Magento 2.2 has Officially Come to an End

Magento 2.3.3 has many features and updates to get excited about. Beginning with more fluid GraphQL connections making connecting to PayPal, amazon pay, and other services easier than ever. Along with a record-breaking 157 security patches, Magento 2.3.3 and greater will have Yotpo built-in! Wait, no monthly costs for reviews and marketing those reviews?? Well not quite, there is still the cost but no setup. Huge time saver. We’ll talk more about what Yatpo is and how to leverage your reviews in your marketing strategies. As expected with the new release comes a lack of support for the old. Magento announced 2.2 or older versions of Magento will no longer be PCI compliant as of January 1st of 2020. That means security is more important than ever. Magento Development talks about the need for security and what they’re doing to make improvements. Not all security updates are bad ones. New with Magento 2.3.3 much like Magento 1.9 you can now easily and quickly apply security patches much like bandaids. These security patch bandages are good for six months of security until a full security upgrade is needed. Still! Six months of preparation and site protection within minutes?? Love it Magento. 

This new take on Magento Security will help decrease the cost of using Magento significantly. Magento pricing has been high for a long time and continues to be one of the most expensive eCommerce solutions out there but that comes with countless abilities and customizations you wouldn’t get anywhere else. 

Improvements 

Out of the gate Magento promises faster loading times and better overall shopping experience by boosting the performance even more. Performance boots come more from the CSS side of things with this latest update. Displaying text while web fonts load in the background and moving non-critical CSS items to the end of the loading queue is one way Magento has focused their performance efforts. Another way Magento 2.3.3 provides better performance involves the server and limiting the number of requests going back to the server. This will help increase throughput and decrease resource consumption. Magento is seeing improved speeds of up to 5 points according to Google PageSpeed Insights. 

Along with performance, Magento is making it easier to track what you need on your admin panel. What that means is the ability to let your interactions be tracked by Magento to build better user experience for admin users in the future. 

Stay with Magento?

After reading this or dealing with the constant updates Magento puts out you might be asking yourself “is Magento right for me?” “Is Magento going cause our company significant-tech debt?” 

In the next portion of this post, we would like to address that issue and help you align your eCommerce needs.

Every eCommerce platform is going to make you pay to play. Shopify Plus requires you to spend $24,000 a year just to host an enterprise account. Warning: If you are not doing 50,000 orders a day or even more, Shopify plus is not something you need. Definitely not something you should even consider. Along with Shopify, BigCommerce has a steep cost for its enterprise accounts as well. BigCommerce comes in at $12,000 a year minimum just to host your enterprise account and provide pricing at the SKU level. Magento, on the other hand, is an open-source platform that allows very custom functionality and very granular customizations that Shopify and BigCommerce don’t offer. That being said Magento Pricing is not on Wendy’s dollar menu just because it is free. We advise clients to expect roughly $15,000 in site maintenance a year because of the updates and maintaining speed. That puts you at a comfortable middle with a whole lot of customizations. 

That being said, hosting and maintenance are the recurring charges that go along with eCommerce pricing. When you begin your search for a Magento Development Agency keep in mind the actual build is going to be roughly $25,000 – $80,000 depending on your specific needs and customization. With that Magento pricing, you would be set up to scale and do so on more than one URL at a time. 

Conclusion

The new Magento update promises a lot of improvements. Of course, switching to a new platform or update even, can be time-consuming and difficult.  We can help along this process though. If you have questions or need a quote, contact us!