Magento Go – the hosted version of Magento will be shut down on February 1st 2015, impacting many online shops who chose this platform. eBay, the owners of Magento, made this decision at the beginning of July 2014.
Magento Go is not the same product as the Magento Community Edition that ExtraDigital provide, and this announcement does not have any impact on the online stores we have designed and developed. Indeed it shows that eBay, (owners of Magento), are focusing more effort on their original core products.
Many online retailers will now be forced to migrate their stores, and it is interesting the ‘upgrade’ route recommended by eBay is not to the Magento community edition but to the Bigcommerce platform that is already well integrated with PayPal and eBay.
Reasons for the Closure
It appears one reason for this decision was the fact that much of the new functionality on Magento Community and Enterprise was not available on Go and the cost to provide it was too high.
The main reason given by eBay for closing down Magento Go is to focus on the core products of Magento Community and Magento Enterprise. It was never widely publicised that the code base of Go is quite different from the other Magento products, and whereas migrating from Community to Enterprise is straight forward, the same does not apply to Go.
ExtraDigital never recommended the Go product due to the lack of a reliable upgrade route – we have always offered a full Magento solution for shops requiring less back-office functionality and complexity.
As each online store is different, we can help you review your options and select the best eCommerce solution for your business. ExtraDigital can also help any online store looking to migrate from Go either to the full Magento software or to an alternative eCommerce platform helping to ensure the change is as seamless as possible.
Contact ExtraDigital today to find out how we can help you.
