Ray Bogman

Bio: Business Solutions Architect at Magento

Gaurav Jain

Bio: Co-Founder at MageComp

Christian Münch

Bio: Senior Web-Developer at netz98 GmbH

First we should explain, why it is good to move to Magento 2.

If you are a Magento 1 merchant, you have a stable e-commerce solution. Maybe your business grew up along with Magento 1. That is great. Much of this success may have come from the big Magento community and Magento partners. What if these partners are not anymore available in the future? Overtime, this might pose a problem for the people who have established their business on Magento 1 with developers and influencers moving on to the next version of Magento. That is a big risk for your business. So it is important to move towards t Magento 2. It is critical for your business. .

Another aspect is that the official support of Magento 1 will cease in the future. With the ever evolving e-commerce landscape, every shop is a potential target for hackers. Hackers are very creative in finding gaps in the Magento’s software. This means that there will a day where zero-day vulnerabilities are available and you will be getting no security patches for your running e-commerce system. Will you be you able to handle security issues with your developer team or your agency? I guess most of the merchants will not be able to handle that scenario.

Back to the topic… How can you move onto Magento 2?

As a merchant you should know that Magento 2 is a completely new software. That means that you Will need to re-create your shop. There is no magic upgrade script or button available. That means that you need a good plan to switch your platform onto Magento 2. One tip is to create a list of all the existing features. Note every custom feature you use on your Magento 1 shop.

Then review every feature. Is that feature essential. Does this feature help you or your business in anyway? earn a If a feature brings you a lot of business value, write it to your Magento 2’s feature list.

Once you have this list, speak to your developer team. The developer team should check if the features you highlighted are available on Magento 2 or on the Magento Marketplace. If not, you need good developers who can build these features for you to use. Be wary that development takes time.

At the end you will have a Magento 2 system which cleaner and maintainable. This is needed to grow your business and to keep your developers happy.
Let’s take a look at it from a developer’s perspective.

As a developer you should not be too critical. Yes, there are a lot of bugs in Magento 2, but Magento 1 was not very stable either. With every release, the code base is more stable. Magento 2 is a php software with the biggest contributor list on github. This team invests a lot of time in fixing annoying bugs. But this does not mean that you are unable to build stable shops at the moment. There are a lot of companies running their business upon
Magento 2.

With Magento 2, you (as a developer) can work with a modern application stack. Tools like css preprocessors and component managers are already available. There is a test framework already included in every installation. This means that you can build your software which is test driven. Magento 2 comes with 16.000 unit tests! You are able to use features of PhpStorm which cannot be used with Magento 1. Yes, there are a lot of features available which makes the developer’s life easier. The autoloading feature of Magento 2 is based on the composer. This enables you to put your source code into its libraries. It is also easy to require 3rd party libraries in your project. That offers you the door to the whole PHP community.

If you are not familiar with Magento 2, try to get a Magento 2 certificate. This will help you review different parts of the Magento 2 system. That will also help you understand the new architecture of your new favorite e-commerce platform. If you love Magento 2 but your employer does not let you work with on it , rethink about your ob because everyday that you work with Magento 1, you are losing valuable time. I myself had the opportunity to participate in the Magento 2 Beta program. So I was able to look at the growing system from the beginning. Since working with Magento 2 in 2014, I can say that I would not want to go back to Magento 1. If you are still reserved… Try it!

Sonja Riesterer

Bio: Marketing Manager at integer_net GmbH

If you plan to move from Magento 1 to Magento 2, first of all, you should be aware of the fact that it is a replatforming process, not an update. Before you code a single line in the new system, it makes sense to note done what is important. Which features are a must-have in the new system? Check your assumptions through actual user data.

Also, depending on the size of the project, it might make sense to start with a smaller market. For example, if you have a multistore, consider launching a single language or brand first.

From a marketing perspective, it depends on the most important channels. If your customers mostly find you via search engines, make sure to note down all important URLs of your Magento 1 store. After the replatforming, the Magento 2 store should have the same URLs or at least redirects from the old URLs to new sites of your store. Magento’s sitemap and URL redirect tools can assist you with this task.

In order to make the most of your new ecommerce system, it’s recommended to know it properly. Magento’s user guide, videos, etc. will help you understand what is available from scratch. An individual training session will give you deeper insights, plus some tips & tricks on how to use the features in your store’s case. Combined with high quality extensions and upcoming features like PageBuilder, the new system should provide your store with a solid foundation to build your business.

Fayyaz Khattak

Bio: Magento Community Manager at Cloudways

The best minds in the ecommerce development industry are already focused on migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2. But, it is not an easy task, because most of the store owners have already invested an enormous amount of resources in the development of their Magento 1 stores. It would be a daunting task to reinvest in building a more stable store using Magento 2.

As an Ecommerce expert, I would suggest store owners to stay with Magento 1 until Magento Inc. ends its support officially. However, as a Magento Developer, I would recommend Web / Magento Developers to learn more and more about Magento 2 because Magento 2 is developed on the latest technologies and coding trends. Apply the best practices and develop a store by integrating all the features and extending the core functionalities to achieve different goals.

Qaisar Satti

Bio: Magento Developer at Unitedsol and also run his own Magento Blog.

The best minds in the ecommerce development industry are already focused on migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2. But, it is not an easy task, because most of the store owners have already invested an enormous amount of resources in the development of their Magento 1 stores. It would be a daunting task to reinvest in building a more stable store using Magento 2.

As an Ecommerce expert, I would suggest store owners to stay with Magento 1 until Magento Inc. ends its support officially. However, as a Magento Developer, I would recommend Web / Magento Developers to learn more and more about Magento 2 because Magento 2 is developed on the latest technologies and coding trends. Apply the best practices and develop a store by integrating all the features and extending the core functionalities to achieve different goals.

Sam Thomas

Bio: Founder of Mageplaza

Magento 2 has some outstanding features which are superior to those in Magento 1. For instance: Speed has enhanced significantly. Magento 2 can work well on PHP 7.x while Magento 1 can run on 5.6.x only. Furthermore, Varnish Cache is already available in Magento 2, so the page loading speed is really impressive when a store is selling thousands of products. The feature Ajax cart is also supported in native Magento 2 to bring buyers a better shopping experience.

Admin panel now has a user-friendly interface which is really easy to use. There are some significant changes in checkout too. The six checkout steps in Magento 1 have been cut down to only two steps in Magento 2. In addition, there’s a logical change in checkout, customers need to put in the complete shipping information before seeing the billing information. However, some merchants were not used to this and asked Mageplaza to customize this feature in our Mageplaza One Step Checkout extension.

In terms of marketing, Magento 2 has become more mobile-friendly. This will help online stores approach more customers who are mobile users as well and help store admins work on different devices at once. This innovation takes place as an inevitability when we live in the world of millenials who shop everything from their mobile handsets and tablets.

There is something that Magento 1 store owners should be aware of before taking any action. Supports are going to be officially terminated for Magento 1 from November 2018. Until then, Magento only provides security patches and important fixes but no new features. Obviously, Magento are putting 100% of effort and sources on Magento 2. Magento 2 is a new era for both merchants and developers. Knowing that migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2 will take lots of time and money, I still reckon this migration will be a must to guarantee store maintenance in the long term.

Brian Tran

Bio: Technical Expert at Mageplaza

Magento 2 applies some new technologies compared to Magento 1 such as KnockoutJS and PSR-4. Also, newer features are updated constantly. The Composer is used during installation and source code management. Moreover, Magento 2 is way more customizable, this helps eliminate conflicts among different modules. Generally speaking, Magento 2 also is way faster and more stable than Magento 1 after enabling cache.

Personally, I’m impressed with the new interface of the backend. It’s supported on mobile devices pretty well with a much better user experience. I reckon that small stores should not migrate from Magento 1 to Magento 2 as the process costs a fortune and may cause lots of issues. In contrast, medium-sized and big e-commerce stores should consider migration as it will be good for store maintenance in future

Jacker Ngo

Bio: Technical Expert at Mageplaza

Magento 2 provides way better security than Magento 1. To clarify, URLs are enhanced to prevent cross-; XML configuration is improved to eliminate bypass by attackers. I personally like the application of API in checkout to help process data better. Besides, KnockoutJS is excellent in Magento 2 as data can be automatically updated as soon as there are any changes made; thanks to this feature, there’s no need to reload the page.

As far as I’m concerned, small Magento 1-based stores which are sustainable and stable should not migrate onto Magento 2. These stores should have other options as well including s back-up plans since migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2 will be riskier. However, for medium-sized and big enterprises, I would recommend the alternative, it means these stores should prepare themselves both technically and financially for the migration. They need to be aware of some calculated risks, even though Magento 1 to Magento 2 migration will bring greater stability and sustainability.

E-commerce websites should create a staging site and conduct the migration process on this store really carefully before going live. Also, online stores should know that their data related to customers, orders, products and configuration may not be perfectly remained after migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2. Prepare for this!