Since its first public release in 2007, Magento has grown into the world’s most-popular ecommerce CMS platform.

It is estimated to be powering between 25% and 30% of all ecommerce sites on the web… Now that’s impressive.

The ‘Community Edition’ (now known as ‘Magento Open Source’) has been continuously updated and upgraded over the years, with patches and updates that merchants can apply to keep their version of the software updated with the latest functionality and security features.

All these different versions of the software were numbered, from its original beta version up to version 1.9.3, which was the last update to the ‘version 1’ branch of the software.

In November 2015, after much build-up, delay and anticipation, Magento 2 was released…

What is Magento 2?

Magento 2 is a completely new branch of the software; a rebuild of the entire platform from the ground up and is not simply an update or patch to the previous version.

Merchants running a version of Magento 1 are not able to upgrade their system to Magento 2 by applying a patch or performing an upgrade to the code. Moving to Magento 2 involves building the website again from the ground up on the new platform.

Magento 1 End of Life Announcement

In releasing version 2, Magento announced the impending ‘end of life’ of version 1. Magento’s resources are now entirely focussed on the development and support of the new Magento 2 platform, unfortunately, to the detriment of the old version 1 branch of the system.

In fact, Magento announced a firm cut-off date, by which it originally said support for version 1 would end. The date? November 18th 2018.

This was the date at which Magento would stop releasing security updates and anyone with a v.1 Magento site would be left completely to their own devices and therefore susceptible to any future security vulnerabilities in the software.

The announcement of this cut-off date created some degree of panic in the Magento community. It left everyone in the world with a Magento website with a sudden, urgent requirement to build a completely new site from scratch (whether that be on version 2 of Magento, or by moving to a different CMS platform altogether).

It soon dawned on Magento that the sheer number of v.1 sites around the world meant there were literally not enough Magento developers in the world to be able to rebuild all of them in Magento 2 by the original cut-off date!

Thankfully they saw sense and released this announcement in May 2017, abandoning the cut-off date and stating that version 1 will remain supported “for the foreseeable future”.

Security vulnerabilities are still being patched if and when they arise and your site will remain up-to-date, assuming you apply the version 1 updates as and when you receive them.

New announcement

The cut-off date for Magento 1 users has been announced as June 2020.

Magento will not support ‘Enterprise Edition’ customers after June 2020, and neither will it support ‘Community Edition’ customers. The only support will be from within the community and that, unfortunately, will not be ‘official’ support.

If you’re running a Magento 1 site right now, your requirement to upgrade to Magento 2 is dawning.

Get ahead of the game…

Magento 1 is still being ‘supported’ (for now) – and until June 2020. We advise all merchants to remember that Magento 1 is not being developed or improved.

All Magento’s efforts are now being invested in the development of Magento 2 and version 1 is essentially now obsolete. All the new, exciting and valuable developments and improvements to Magento are happening on Magento 2, with v.1 being left to fade into obscurity.

Support for v.1 will end by June 2020, and we recommend merchants on Magento 1 consider moving to Magento 2 sooner rather than later.

Doing so will ensure you avoid the panic of the hard cut-off date and will also get you into the improved experience – both for merchants and customers – that Magento 2 offers over version 1.

Need more help or advice?

Advantec is a digital agency specialising in Magento web development, with an in-house team of Magento 2 certified developers.

If you’d like any further advice on upgrading from Magento 1 to version 2, feel free to get in touch with us any time.