Magento 1 vs Magento 2: Comparison

With the arrival of Magento 2, there started a comparison: Magento 1 vs Magento 2. But it has been quite a struggle to get there.

Magento 1: Explaining the Context

In 2008, Magento 1 was released, that was many moons ago. Magento takes small and medium-sized businesses or SMBs under its consideration, as it was originally introduced as an open source platform for the users. Over the last eight years,  SMB eCommerce industry is under the firm control of this platform: Magento’s aim paid off well. Today almost 25% of worldwide eCommerce shops run on some or, the other version of Magento.

Till now, there have been three editions of Magento in use – Magento 1 Community Edition (CE), Magento 1 Enterprise Edition (EE), and the newly-minted Magento 2. Almost infinite levels of scalability and control os offered by this platform. Due to being an open source foundation, it has lead to a rise of an entire developers community along with various dev shops who are continuously building innovative extensions, themes, and many other features. Magento 1 has carved out an amazing niche for itself by filling a hole in the market by providing the businesses to control the solution (that’s what they wanted). They also got the control to customize according to their specific needs and even host themselves if they wanted to. 

Magento 2: Story

Being a Magento Gold Solutions partner, we first got introduced to Magento 2 in the year 2010. Then the release was scheduled for the 2011 year end. But it didn’t happen due to some ongoing scenes backstage. In early 2011, the parent company eBay bought 49% shares of Magento, and the remaining shares later that year. 

Under the direction of eBay, the company’s focus shifted away from Magento 2 and that was in favor of concentrating on the other piece of their business i.e. Order Management. Flopped ecosystem called “X.Commerce” was created with a half-hearted effort. There was an incomplete opinion around the two camps which suggests that while eBay owned the company, they shelved Magento 2 in favor of other projects. 

Finally, Magento 2.0 Release Candidate (RC) debuted to the Magento developer community on November 17, 2014, as the work must have continued though, slowly. It got mixed reviews, though it solved most common issues with Magento 1 but came with its own set of issues. With a lacking general product speeds, it was a bit difficult to install on your own. As the extensions were difficult to port over, new training was required for almost all parts of this platform. Even after getting launched 4 years after its first mention, the developers were unimpressed with it, considering that fact. 

But again, there were some big amendments in the store and some wider forces were at work. eBay sold Magento to a group of investors who relaunched it as an independent business, after a public spat between eBay and PayPal in mid-2015. 

The business set about quickly. The production version of Magento 2.0 was released finally, late last year. As an independent entity again, Magento worked hard to get feedback and resolve developer issues, but it was not so easy entry for version 2.0 after such a long gestation period. At the Imagine 2016 conference, to ensure the great experience of merchants, leadership made huge steps.

Magento 1 And Magento 2: Key Differences

Version 2.0: The Changes

At the initial phase, we were little hesitant to have our merchants consider Magento 2. The reason behind that may be the “No one wants to be first to the party” syndrome. As discussed earlier, Magento owes a great part of its success to the flexibility and customization capabilities it has whereas the extension marketplace for Magento 2.0 was still woefully lacking behind.  It still didn’t wholly suit the clients’ needs, even with its improvements over Magento 1.0. It cost fortunes to recreate features that could be easily provided by simple extensions in Magento 1. 

It changed a lot with the release of Magento 2.1. Magento’s head of product management, Paul Boisvert, announced this latest version in March during Imagine. The aim of this release was to fix core bugs, provide security updates and patches, and add new features for merchant use.

While some Magento developers and partners have had a sigh of relief, but this announcement also uncovered other interesting shifts. The new features, including Elastic Search, Content Staging, and in-site PayPal/Braintree payments will only be offered for the Magento Enterprise version. These features will not let the customer leave your site. To monetize the most sought-after features of Magento, they have split the feature sets to divert more merchants toward their new and improved Magento Enterprise 2.1.

Magento 2: The Cost

Almost for eight months, the pricing for Enterprise was a hot topic. But with the release of Magento 2.0, the per-license pricing model popular with Magento 1 was ditched. This was done to favor the implementation of the revenue-based model instead.  

The new pricing structure was designed on the basis of tiers of gross merchandise volume i.e. GMV. For larger brands managing around high-volume sales periods and spikes in site traffic, this strategy is extremely beneficial. Due to this new structure, now the merchants are not penalized to handle this “Shark Tank”-type load by spinning up new servers. For this, they pay one fee. 

This new pricing structure carries some pros and cons, as a lot has been already said about it. The most important thing for merchants to remember is: those who tie multiple web properties such as B2B & B2C sites, in a single installation could cost them a pretty large amount for their Magento Enterprise license. However, Magento 2 has attempted to sell for increasing speed to market via Gauge Interactive i.e. certified development partner. This will ultimately lower the cost of the product for merchants over an extended period of time.  

Magento 1 vs Magento 2: Final Verdict

With so many improvements to native functionality as well as the availability of more than 350 extensions, Magento 2.1 is recommended for most of the eCommerce-only and multi-channel retailer clients. If SMBs are looking to climb the next step in the Magento ecosystem, Magento 2 can be a great option. With a dedicated team of 1-3 employees, $2 million, or up can be sustained. Therefore, Magento 2 is a valuable solution for them. Within the next 18 months, you should plan on migrating to Magento 2, if you’re a merchant currently on Magento 1.0 who fits that bill. As stated by the Magento, they’ll continue supporting Magento 1 for at least an additional 3 years. Third-party integrations with ERPs and CRMs are the only remaining concerns.   

Magento has proven its interest in hearing out as well as addressing the partner concerns, by presenting a listening posture and releasing Magento 2.1 so quickly. To address the need for centralized data functionality for merchants, they’ve already begun taking steps. Much can’t be revealed about the overall future of Magento, but there is a strong hint, by Magento leadership at huge B2B offerings, world-class eCommerce feature sets, as well as a high rate of innovation that would make any retailer’s head spin. 

Magento 2 boasts of 240k downloads of Magento 2 Community as well as Enterprise editions, more than 800 active eCommerce stores, and 100+ trained solutions partners. Altogether the situation is still optimistic as we are proud to be a certified Magento partner.