines could penalize you for using an insecure website. If search engines detect that your website is a gateway for hackers, they will reduce your traffic. As a result, you will lose some of your visitors.
• Finally, you may end up losing all your investment and valuable data if you are attacked by hackers.

What are the alternatives to Magento 1 if Magento maintenance ends?

There are many options regarding your e-commerce store. In fact, there are plenty of e-commerce solutions these days that allow you to quickly sell online. If you take the time to do some research, you'll find some great tools that will perfectly suit your business purpose. Here are some suggestions based on our development skills and experience in the e-commerce market.

Option 1 – Migrate to Magento 2

Magento maintenance will be effective on Magento 2. Magento 2 offers many advantages over version 1. Even though both versions have two completely different frameworks and probably a different layout, there are many features that you will not find on Magento 1.

The main advantage of Magento 2

Many companies or developers who work with Magento 1 felt that it required too much technical skill. Therefore, when comparing e-commerce platforms, they also rely on these factors. So, before you decide to move on to other e-commerce tools, take the time to learn about these advantages – Magento 2 is much better than Magento 1 in terms of maintenance, of which here are some of the advantages:

There is a marked improvement in performance, and Magento 2 is 20% faster than Magento 1.

I had the opportunity to work on many Magento 1 websites, and the loading time and performance were very high. I was amazed at how fast Magento 2 was. For an e-commerce store, performance plays a crucial role in SEO.

It's easier to integrate and develop.

Unlike Magento 1 which required a greater share of manual or backend manipulations, Magento 2 offers an easier way for developers. You can easily use a command line interface or configuration functions to install features while validating if they are Magento compliant.

The simplified ordering process.

The checkout process of Magento 2 is quite simple compared to Magento 1. In fact, for Magento 1, unless getting an extension, users will have to go through six steps to complete a transaction. Whereas in Magento 2 there are only two steps. In other words, with Magento 2 you increase your chances of making more sales.

The administration interface is simpler and User-friendly

Magento 2 admin interface is more user friendly and well designed. So any non-technical user can easily understand and use it.

Managing the mobile aspect is easier

Magento 2, by default, comes with Bootstrap features that improve the responsiveness of your store. As you probably already know, over 70% of internet users browse on mobile devices and tablets. That's why integrating mobile-friendly features into an e-commerce tool is one way to improve the responsiveness of your website.

There is Drag & Drop functionality

The latest version of Magento 2 to start integrating the tool to generate the pages. This will allow you to create pages more easily and have the design configured to your liking without necessarily needing a developer.

Other features of Magento 2

There are many other features of Magento 2 that you can use to improve your sales; some are:

• You can easily connect to marketplaces like Amazon, Google Shopping.
• There are other features that can help automate some of your processes. For example, email marketing software or the abandonment of shopping cart automation.

What are the main changes from Magento 1 to Magento 2

Some Magento 2 database tables are similar to those of Magento 1, but there are many changes to consider. Migrating then means moving your data from the other database to the new one, moving your theme (if you wish), your extension and other custom features. Here's what you need to do to migrate correctly:

Take an inventory of all the features you need to migrate.

For any website using a CMS, there are basic features and custom features. The basic functions are those which are provided with the software without additional extension. Custom features, you add them yourself to improve your store. Magento offers an easy way to move core functionality using the Data Migration Tool . As for your custom features, you can see them either with your third-party vendors or with your developers. If your custom feature providers have no equivalent in Magento 2, you can either create new ones, must search for similar features in Magento Marketplace. Once you've done that, you can now move on to the proper migration process.

Migration process from Magento 1 to Magento 2

• Building a new store using Magento 2. A new store involves installing Magento on your server (if you are looking for the open-source version) or creating an account on the Magento Commerce platform.
• Install the Data Migration Tool and begin migrating your core functionality. As mentioned above, the Data Migration Tool can only help you migrate the basic features of Magento.
• Migrate your theme from Magento 1 to Magento 2 and adjust UI changes.
• Update your data accordingly. Here you can learn more about Magento 2 .
• Update your custom features. Once the migration is complete, you will need to update your custom features with the equivalent in Magento 2. You can also add additional features in Magento 2 to take full advantage of the new version.

Although Magento maintenance of Magento will no longer be available under Magento 1; Magento 2 can be a good alternative.

Option 2 – Opt for Shopify

Shopify offers many benefits for growing quickly online. One of the great things about Shopify is that you don't need any technical skills to run your store. Also, Shopify's business model seems to suit a growing number of e-commerce owners. Below are some of the benefits of Shopify.

• Over 800,000 people around the world use Shopify for their e-commerce.
• The average annual growth is more than 126%.
• Over 427,676 websites use Shopify,
• Five thousand four hundred businesses trust Shopify Plus.
• Revenue for 2018 was $1.073 billion .
• According to Shopify, they made over 1.5 billion sales during Black Friday 2018. In other words, customers earned up to $870,000 per minute.

Here are some differences between Magento and Shopify

Cost

The cost is an aspect that no company can ignore, especially in the beginning when you want to stabilize your business. Magento is based on an open-source platform, so you can get the community edition for free. You must define your hosting and your domain name.

Marketing

Another feature you should look for in your e-commerce platform is how it aligns with your marketing strategies. Magento offers strong SEO features with friendly URLs, site mapping, and Google Content API, but Magento does not give you built-in social media features. You can add applications to make your Magento site user-friendly. When it comes to built-in promotion options, Magento wins with its countless features like up-selling, promotional pricing, flexible coupons, related products, free shipping, product bundling, and more. Shopify doesn't offer much flexibility when it comes to SEO, but gives you the essentials with the robots.txt and "sitemap.xml" files. It's more popular for its social media capabilities that let you sell directly on Facebook and create sellable pins on Pinterest. Built-in promotions include coupon and discount codes. You can also find other solutions for promotions in the app store.

inventory

Shopify software is useful for managing the inventory of your physical store as well as the online store. The e-commerce platform has capabilities to help you sell on major social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. In addition, it also has a PoS (Point of Sale) solution for managing your in-store inventory. As a store owner, you can customize your Magento store as you wish. You can integrate multiple channels as well as online portals that you consider ideal for growing your business. There are several extensions available in the market to help you customize your inventory database to your needs. The advantage of working with Magento is that it offers custom integrations. It's useful when you're looking to provide unique personalized offers to your customers based on their purchase history.

Support

Shopify provides 24/7 customer support and also offers dedicated and community support. It certainly has advantages over Magento, especially for small businesses that need constant support for updates and security patches. Magento, on the other hand, relies entirely on community support, so no service representative can answer your one-on-one questions. For any issues, you will need to post a question on the community forums or search for a previous answer to a similar question.

User interface

If you are a small business, your eCommerce store UI is a significant reflection of how you can run your store. If you are looking for a less complicated admin interface, Shopify is better for you. Daily functions like adding and editing products, managing categories, adding modules, etc. are easy to use in Shopify and can be done without much technical expertise. Magento, although flexible, is more complex, as there are many more functions integrated in the administration section. You can embark on this adventure if you have a larger product portfolio and the resources to manage the technical part.

Third-party apps

It's easier to expand your store using one of the extensions than if you have a Shopify store. The Shopify app store works for you if you don't need any additional integrations for your store, but it still falls far short of matching Magento in terms of the number of apps available and the variety of themes. Please read this article , Magento and Shopify, to learn more.

Option 3 – Switch to WooCommerce

WooCommerce is also another powerful eCommerce site powered by WordPress. As you probably know, WordPress is the most popular CMS for website. Below are some of the benefits of WooCommerce.

1. The specificity of WooCommerce is that it is an open-source platform whose code language is accessible to everyone. You may as well choose to subscribe to a monthly version. Thanks to its open sources, it offers an unlimited possibility of customization, which allows a great margin of flexibility. You can practically use it to build your website according to your personality and aspirations. Customizing and using Theme on WooCommerce is simple and straightforward.
2. Because WooCommerce uses the power of WordPress, it has an exhaustive variety of themes for better web design.
3. In addition, thanks to its integration with the structural systems of WordPress and its specificity to promote in-depth customization of your website, WooCommerce automatically improves your natural ranking on Google.

Other options to consider – PrestaShop, BigCommerce, OpenCart.

There are many other CMS that you can use for your online store. These include PrestaShop, BigCommerce and OpenCart. Note that each tool has its pros and cons. If you need help choosing the right tool for your business, you can contact us .

Conclusion and final remarks

The end of maintenance of Magento 1.x can have an impact on the progress of your online activities. To continue running your e-commerce business, you may need a robust tool that will best suit your business purpose. Whatever your experience with Magento 1, you will certainly enjoy using Magento 2, however if you want to switch to another software, you also have various tools at your disposal. The end of Magento 1.x maintenance could lead many developers to lose interest in it. That said, many of your features will break down as other aspects of the site progress.