Magento 2 Migration Is NOT Recommended In These 5 Cases
One of the most common advice for Magento merchants is to implement Magento 2 migration before “Magento 1 end of life”. However, from my perspective, migrating to Magento 2 is not a perfect option for everyone. You can absolutely maintain your current website if being in one of the following situations:
1. You Are Satisfied With Your Existing Site Speed
For Magento e-commerce stores, merchants crave to cut down every single second of the website speed to enhance the user experience. The faster the page speed is, the higher customer satisfaction will be achieved. The ideal time of page loading is within 2 to 3 seconds. You can be proud of your site if it is able to show up within just this range of time.
Since improving the page speed is one of the most important motivation to carry out Magento migrations, if you have no issues with your site speed, staying with Magento 1 is fine.
On the other hand, if the page load time is under your expectations, you should take migration to Magento 2 into consideration. Undeniably, Magento 2 platform can deliver the fastest loading speed due to several factors.
Firstly, the users can switch pages in a blink thanks to M2 Ajax Cart technology which allows access to the sessions without loading the entire page. Secondly, Magento 2 is using PHP 7 that contributes to the superior loading.
2. Your Website Security Is Guaranteed
Taking Magento’s great support and some techniques to enhance the security, Magento store owners might have no worry about their websites. Some familiar techniques are using private keys for data transfer, limiting access to the backend, applying two-factor authorization for Admin logins, restraining outgoing connections, enabling a web application firewall, and so on.
If you are confident about the high level of your website security, moving from Magento 1 to Magento 2 might be not urgent.
On the flip side, Magento 1 has ended its golden period when Magento keeps updating security patches to prevent possible damages. To be more specific, from July 1, 2020, Magento will officially stop providing support for Magento 1. As a consequence, there will be new threats to your website security. If you are not able to handle those risks, Magento 2 migration is highly recommended.
3. You Have Good In-house Developers
As mentioned before, your site might get into trouble when Magento ceases its support. However, if you have a strong technical background or have an experienced team of in-house developers to handle all of the possible problems, Magento 1 end-of-life is not a scary thing.
Nonetheless, if you don’t own such things, there are several “warning signs” for your store.
Firstly, any Magento website needs regular updates to maintain its high performance. Without technical skills or the in-house developers, how are you supposed to do that? Just to remind you, most of the Magento agencies now have stopped offering support for Magento 1 websites, to focus on Magento migration or other Magento 2 development services. Secondly, assumed that your Magento extensions suddenly did not work as usual, what would you do while all of the module providers now are declining to assist?
If you have no solutions for the listed issues, there is no better option than Magento 1 to 2 migration.
4. You Are Too Busy Right Now Or Have No Budget
Although migrating to Magento 2 has many advantages, it does take time (from 1–3 months), money (starting from $2,500), and effort (to find reliable Magento migration services and follow project progress).
Due to that, Magento 2 migration might not be a good option for the Magento merchants who are in low-budget or have no time for the upgrade.
Nevertheless, to support e-businesses in the Coronavirus pandemic, some Magento development companies are offering Magento 2 migration services with attractive discounts. If “money” is your sole problem, it’s addressed now.
5. You Have Little Or No Concern For Modern Technologies Like PWA
As you might know, Progressive Web App (PWA) has become one of the most amazing mind-blowing technologies in recent years. Many e-commerce stores (not only Magento ones) have applied PWA to enhance their web page speed and deliver app-like experiences to their users. The thing is, it’s difficult to convert a Magento 1 website to PWA. Most of the available PWA integration solutions now are for Magento 2 only.
Hence, if you have no need to integrate PWA in your Magento store, it doesn’t matter whether you migrate to Magento 2 or not.
On the contrary, in case that you want to improve the mobile experience for your store with the faster loading speed, push notifications, offline mode, fullscreen display…, your website must be Magento 2 ready before starting PWA integration.
Final Words
Actually, Magento 2 migration is strongly recommended, but not a must. Magento store owners should consider their actual needs, situations, and available resources to decide whether to upgrade to Magento 2 or not.
