In the past few weeks, we have received quite a few questions from online merchants regarding the Magento platform and the related migration to a newer system. Namely, official support for Magento 1 version ends on 30.6.2020, which has led merchants to receive many emails, mostly those that instilled additional fear in merchants and sold them their solutions, which are mostly quite poor. Let me address some of the most common concerns merchants have regarding different versions of Magento.
Will the store on Magento 1 stop working?
Due to various emails, like the example below, there were some questions and fears.
“Upon reviewing your online store, we noticed that you are using the Magento 1.9 platform, which will no longer have official support as of June 2020. This means that there will be no new security updates, and you will be responsible for their development.”
In short, stores will still operate and can still receive unofficial security updates.
What exactly does the end of official development mean?
Magento wanted to end the development of Magento 1 version as early as 2018, but due to poor community response, everything was postponed to June 2020. The poor response was mainly due to the state of the then Magento 2 project version, which was in quite a poor state and has since improved, but still has some shortcomings.
If we look at an example from a few days ago: “Magento Open Source 2.3.5-p1 includes over 180 functional fixes to the core product, 25 security enhancements, and the resolution of over 46 issues by our community members… We strongly recommend that all merchants upgrade as soon as possible.” we can see that quite a few fixes are still needed for the version to be truly stable, secure, and reliable.
The end of official development means that Magento will focus all its efforts on developing the new Magento 2 version and stop development on Magento 1. This means that there will be no new upgrades and security patches for Magento 1 from the Magento company.
However, this does not mean that they will not be available or that the store will stop working, as there are several options, such as the open-source project Open mage project (https://www.openmage.org/) and the paid option Mage one (https://mage-one.com/), which will ensure that your store can continue to be upgraded and properly protected.
Both solutions have guaranteed that they will support Magento 1 for at least the next 5 years.
What about Magento 1 modules?
We have developed quite a few modules for Magento 1 and have more than 50 modules in total, so we can cover most of the wishes, and if necessary, we still develop new modules, as more than 100 Magento stores with different wishes turn to our technical support.
Currently, there are still more modules for Magento 1 than for Magento 2, but this is also changing, and we already have some Magento 2 solutions ourselves. Officially, modules for older versions will only be available through the developers' sites and no longer through the official Magento site.
We will continue to maintain and upgrade the modules as needed, and at the same time migrate all modules to Magento 2. Unfortunately, these will be more expensive for the newer version, as the entire development is much more complex and takes considerably more time and resources to develop a module.
You can view the prices of modules and the offer with our quick assistant to the online store at the URL below.
PCI security compliance and PayPal
Most online payments in Slovenia are made with cash on delivery, and other payments with credit or debit cards mostly do not take place on the merchant's site, but the buyer is redirected to an external site for payment. In some cases, forms from external sites can also be displayed on the merchant's site, but the entered card data is always entered and stored on the payment provider's site. This greatly reduces the possibility of abuse or data theft. We advise against accepting and storing data on the store's site itself, and we do not do this in practice.
For payment processing, the only provider currently (according to our information) is PayPal, which has notified Magento store owners of the mandatory upgrade to a newer version for continued payment processing, and in such a case, it is difficult to predict how things will unfold. Namely, there are many more stores on the older version than on the new one, and this number is quite large - more than 100,000 stores.
In the event that PayPal would disable payment processing through the site, there are two options: either integrate PayPal payments through a payment intermediary, such as the Mollie payment system, or extend for an additional 6 months by ensuring that the existing store is maintained for security and work on migration to another system.
If you would continue to use Magento 1 with the Mage one support option, PayPal responded: “Mage One can from our point of view be an interim solution if a migration is not possible until 30th of June 2020. Patches provided by Mage One will surely help to satisfy the data protection standard of the credit card industry, but using Mage One service does not imply, that we can guarantee that you comply with these standards.”
Security and Magento
If you want to have a well-protected store, it is good to regularly update your system, regardless of which Magento version, as this can avoid many problems.
Even if we have a Magento 2 store, this does not mean that we are protected, given how new the system is and how many new security patches it has, it can be quite the opposite.
You can check the security of your store at the link:
https://www.magereport.com/scan/
If you check the sites that are in the emails urging you to migrate, you can see that the sites are marked as high risk.
If you would like to update your store, write to us, and we will help you arrange the upgrade. Upgrades on Magento 1 usually take about 2 hours of work, and on Magento 2, twice as much, depending on the extent of the changes that need to be made.
Support hour on Magento 1 is €40+VAT, on Magento 2, it is €65+VAT.
Speed and cart on the store
The advantages of the new system should also be a better two-step cart and faster operation of the online store, but is this really the case in practice?
The system itself has much more complex requirements than the previous version and is becoming quite a big problem when changing the PHP version that would suit the appropriate Magento 2 version, which can be a challenge for many. If we set up Magento stores on one of the most popular hosting providers, we can see that things are quite the opposite, as working on the newer version can be a challenge when caching and similar things are turned off.
More than the version of the system itself, it is important how everything is set up from the PHP version to additional caching and store settings. We have been working on Magento 1 for almost 10 years and have also developed our modules for faster operation and our carts, which we tested with others and had very good sales results.
So we can say that both versions can be well arranged if there is appropriate knowledge and developed related solutions, as we can see in the example below, which was promoted.
You can check the speed or rating of your store at the link:
