Migrating from Magento Community to Magento Commerce Cloud can deliver significant benefits as part of your business development strategy.
Youāll want to be sure you choose the right ecommerce platform to replace Magento 1 Community Edition when it reaches the end of its operational life 30 June 2020. Here we review some key points you might want to think about.
Magento 1 Community Edition
The flexibility of Magento 1 made it a much-valued platform for ecommerce businesses around the world and there are still an estimated 180,000 sites using it. And, of course, theĀ Community Edition (CE)Ā is open source and free to download and use. However,Ā Magento announcedĀ that Magento 1 would come to the end of its supported life on 30 June 2020.Ā
If you currently use Magento 1 CE, you will know that it has excellent functionality for small and growing businesses without major configuration requirements and there are plenty of Magento extensions available.Ā
However, without ongoing support, there wonāt be new extensions, innovations or security updates and your site will become increasingly vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
Magento Commerce Cloud
The successor to Magento 1 was launched back in November 2015, known as Magento Commerce with on-premise and Cloud-based options. Today,Ā Magento CommerceĀ offers a managed and hosted platform as a service (PaaS) solution.Ā
It has an advanced Cloud hosting infrastructure for development, staging, and live website production, enterprise-grade analytics, personalization andĀ artificial intelligence (AI).Ā
Itās optimized for larger, more complexĀ business to consumer (B2C)Ā andĀ business to business (B2B)Ā companies with large catalogs and a lot of online traffic. Powerful out-of-the-box functionality provides extensive scope for customization, and seamless third-partyĀ integration.
Features include corporate account management and customer support, company credit management, and tools for fast ordering and online requests for quote. The powerfulĀ page builderĀ means content can be created, previewed, and scheduled by non-expert users withĀ content stagingĀ controlled in the easy-to-use Admin panel.
Magento Commerce will continue to evolve and improve, giving business that makes the decision to use it as their new ecommerce platform a competitive advantage.
What Magento Commerce can do for your business
Security
Magento CE doesnāt provide credit card tokenization or secured payment bridgesĀ which are required by banks and payment card companies. As security is a necessity for modern ecommerce, robustĀ site security requirementsĀ and payment card industry (PCI) compliance are essential.
Magento Commerce offers multiple secure payment gateways like PayPal, Braintree, and WorldPay and has a regular scanning process, external penetration testing and a host of otherĀ security measures.
Performance
The flexibility of Magento CE meant that it wasnāt always the easiest platform for non-expert users, and it hasnāt had the best reputation for performance.
Magento Commerce pages load 30% to 50% more quickly and add-to-cart server response times are 66% faster than Magento CE.Ā
It is effective for sites with high volumes of traffic, can handle large product catalogs, and process up to 39% more orders per hour. It will be the preferred choice for businesses that need fast development and continuous deployment in a secure and scalable environment.
Scalability
The future requirements of your business will be a deciding factor when youāre reviewing the benefits of Magento Commerce. Magento CEās reputation for scalability wasnāt strong; a challenge that needed to be resolved by the user.
For businesses that expect to expand significantly in the next few years, Magento Commerce will be a good choice because itās designed to scale according to business needs.
Functionality
BothĀ Magento CE and Magento Commerce have powerful ecommerce functions including customer segmentation, theĀ popularĀ solrĀ searchĀ platform, andĀ return merchandise authorizationĀ (RMA)Ā functions, for example.
Magento Commerce also offers opt-ins forĀ promotions, enhancedĀ B2B catalogĀ functions, pre-built integration with enterprise content management systems and aĀ progressive web applications (PWA)Ā studioĀ for more engaging mobile experiences.
Marketing
Magento CE gives you tools to boost your storeāsĀ search engine optimization (SEO)Ā like customizing meta tags, headings, and URLs.Ā
Magento Commerce can give you more advancedĀ marketing featuresĀ like content staging, sophisticated attribute-based customer segmentation, targeted content, and abandoned cart reminder emails.
Your choice?
For new businesses that wanted to explore Magentoās features Magento CE was a practical choice. However, ecommerce has come a long way since it was originally created in 2007.
Magento Commerce delivers a smoother, faster shopping experience and improved performance. In summary, it includes:
- improved performance and scalabilityĀ
- advanced customizationĀ
- monitoring and cybercrime protection
- development tools
- streamlined integration with third party systems
- advanced marketing and segmentationĀ
- large catalogs
- fast checkoutĀ
- a wide range of extensions
- advanced reporting.Ā
As aĀ managed, automated hosting platform,Ā Magento Commerce delivers the optimum scalable and secure environment to meet the needs of fast-growing businesses.
How much does migration to Magento Commerce cost?
Migration requires more than a simple upgrade, so summarizing the cost of moving from Magento CE and Magento Commerce isnāt simple.Ā
Magento CE wasnāt ever completely free because there were always costs associated with building, running and maintaining your site. You probably needed the help of someone with experience of developing and maintaining a Magento site and hosting costs must also be included.Ā
So, it isnāt as straightforward as looking at the license costs for Magento Commerce, which bundles together licensing andĀ Amazon Web Services (AWS)Ā managed hosting. These prices start from as little as $40,000 per year, rising to $190,000, based on expected annual gross sales revenue.
Other considerations
When you move to a new ecommerce platform you will be changing database structures, and themes and working with a newĀ application programming interface (API). To avoid data loss and downtime you will need the help of someone experienced in the migration process.
They will be able to help you review your current extensions and data and understand what functionality is now included in the core code for Magento Commerce. In many cases, you wonāt need as many customizations and you will probably also be able to remove quite a lot of redundant data. This will simplify your migration and provide cost savings.Ā
Migration also involvesĀ designing, building and testing your new platform before moving over your customer information, catalogs, orders, and shipment information While there are tools to help with this, customized data, administration rights, and media might all need to be moved manually and your migrated data will need to be thoroughly tested.Ā
Hourly rates for an experienced Magento development and migration expert can range from Ā£75 to Ā£150 per hour. You will also need to think about any extensions or customized themes you might need.Ā
We are currently offering our Magento Fast Track offer to get you trading online quickly with prices for development starting from £18,750. Take a closer look at Williams Commerce Magento Fast Track Offer.
In safe hands
Williams Commerce is an Adobe Gold PartnerĀ and specialist ecommerce system integrator providing ecommerce, marketing and technology services to a wide range of B2B and midmarket retail customers worldwide.
If you are interested in migrating from Magento Community to Magento Commerce, you will be in safe hands with our Magento experts.Ā Please get in touchĀ to find out more.