Online sellers who have built their businesses on Magento’s version 1.X can vouch for the reliability, scalability and efficiency of this eCommerce platform.

After all, they wouldn’t have managed to list products and manage orders as well as payments on their online stores and various marketplaces, such as Amazon and eBay, from a single screen had it not been for the extensive features of Magento 1.

So when word got around that version one will cease to receive support and updates, it placed a lot of sellers in panic mode.

It’s a good thing Magento quickly stepped in to prevent such baseless information from demoralising their customers.

Continuous support for Magento 1

Contrary to rumours, Magento has no plans of ending support for version 1.X anytime soon and forcing its users to upgrade to Magento 2.

They made that crystal clear in a blog post which they published on their official blog last month.

If your online store is still firmly anchored to Magento 1, put your mind to rest and carry on with your daily activities as it’s going to take 18 more months before the implementation of Magento’s new support system.

That means to say version 1 will continue to receive security updates until Magento has formally announced their new support rules.

We have below an excerpt from the blog post of Jason Woosley, Senior Vice President of Product and Technology at Magento:

“Magento stands behind our customers and will never leave a customer behind – you can rest assured that we have your back at every turn. Magento 1 has been and will continue to be supported for the foreseeable future. We have no intention of denying access to our world-class software and know your business relies on Magento to drive growth and differentiation for your brand.”

Are you ready for Magento 2?

While ensuring that he encourages users of Magento 1, Woosley found an opening in his article to push their company’s new flagship product Magento 2, which you were warned against upgrading to due to its untimely release in 2015.

Woosley wrote that version 2 has the capacity to enhance a website’s performance, give it better visibility and business results.

There is no doubt that Magento 2 will be the most in demand eCommerce platform over time, which could be three years or so from now.

However, unless the security bug which was detected by DefenseCode and other undocumented features on version 2 have been successfully fixed, we think the users of version one are going to hold off their migration a little bit longer.

What are your thoughts on the extended life of Magento 1 and its successor?