What is Magento?
Magento is one of the most powerful Content Management Systems available for the development of eCommerce websites by drag-and-drop without having to write the entire code manually. It has taken a long time for the people to trust and use Magento. And, with time, it has turned out to a good choice for them. Now, after the release of Magento 2 many changes have been brought. However, you might not feel the need to upgrade from Magento1 to Magento 2 for your website, read on to find the key differences between the two versions and then decide.
What are the differences between Magento 1 and Magento 2?
1. Architecture
There have been many queries regarding the storage with Magento 1. This has been looked up for in Magento 2. This has been made possible by the addition of Apache, Nginx 1.7 and higher, Symfony, Composer, etc. Magento 2 has even got support for the latest versions of PHP and thereby, it provides improved security services and better store performance.
Notable changes in the technology between the two versions are as follows:
PHP 5.2x-5.5x has been changed to PHP 52.6x / 7.0.2 / 7.0.6
MySQL has been added by MySQL Percona 5.6 and greater, Varnish 3.x / 4.x, Redis 2.x / 3.x or Memcached 1.4.x
Solr to Solr 4.x
HTML to HTML5, CSS to CSS3, JQuery to JQuery, Requier.js / Knockout.js
Zend Framework 1 to Zend Framework ½, Symfony, Composer, PSR – 0/1/2/3/4
2. Speed and Performance
The loading and processing speeds have increased drastically in Magento 2 in comparison to that of Magento 1. To achieve this increase in speed, full-page caching is implemented in both editions of Magento 2 – Community as well as Enterprise.
Some statistics show that Magento 2 processes 39% more orders in an hour than Magento 1. The response time by the servers has also reduced. The add-to-cart server response time has decreased by 66% and it now provides 51% faster checkout times. About 47% of the users expect a page to load within 2 seconds and they will give up if it takes more than that. Well, this can be avoided by using Magento 2 as it is faster than the previous version.
3. Augmenting Extensions
Magento 1 allowed integration of several extensions; third-party too, but there were some reported problems when users were trying more than two extensions to write the same functionality. This problem has been taken care of in the newer version -Magento 2. This is because, in this version, the extension code actually overlaps the core code instead of overwriting it. This lets the plug-ins function better and in an efficient manner. This has made the third-party plug-ins cheaper and easier to integrate; thanks to HTML5, Require.js, and CSS3.
4. Efficient Search Engine Optimization
When Magento 1 was developed and introduced in the market, SEO wasn’t that famous a concept. It was still in the emerging phase. But, we are all aware of the significance of SEO in web development. Magento 2, developed later, has been embedded with special features for taking care of SEO ranking and other optimizations. The SHA-256 hashing algorithm used in Magento 2 does more benefit to SEO than the previous one. Magento 2 lets you have meta-tags for the title, description, keywords, etc. for discrete pages. Above all, it also allows mobile-friendliness that is missed in the previous version; it is a very important factor that cannot be ignored while considering ranks.
5. Dashboard
There is a great difference in the dashboards of the two versions. The dashboard in Magento 2 is more user-friendly than Magento 1 because of its interactivity. The information search is quicker and more efficient because of better store management. The operational functions such as checking the last order, average sales, total sales, top search terms, etc. cannot be found in Magento 1.
6. Security
Security is one of the most important concerns for any web developers; especially when working on an eCommerce website as customers’ personal information is to be stored. So, Magento has taken care of the security of data. But, Magento 2 has improved security measures. The SHA-256 algorithm for hashing stores the password in such form that their confidentiality is not compromised.
7. Price
Magento 1 wins this round. Magento 1 is much cheaper than Magento 2. The Enterprise Edition of Magento 1 starts from $18,000 per year while that of Magento 2 starts from $22,000 per year.
Should you migrate to Magento 2 or not?
It would be a good choice to shift from Magento 1 to Magento 2 as the support for Magento 1 is about to end very soon – June 2020. So, there won’t be any bug fixes, security patches, or updates in the technology. So, continuing to use it will be like investing money in something that is not so productive and this is not what a clever businessman would do. Moreover, Magento 2 clearly wins the battle in almost all the features we just saw. So, sticking to the older version just for the sake of lower cost would not be a wise decision. In a way, you would be increasing the costs as there won’t be any support from the community after some time; implying you will have to work on the fixes on your own.
You might be afraid of the changes that will be brought with the shifting from Magento 1 to Magento 2. You might also feel that the customers are already comfortable with what is going on and how things are. But, remember that Change is the only constant. People’s needs are going to change. They will want something new, if not now, then after some time. With the loss of community support, you will be left with no other choice than to do the updates yourself. That will be a huge task. Instead, it is better to upgrade to Magento 2. However, there is no compulsion from the Magento community that you will have to upgrade, but as it seems, it is the best choice.