With Magento 1’s end-of-life coming up, it might seem like everyone is scrambling for cover. And understandably so, given the fact that after June 2020, merchants with online stores deployed on Magento 1 (M1) will lose all access to new features, functionality updates, bug fixes, and support from Adobe/Magento. Most importantly, any future vulnerabilities exposed will no longer be addressed with new security patches from the company, according to their published information on the subject.
New features, functionality updates, and security patches, as well as some Magento extensions, will only be made available to storefronts on the latest version of Magento 2 (M2).
Now, it’s human nature to ask these two questions during such situations — what are my options, and what is everyone else doing?
Let’s first take a look at the second question, because there is often a lot of wisdom to be found in community behavior, that will usually lead to a solid decision.
So what are other merchants really doing about it?
To answer this question, we need to understand how many merchants are still with M1; and what proportion of them are actually moving to M2 (and to which edition), less than seven months before M1’s end-of-life.
We turned to technographic data available from search engines and web technology profiler tools, BuiltWith and SimilarTech along with other online resources, to find the information. It’s also worth noting that these online tools do not always identify the exact versions of Magento, so we are presenting this data based off percentages of versions actually identified.
- There are currently more than 200,000 sites on Magento across all its versions.
- Historically, Magento has been about 30% of all online stores worldwide. In fact, 20-25% of all e-commerce stores were on Magento Community and about 5-10% were on Magento Enterprise. Obviously, the water is a little muddy considering the number of name changes that have taken place.
- Of all identified M2 sites, more than 90% use the open source/Community edition today. In the Top 10K sites by traffic, this share is closer to 50%.
- Furthermore, the number of sites migrating from M1 to M2 Community is more than 30 times higher than those moving to M1 to M2 Enterprise.
- More than 78% of all M1 sites are now on M1.9. As a percentage, a significantly higher proportion of sites are moving from M1.x to M1.9 (47.5%), compared to the M1.x to M2.x transition (22%).
- More than half of all Magento sites, according to SimilarTech, are still on M1.x versions, a large number, considering M1 end-of-life is less than seven months away (and the fact that the migration exercise can often take several months).
These numbers indicate four broad themes:
- Merchants are moving to the latest version of M1.x, which is 1.9, to get as updated as they can without a full re-platform to M2. The community definitely understands that M1.9 (and 1.7) were the most stable versions of the platform. They are taking a wait-and-see approach for future announcements.
- M2 Enterprise has a much lower market share than M2 Community at just over 3,000 sites worldwide. And M1 is still leading M2 in market share with well more than 100,000 sites worldwide. This means the community is waiting and not rushing. That said, more merchants may start planning the move now that Black Friday 2019 is behind us and it doesn’t seem like Adobe will push the end-of-life date out once again.
- There is, definitely, apprehension among a large proportion of merchants in making the leap to M2. They can avoid paying licensing costs by deploying M2 Community, however, the replatform itself involves a complete rewrite of their sites.
- The preference of merchants to go to the open source/free version of M2 is not surprising given the considerable license costs associated with M2 Enterprise. The bigger the store, the more likely they will invest in licenses, the promise of support, and the “premium” features. The sales team at Adobe/Magento is targeting bigger brands too.
There’s plenty of talk in the Twitterverse to help you understand what direction others are taking, and what version will work best for you. There are a lot of blogs written about this too, and Reddit has some interesting and candid feedback from merchants and developers alike.
- “Newest Magento 2.x versions are much faster than M 2.0.0 but M2 still at least 2 times slower than Magento 1.9.x.”
- “What necessary features does Magento EE have? In our case: giftcards, customer attributes, better admin customer/order management. nothing that can’t be replicated/worked around on CE… + the staging stuff sucks mostly,” etc.
Moving from M1 to M2 is not a simple upgrade; it’s a re-platform that requires extensive development work, which takes months, and can be prohibitively expensive (read, tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars), for even the most basic sites. For many merchants and e-commerce sites, the end-of-life deadline of June 2020 isn’t working out, mostly due to the costs, timelines, resources, and uncertainty involved, and often because the timing isn’t right for their business, yet. And it’s okay… no one should feel pressured into a decision like this. We are fans of the Magento platform and have seen it be a success factor in branding for many large multi-million dollar businesses.
The biggest concern such merchants have, is regarding the protection of their M1 applications against new vulnerabilities discovered after June 2020, once Magento stops rolling out security patches. There are bad guys (hackers) out there ready to cause trouble and steal confidential information (such as identities and credit card data) from digital commerce sites, the moment they spot a vulnerability.
Your option: Introducing Webscale M1 Support
As part of our ongoing commitment to supporting the Magento community in these times, we’ve launched Webscale M1 Support, a security-focused SaaS platform that allows merchants to continue to use M1 beyond June 2020, securing their site against exploits, from the point of entry to the backend infrastructure.
Now, we are not suggesting you avoid upgrading forever. We just want you to do it when (and if) you are ready.
Webscale will be working closely with the Magento Association (we announced our partnership with them last week), the community, and Magento experts worldwide to develop application security patches, and collaborating with our digital agency partners and developers to apply these patches to merchants’ applications. Interestingly, our Web Controls might be the only way to stop M1 exploits in seconds, while we develop the patches for a long-term fix.
You’re not alone!
Again, we’re not saying that you shouldn’t move to M2. We definitely encourage every merchant, that wants to re-platform, to get it done with the right partner and appropriate planning. We have a large network of proven partners we can introduce you to as well. They cover M2 Enterprise and Community store development. We’ve also put together some resources, like this webinar and these articles on the objectives and process. However, there is a lot of propaganda out there around the need to rush to M2, and we feel merchants shouldn’t be forced into a hasty decision.
If you, as a merchant, are still with M1 and prefer to continue with it until the time is right for your business (beyond June 2020), you’re not alone! It may seem that every merchant is hurtling towards M2, but they actually aren’t. The numbers we shared above, prove that there are plenty of merchants in the same boat as you are.
You also have us right beside you, until you’ve decided what the best way forward for you is. Webscale M1 Support will be around for at least the next 24 months (most likely, longer), if you would like to give your business more time to plan and re-platform.
We are committed to your success because we understand how difficult your journey is, from working with more than 1,200 stores like yours.
To learn more about Webscale M1 Support, click here, or request a demo by filling out this form. You can also email me directly at ceo@webscalenetworks.com, if you have ideas on how we can help.
