Why You Should Move From Magento 1 to Magento 2 Now

Magento 2 has been out for almost a year now, yet not many businesses have moved from Magento 1 to Magento 2. Why you might ask? Well for one this is a huge cost because you are essentially building an entirely new site and most businesses did not budget properly for this. The other is that the marketplace and community is not mature on Magento 2 compared to Magento 1.x so many businesses are waiting for more extensions and sites to be stable on Magento 2. Now that we are heading into quarter 4 and soon to be 2017, the time to be in limbo is over and you should really be taking action to prepare to move to Magento 2.
Here are many reasons why you should start planning the move from Magento 1.x to Magento 2.x now:

You Might Be On a Ticking Time Bomb

Magento 1.x will eventually be deprecated and no longer supported by Magento. This ultimately means you are on a ticking time bomb. Yes, you can wait it out one, two, three, four maybe many more years. However, you could eventually be a security risk to your customers and have more and more difficulty supporting an antiquated platform and technical infrastructure. If you want to be a relevant business you will have to upgrade and the sooner the better in terms of total pain transitioning and getting used to the new Magento.

Better Technical Architecture

Magento 2 has a significantly better technical architecture in that its file structure is much more simplified for extensions, themes and other uses. Previously, to build a theme or extension you would need to have code in many different folders throughout the file structure. Now an extension is simply one folder with all the code associated with it, making it easier to remove or modify than ever before. Additionally, more modern technologies are put into use like composer and Jquery.

New Features

There are many new features constantly coming out such as color swatches, an improved checkout experience, API admin panel capabilities and much more. Magento 2 is already on version 2.1 and will continue to be adding new features with every release. Staying on Magento 1.x means you will not get access to new core features.

Better Performance

Magento 2 offers full page caching and much better performance capabilities. The new software will continue to mature and improve its performance capabilities as new releases come out.

Easier To Upgrade

The new architecture is much more easily upgradable so moving from 2.0 to 2.1 etc is not nearly as difficult as moving from 1.7 to 1.8 as an example. Additionally upgrading and exchanging extensions will be much better. Simply put, Magento 2 will be much better in terms of maintaining and upgrading for future use compared to Magento 1.x.

A Community Pushing Forward

The new community is pushing forward with Magento 2. It doesn’t make sense for developers and extension makers to invest heavily in M1 when it will clearly die eventually. The community is moving towards Magento 2, so everyday spent on Magento 1 will eventually be worth less and less and compared to time spent investing in the Magento 2 community.

It takes Time To Plan and Implement

I laugh when people say they are going to get a site up in two or three months. I have only rarely seen a few companies pull off extremely fast implementations and they either had huge budgets or threw up a simple site with a basic themeforest theme and limited features. Chances are you, you will need significant time to get to Magento 2. Maybe six months or longer when you factor in all the things that go into planning, getting vendors in place etc. Therefore even if you start planning now you will most likely not launch until 2017.

You Wont Fall Behind

The eCommerce industry is racing forward. Amazon, Walmart, and the major players are constantly innovating forward, not to mention the mid tier guys too. The fact of the matter is if you are sitting around with Magento 1, chances are you will fall behind the eCommerce race to the top.

New Relic Integration

Magento 2 now comes more closely integrated with New Relic meaning you can more easily monitor and keep your application in good standing. This is incredibly important because of how

Enhanced API’s

Magento now has more robust API capabilities than before. You can also see the API’s in the admin panel which was not the case in Magento 1.x. It should be easier to integrate with Magento 2 than it was previously via the API functionality.

Better Admin Panel

The admin panel is much cleaner and easier to use. You can even adjust the view of your catalog by moving the rows in the order you want, and displaying the information you want, something you could not do before. The admin panel will be much easier for non technical users to leverage moving forward.

An Actual Upgrade Future

If you are on Magento 1.x you have no upgrade future. You will have to replatform eventually, so why not start the process now? With Magento 2, you actually have a future to build around and upgrade as new versions come out.

A More Secure Future

Magento 2 is much improved and constantly being worked on. Magento 1.x will become a bigger security risk as it is less and less supported. Magento 2 will continue to make security improvements to help merchants stay PCI compliant and secure.