Magento 1 to Magento 2 Migration: Complete Guide

Magento 1 is an open-source e-commerce platform that was launched in 2008. Since its inception, numerous entrepreneurs and IT engineers have focused on the platform because of its scalability and customization capabilities, which were challenges at that time.

Maintaining one of the top positions in the market, Magento continued to evolve. In 2015, Magento 2 was launched. This solution has continued to provide e-commerce merchants with undeniable advantages in achieving business goals and addressing the performance and security challenges of Magento 1.

Thus, the majority of Magento old-timers have considered migrating from Magento 1 to the upgraded version. If you still belong to the small group of merchants that run their businesses on Magento 1, you should find this article useful.

Continue reading this article to discover the reasons you should upgrade your Magento version and to understand the Magento 2 migration process and costs.

Why Migrate to Magento 2?

Magento 1 has been a loyal companion, but the way developers and sellers view an ideal e-commerce platform changes every year. E-commerce advancement does not stand still, and the official end-of-life date for Magento 1 was June 1, 2020. Thereafter, Adobe (the company that acquired Magento in 2018) stopped providing support, security patches, and quality fixes for Magento 1.x systems.

Security concerns have driven the transition to Magento 2, but enhanced security is not the only reason to migrate. Magento 2 surpasses Magento 1 in many ways. What will you lose if you stick with Magento 1, and what will you gain if you switch to Magento 2?

Security risks of Magento 1

Online stores based on Magento 1 are more vulnerable to various cyberattacks because of their weak security. A few months after Adobe stopped supporting Magento 1 merchants, Sansec, the leader in e-commerce malware and vulnerability, reported the biggest documented hacking campaign since 2015, targeting almost 3,000 Magento 1 stores worldwide.

The hackers placed malicious JavaScript code on the checkout pages of websites to intercept clients’ payment information. This hacking campaign compromised tens of thousands of online customers, damaged the reputation of many web stores, and caused substantial financial losses.

Unfortunately, cybercriminals do not take vacations. The number of victimized Magento 1 stores will continue to increase until their owners implement measures to prevent attacks by upgrading to Magento 2.

Another security risk of Magento 1 is losing payment card industry (PCI) compliance, which is the process that online businesses follow to protect their customers’ credit card information.

For additional information, read the following article: “The PCI DSS and GDPR: How to Make Your Business Compliant.”

If you use a third-party payment processor for your Magento 1 website, you are less likely to face PCI penalties because your payment provider shoulders this responsibility. Nevertheless, you still face possible penalties because PCI compliance requires merchants to keep their systems up-to-date, which is not possible with Magento 1, as previously explained. At a minimum, this failure may prevent you from accepting Visa and Master Card payments online, but at a maximum, you may be fined between $5,000 and $100,000 per month.

Benefits of Magento 2 migration

The following information answers the second question of what you will gain by switching to Magento 2:

• Improved architecture. Security drawbacks are not the only issue Magento 1 merchants may encounter. Limited website performance is another drawback. Unlike Magento 1, Magento 2 is equipped with new technologies, such as Apache, Composer, Symfony, Nginx 1.7 or higher, etc. Magento 2 also supports the latest PHP versions. These elements dramatically increase the speed of online stores, allow Magento 2 websites to process 39% more orders per hour, and enable up to 66% faster add-to-cart server response times. Certainly, these improvements positively impact conversion rates for websites.

• Enhanced interface for administrators. Considering the Magento 2 user-friendly and interactive interface, the Magento 1 design is messy. Magento 2 provides a comprehensive dashboard that allows users who have limited technical skills to conduct basic store management activities, such as reviewing last, new, and average orders, bestsellers, and top search keywords, as well as quickly searching for other essential information. This makes it simpler for administrators to manage their stores efficiently, especially when it comes to enterprise-level businesses.
• Flexible search engine optimization. Magento 2 clearly boasts better SEO features. Unlike Magento 1, the upgraded version uses a canonical tag to avoid duplicate content issues, enables meta tags for individual pages, and provides a streamlined shopping experience for mobile devices, which is a ranking factor.
• Revamped mobile shopping experience. Speaking of the mobile experience, Magento 2 fully addresses the needs of modern mobile shoppers. It provides a fast and affordable way to build a website with a mobile-friendly design and immersive mobile commerce experience to boost customer engagement, conversion rates, and revenue.
• Extensive reporting and visualization. Reporting is another category in which Magento 2 wins over Magento 1. Magento 2 has a comprehensive reporting system that allows its users to establish as many dashboards as needed, easily transform their business data into visual reports, focus on key metrics, and develop an organized picture of their e-commerce performance.
• Increased security. Although security is last on the list, it has top priority when considering the reasons for migrating to Magento 2. First, Magento 2 utilizes SHA-256 hashing algorithms within the password management system, which is an advancement in network security. SHA-256 is more secure than other common hashing algorithms and helps merchants guarantee high-level password security. In addition, Magento 2 store owners can seamlessly strengthen their website security by incorporating an additional protection layer by using a two-factor authentication extension.

To learn more about the benefits of the current editions of Magento 2, please read the article “Magento Commerce vs Magento Open Source.”

Steps for Migrating to Magento 2

Now let’s refer to the Magento 1 to Magento 2 migration process itself. Generally, the process takes from two to five months to complete, but the duration depends on the complexity of the website, number of extensions, and customization level.

As an Adobe Solution Partner, Dinarys provides comprehensive Magento 2 migration services from Magento 1 or any other e-commerce platform. Typically, our Magento 2 migration process consists of the following stages:

Gathering requirements

Understanding the requirements is the first step on the journey to upgrading your Magento store. During this stage, our Magento migration experts identify the requirements for the data to be migrated. This data includes information related to products, customers, and previous orders, as well as store configurations, extensions, themes, and customizations. Understanding these prerequisites is crucial to creating a step-by-step plan that results in smooth migration.

Staging environment preparation

During this step, we prepare a testing environment on a separate server to avoid causing downtime for the existing store.

Transferring store data

We first install and configure the Magento 2 Data Migration Tool in an empty Magento 2 environment with the help of Composer. The Magento 2 Data Migration Tool ensures consistency between the Magento 1 and Magento 2 database structures, tracks the data transfer progress, creates logs, and runs data verification tests.

We then migrate the product data (product attributes, categories, ratings, reviews, and manufacturer information) and do the same for customer information (login, password, and order history), order information (orders, payments, and invoices), and SEO setup (titles, descriptions, metadata, and redirects).

Setting up the theme

Since Magento 2 is radically different from Magento 1, it is impossible to migrate your current store’s theme directly without making any changes. There are three solutions to this problem: install a ready-to-use Magento 2 theme, develop a custom theme, or customize a ready-to-use Magento 2 theme.

Replacing Magento 1 extensions

Similar to themes, Magento 1 extensions cannot simply be migrated to a new Magento 2 store. During this stage, we use the requirements we collected during the first stage and replace previous extensions with Magento 2 default functionality (e.g., two-step checkout, B2B features, and Elasticsearch) or third-party extensions. An additional option is to develop custom modules that cannot be found anywhere in the market.

Conducting deployment and performance testing

During this stage, our quality assurance experts ensure that the newly minted Magento 2 store has a consistent look and performs smoothly on all major browsers. They also troubleshoot any glitches that may occur during the testing process.

Launching the Magento 2 store on a live server

After we ensure that the Magento migration is 100% complete, we move to the final step of the website launch with all issues having been addressed.

Additionally, as a full-cycle development company, we offer post-launch services because clients may need additional stabilization, improvements, and regular fixes to keep pace with the times.

You may be interested in reading the article “Why Is It Critical to Upgrade Your Magento Minor Version and How to Do It?”

Magento 1 to Magento 2 Migration Cost

In the same way that the duration of the Magento 2 migration depends on the store complexity, so does the cost. Thus, it is difficult to estimate the migration cost. The table below shows the estimated cost of basic Magento 2 migration services with Dinarys.

Magento 1 to Magento 2 Migration: Our Case Study

Dinarys is an e-commerce business development team that has been operating since 2014. The company has led numerous projects with companies from Europe, the US, and Ukraine. Magento development, including Magento 2 migration, is part of our core expertise. The following information highlights one of our Magento 2 migration projects and the results we obtained for our client.

Goddess is a popular European online multi-brand marketplace of cosmetics. The client’s ultimate goal was to improve its store’s performance. Since the previous solution was based on the Magento 1 platform, we migrated the store to Magento 2 with a full redesign based on the standard Magento theme Luma 2, which we customized.

To address all of the client’s concerns, we completed the following steps throughout the project:

• Migrated the current web store from Magento 1 to Magento 2.
• Expanded the functionality of the online store through one-page checkout and multiple custom modifications.
• Added a courier timeframe field on the checkout page for customer convenience.
• Implemented custom field and admin logic.
• Conducted full-regression testing of the resources, along with raw testing of each involved module.
• Added new localizations for the targeted demographics of website users.

Consequently, we designed and implemented an improved marketplace using Magento 2 as a base with the custom one-step checkout feature, new user and admin capabilities, and streamlined overall performance. Goddess clients can now easily check courier timeframes during checkout and enable live updates. This new solution significantly improved website traffic and increased our client’s regular profit.

Why Choose Our Magento 2 Migration Services?

Magento is unquestionably a future-oriented platform for developing not only online stores, but also entire businesses. Working with a proven Magento development team, such as Dinarys, you can implement a winning solution that helps you accomplish your entrepreneurial goals and more. Here are some of the reasons why you should choose to migrate to Magento 2 with us:

• Decreased shopping cart abandonment rate. Compared to Magento 1, Magento 2 store pages load 30% to 50% faster. This minimizes the undesirable phenomenon of shopping cart abandonment.
• Increased sales. Equipped with Elasticsearch, B2B features, and comprehensive analytical features, Magento 2 delivers the tools that are vital for a top-notch customer journey that results in a purchase in most cases.
• Mobile commerce conversions. Magento 2 out-of-the-box mobile functionality allows for the creation of a robust mobile experience with an efficient checkout process that reduces the mobile conversion gap.

Read more in our blog Why Should You Upgrade to the Latest Magento 2 Version.

Contact us today to discuss your Magento 2 migration project. We know how to digitalize your business in a manner that leverages all your efforts in the near future.