Insights

We don’t do business in doom and gloom, only digital solutions, so while the world may not be ending, Magento 1 is. Below you’ll find information pertinent to the first version’s End-of-Life (EoL), and how Webfitters can help in its wake.

What is Magento?

Part of the Adobe Cloud Experience, Magento is an e-Commerce platform that provides businesses with the software necessary to establish an online shopping presence. Launched in 2007, Magento has served hundreds of brands by connecting their customers to the products they love. Their scalable, open-source software has successfully created a network of online shops that are easy to maintain and reinforced with a support system to ensure effortless execution.

What happened?

Magento 2.0 was rolled out in 2015 as the much-anticipated successor of Magento 1. Originally, the plan was to continue support for Magento 1, after the launch of the second version, for 36 months, which was later extended to 55 months, and then users were strongly encouraged to move to Magento 2.0.

While it was largely thought to be a seamless transition to the new version, most found themselves confused with the technicalities of converting. It turned out that navigating your site from Magento 1 to Magento 2.0 was incredibly costly and time-consuming. Because of this, many users still opted to function with the first version of the platform. The situation became increasingly complicated when on June 30th, 2020, Magento officially announced that they would no longer be providing support for sites running on the first version- which left many businesses feeling stranded, and with a lot of questions.

What does this mean for your site?

A couple of things. The rescinded support for Magento 1 has put online shops (really, their entire site) at risk, and leaves them vulnerable to security breaches. Because there are no updates or bug fixes pushed through to Magento 1, there are issues that go unchecked and can open the door for hackers to breach and collect sensitive information on your site. Along with the woes of weakened security are additional issues with compatibility and accessibility when operating on Magento 1. Without the infrastructure that is current on Magento 2.0, online shops move slower and fail to meet the ease of usability that customer’s desire.

We saw an incident like this happen in September when almost 2,000 stores were hacked. Customer’s credit card details were then collected by a skimmer that the culprit had placed in the checkout form. What is the commonality between these stores- of which most had never experienced a previous security compromise- you ask? They were all operating on the outdated version of Magento 1.

So, how can Webfitters help?

The troubles consistent with the EoL of Magento 1 are avoidable, and if not attended to in a timely manner, could negatively impact your customer, even causing them to question the validity of your online store. This is why, with a free consultation, it is important to sit down and evaluate your shop and its current performance to determine a path forward. Whether it be rewriting and upgrading to Magento 2.0 or making the move to a new platform, with a Webfitters solution tailored to your business’s unique needs, you can feel confident in the strength of your online shop, even in the wake of Magento 1.

Contact us today to find out how Webfitters can help you transition out of Magento 1.