Magento 1 to Magento 2 Migration (5 Things to Know)

Now that the official support of the Magento 1 platform has ended, the Magento migration question is more debated than ever.

On the one side, you need to keep in mind the complexity of the “moving” process from the technical perspective. On the other, it can bring numerous outstanding advancement opportunities.

Take the chance to build progressive web applications based on Magento 2 as an example.

You can improve the website and make it mobile-friendly, lightning-fast, and good-looking to outperform the competition. All these become possible after migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2.

Are you a business owner with a store up on Magento 1? Are you in two minds about whether you should migrate to Magento 2 or not?

Here are five of the most often asked questions regarding Magento 1 migration to Magento 2.

Image source: Zealousweb

1. Why migrate to Magento 2 if the site works fine?

Perhaps the fairest answer to this question is that you’ll still have to go for migration sooner or later.

Yes, your store may be functioning and performing well at the moment, and the truth is that you can keep the store up on Magento 1 for a while. There is no ASAP rush.

But the site will become incompatible whether you like it or not in a year or so.

And since the migration procedure is rather complicated and quite time-consuming, you must keep in mind the large time frames ahead if you decide to move.

Plus, after some time passes, it’ll become more and more difficult to keep up your Magento 1 store and add new functionality. Because the Magento team stopped releasing updates and modules for this store version, they switched their focus entirely on Magento 2.

So, if you’d want to add some features to M1, you’d face the need for custom solutions.

In any case, the move to Magento 2 brings tons of opportunities. You can re-think the store’s design and visuals, improve your navigation, and add new features that deal with SEO, mobile optimization, neater checkout solutions, etc.

You may even take advantage of the chance to create a PWA application after the move to M2 (no such chance with PWAs on M1, by the way).

This modernization and advancement can lead to a new and improved store with enhanced performance and better conversions.

So what’s the point of delaying?

2. Will Magento 1 store face problems without migrating?

Definitely!

Because the official Magento team won’t be releasing nor updating the security patches for the first version of the platform anymore, it’s vital to understand that the longer you stay on Magento 1, the more you’re jeopardizing your eCommerce site.

The disturbing things here are the possible hacks and other vulnerabilities of the store that can occur due to this. Without proper defense, your site can become easier to attack.

Let us give you an example to back this idea up.

For instance, you surely don’t want to fall prey to fraudulent activity leading to data leaks. As a store owner, you take full responsibility for keeping safe the data that your customers trusted you with.

It includes personal information like delivery addresses, contact details, and even more so, payment details. If this information leaks at your fault, such a scenario can lead you to heavy and costly legal consequences.

It is one of the main reasons not to postpone the migration question.

3. Why do businesses procrastinate migrating to Magento 2?

The reason may be that they might not see the point in it or don’t understand why it’s necessary. Say merchants enjoy the store just how it is and fear it’ll hurt rather than help it.

Or they might not know how not migrating can harm their business. Another reason could be that store owners don’t have the budget for migration and are saving up for doing it later.

They can even think about switching from Magento to some different eCommerce platform altogether. There are many probable reasons, and each case is individual.

But what most Magento store owners don’t quite understand is that the first and second versions of the platform are very different technically. It’s like comparing the moon and the sun.

Magento 1 and Magento 2 have very few things in common, apart from the name. The migration process isn’t easy and requires experienced certified Magento developers who know both platforms, their differences, and other migration peculiarities.

Therefore, before making a final decision to put off migration to M2, bear in mind that the procedure isn’t simple. It implies the work of strong, experienced specialists and a deal of time.

Image source: Offset 101

4. How long does it take to migrate?

The time frame for migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2 is a very individual question. The required hours of development will depend on a plethora of factors, including:

• How highly-customized the eCommerce store?
• How large is it (including database volumes and logs)?
• How many third-party modules it?
• How many new features are needed on the website after?

It’s infrequent that a site owner wishes to just transfer the store from M1 to M2 without making any additional improvements. But even if this is the case, count on at least two to four months.

If you’re planning on implementing new features and improving the site, then we’re talking about four months and up.

Again, the more innovative stuff you want and the harder it is to build, the more time it will take. If you want to get a PWA that everyone’s recently craving, add several more months into the equation.

5. What are the most common Magento 2 migration issues?

Many things can go wrong during the process. It’s not like you copy what the Magento 1 store has and paste it onto Magento 2. This procedure requires lots of work, configuration, set-ups, untangling, and debugging.

As a rule, many inexperienced teams underestimate the volumes ahead during the planning and evaluation stage. Because the two platforms have too many dissimilarities in terms of their

architecture, it can get tricky to get things right. Therefore, thorough planning of the work ahead is an important step not to overlook as it can raise issues.

Not everything will be moved, either. For instance, you might not need some logs from a decade ago or some of the currently used features. So, you’ll need to sort some website parts and decide what to “take with you” to the new store. Likewise, the Magento 2 database migration generally presents an additional difficulty.

The challenge with the compatibility of modules is among the toughest that the team deals with. Every store contains various plugins, be it SEO, emails, payment methods, etc. Some of these modules belong to Magento. Others are from third parties or even coded uniquely for the store.

Developers have to find analogs to replace the modules on Magento 2 (since the ones on Magento 1 won’t work) and spend time configuring them. When no equivalents are present, these solutions require coding from scratch.

What else? The re-design usually takes a while as well. New features extend further development. Moreover, the same applies to any custom solutions that you’ll need.

One more issue with migration is hiring the wrong people for the job. If your team isn’t familiar with both of the platforms well enough or lacks previous migration experience, this can knot up and complicate the whole process to a great extent.

That is why you shouldn’t hurry when looking for a development team for migration that you can trust.

Read also: Magento 2 Migration Guide (onilab.com)