Magento 2 vs Magento 1 – Is the upgrade worth it?
VT Netzwelt is one of the leading digital technology Company offering e-commerce development services. Magento is one of the most popular e‐commerce carts, which presently enjoys a market share of around 30 percent. In fact, it has recorded a 60 % higher growth in the year 2014 as compared to the year 2013.
Magento 2.0 was released on November 2015, after four years of development, aiming to replace the 1.x version of the eCommerce platform. A new version of the platform was released simultaneously for the Enterprise and the Community Edition, thus introducing new features and functionality within the paid and the free eCommerce solution provided by Magento. VT Netzwelt offering the best Magento development services and in order to create the perfect online business store, you need an e-commerce platform that offers easy customization. This helps in maximizing sales and optimizing operations
Since Magento Community Edition (Magento CE) is free to download, it is up to you to decide whether to upgrade to the latest 2.x version and how. Those holding licenses for Magento Enterprise Edition 1.x (Magento EE) can extend their licenses for the current version of the software but must upgrade to Magento 2 before December 2018.
Hence, like it or not, merchants using Magento 1 will be forced to upgrade to Magento 2 or migrate to another eCommerce platform by the end of 2018. By that date, the 1.x versions of the community edition will be so archaic that they will require a virtually mandatory upgrade as well.
Is the upgrade worth it? It depends on many factors such as the technical requirements to implement the new version and the total cost of ownership. Furthermore, you should check whether you could take complete advantage of the new key features, which you are paying for.
Let’s take a look at the system requirements. Magento 1 is running on Linux x86 and x86-64 while Magento 2 can be deployed only on the newer Linux x86-64. It is hard to tell whether this is bad or good news in the short-run and it all depends on your existing server environment or the software infrastructure of your hosting provider.
If your organization or hosting provider does not plan to switch completely to Linux x86-64 in the near feature, then you may consider staying with Magento 1.
Both versions require Apache or Nginx web server, with Magento 2 supporting the most recent version of the software. Magento 1 needs PHP 5.4 or 5.5 to run while Magento 2 can take advantage of the new features provided by the PHP 7.0.2 version.
A notable improvement in Magento 2 is the integration of new technologies like HTML 5, CSS 3, support for PHP 7 and Apache 2.2. That said, Magento 2 naturally integrates the latest frameworks, which, in theory, should boost speed and provide better customer experience through improved technology.
Magento 1 requires MySQL 5.6 (Oracle or Percona) database while the new versions support MySQL 5.6.x. Magento 2.0 and 2.1 are able to use three master databases, providing scalability of key areas such as order management, product management, and checkout, which in turn results in better performance.
This is a notable improvement towards better scalability but is not a factor you should consider if you already run a stable software environment and do not plan aggressive expansion in the near future.
Magento 2 offers major improvements in the administrative user interface, which now allows merchants to access their online stores using responsive navigation through devices based on touch technology. The import and export of products were improved to support cross-sales and upselling.
A step-by-step product creation tools enable faster creation of configurable products bypassing the manual creation of a simple product required in the earlier Magento versions. Drag-and-drop administrative tools are another notable improvement, especially compared to the quite unintuitive UI of the older versions.
Another key improvement is the checkout process that now requires only 2 steps, compared to the 5-step process in the older version. The overall experience was also improved through one-click account creation and auto-recognition of registered clients.
A 5-step checkout in the older version is definitely something you should be worrying about since most eCommerce platforms already provide functionality for a 2-step or 3-step checkout. The majority of marketing experts are of opinion that 2-step checkout and guest checkout markedly improve conversion rates.
The new Magento edition supports full page caching through the Varnish web accelerator, providing faster page loading time. It also provides new built-in responsive themes for faster store creation.
Well, page and site caching are offered also at the level of your hosting but faster website loading matters nowadays. One should also welcome a new functionality for better compression of images and faster loading of JavaScript in content-rich stores. This will result in better performance of Magento 2-based merchants.
Magento 2 also provides support for Composer, a PHP dependency manager, to manage dependencies when developing extensions or tweaking the codebase. This new feature should help your developers in the implementation of flawless customizations to your store, which is a good thing.
Although not exactly a feature, the Magento commitment to quarterly updates of the platform should be considered a major improvement. Furthermore, Magento Connect was reorganized into Magento Marketplace where all extensions to the eCommerce platform are assessed by the team of Magento.
It is not a money-back guarantee but introduces a new level of reliability for both free and paid third-party extensions. Read More
Magento 2.0 was released on November 2015, after four years of development, aiming to replace the 1.x version of the eCommerce platform. A new version of the platform was released simultaneously for the Enterprise and the Community Edition, thus introducing new features and functionality within the paid and the free eCommerce solution provided by Magento. VT Netzwelt offering the best Magento development services and in order to create the perfect online business store, you need an e-commerce platform that offers easy customization. This helps in maximizing sales and optimizing operations
Since Magento Community Edition (Magento CE) is free to download, it is up to you to decide whether to upgrade to the latest 2.x version and how. Those holding licenses for Magento Enterprise Edition 1.x (Magento EE) can extend their licenses for the current version of the software but must upgrade to Magento 2 before December 2018.
Hence, like it or not, merchants using Magento 1 will be forced to upgrade to Magento 2 or migrate to another eCommerce platform by the end of 2018. By that date, the 1.x versions of the community edition will be so archaic that they will require a virtually mandatory upgrade as well.
Is the upgrade worth it? It depends on many factors such as the technical requirements to implement the new version and the total cost of ownership. Furthermore, you should check whether you could take complete advantage of the new key features, which you are paying for.
System requirements
Let’s take a look at the system requirements. Magento 1 is running on Linux x86 and x86-64 while Magento 2 can be deployed only on the newer Linux x86-64. It is hard to tell whether this is bad or good news in the short-run and it all depends on your existing server environment or the software infrastructure of your hosting provider.
If your organization or hosting provider does not plan to switch completely to Linux x86-64 in the near feature, then you may consider staying with Magento 1.
Both versions require Apache or Nginx web server, with Magento 2 supporting the most recent version of the software. Magento 1 needs PHP 5.4 or 5.5 to run while Magento 2 can take advantage of the new features provided by the PHP 7.0.2 version.
A notable improvement in Magento 2 is the integration of new technologies like HTML 5, CSS 3, support for PHP 7 and Apache 2.2. That said, Magento 2 naturally integrates the latest frameworks, which, in theory, should boost speed and provide better customer experience through improved technology.
Magento 1 requires MySQL 5.6 (Oracle or Percona) database while the new versions support MySQL 5.6.x. Magento 2.0 and 2.1 are able to use three master databases, providing scalability of key areas such as order management, product management, and checkout, which in turn results in better performance.
This is a notable improvement towards better scalability but is not a factor you should consider if you already run a stable software environment and do not plan aggressive expansion in the near future.
Key new features
Magento 2 offers major improvements in the administrative user interface, which now allows merchants to access their online stores using responsive navigation through devices based on touch technology. The import and export of products were improved to support cross-sales and upselling.
A step-by-step product creation tools enable faster creation of configurable products bypassing the manual creation of a simple product required in the earlier Magento versions. Drag-and-drop administrative tools are another notable improvement, especially compared to the quite unintuitive UI of the older versions.
Another key improvement is the checkout process that now requires only 2 steps, compared to the 5-step process in the older version. The overall experience was also improved through one-click account creation and auto-recognition of registered clients.
A 5-step checkout in the older version is definitely something you should be worrying about since most eCommerce platforms already provide functionality for a 2-step or 3-step checkout. The majority of marketing experts are of opinion that 2-step checkout and guest checkout markedly improve conversion rates.
The new Magento edition supports full page caching through the Varnish web accelerator, providing faster page loading time. It also provides new built-in responsive themes for faster store creation.
Well, page and site caching are offered also at the level of your hosting but faster website loading matters nowadays. One should also welcome a new functionality for better compression of images and faster loading of JavaScript in content-rich stores. This will result in better performance of Magento 2-based merchants.
Magento 2 also provides support for Composer, a PHP dependency manager, to manage dependencies when developing extensions or tweaking the codebase. This new feature should help your developers in the implementation of flawless customizations to your store, which is a good thing.
Although not exactly a feature, the Magento commitment to quarterly updates of the platform should be considered a major improvement. Furthermore, Magento Connect was reorganized into Magento Marketplace where all extensions to the eCommerce platform are assessed by the team of Magento.
It is not a money-back guarantee but introduces a new level of reliability for both free and paid third-party extensions. Read More
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