Why is it finally time to upgrade to Magento 2?

Magento 2 was released in 2015 after many delays and with the enthusiasm that it has been received with, it obviously was worth the wait. Several websites have migrated to Magento 2 and several are in the process of migrating.

I am a person who in always interested in upgrading to new technologies. I did switched to Windows Vista, Windows 8, and all such new software releases without a second thought. But, when it came to Magento 2, I was not equally quick in switching over.

Why?

Remember when various Windows version came out or when any such huge software upgrades were released? Remember what was common in all of those upgrades?

Bugs! A lot of bugs.

Encountering bugs in a new software is not uncommon. But, when there are bugs in an eCommerce website, it is definitely a huge problem as you may lose many customers because of that. Experimenting with an eCommerce website by upgrading it to a new software full of bugs may prove to be a pitfall for your business.

When people approach me with questions related to migration to Magento 2, I have been really apprehensive about upgrading the core software that powers your business before all the faults are cleared out. But after 2 years of its initial release and 8 versions later, I think it is safe to migrate from magento 1 to magento 2.

Once I realised the time is right, I researched about pros and cons that one needs to know about while moving forward with the migration.

The pros of migrating to Magento 2

• More in-built features: As the magento 2 platform itself has a lot of native features integrated within it, it seems to be a full package. With most of the features in-built, there are fewer extensions required.
• Improvised performance: There is no debate about the performance that Magento 2 has to offer. It is way better than the magento 1 platform.
• Fully responsive and touch friendly layout: Magento 2 has a layout that is responsive by default and thus, one does not have to spend time trying to modify various screen views.
• Easy to add functionality: Magento 2 has a setup that has easy and simple backend management with a better UX, thereby offering an enhanced functionality to the admins. Also, the user end functionalities have been improvised by adding a superior UX.

These benefits are bound to improvise the UI/UX of the webshop, thereby attracting more customers.

Also, with Magento 2.2 expected to be releasing soon, Magento 1 is expected to become obsolete by the end of 2019. So, it is better to make the switch now with a lot of time to spare than doing it in haste when it becomes necessary.

Summing up

Magento 2 had several promising features to offer when it was first released but it was a wise decision to wait for others to try it out and smoothen out all the shortcomings before migrating to Magento 2. But now that all the bugs are gone, the only things that remain are its impressive features and they are totally worth the time of migrating from Magento 1 to Magento 2.

Comparison Between WooCommerce And PrestaShop In The 2018 eCommerce Scenario

Choosing the right shopping cart software is the most significant factor for the success of any company. The right style and layout of an eCommerce website with appealing UI/UX is what one needs to get the website to take off the ground.

Many eCommerce beginners are confused about which software to pick for designing the shopping cart out of WooCommerce or PrestaShop.

Though both the software have proven to be equally successful in helping a large number of business owners successfully launch an eCommerce website, the basic difference between the both lies in the base of their frameworks itself:

PrestaShop is a freemium eCommerce platform, written in the PHP programming language and registered under Open Software License and uses MySQL as the database management system. On the other hand, WooCommerce is an open source WordPress plugin for eCommerce that helps in building medium to large size online shopping websites using WordPress.

With the basic difference clarified, I will now give you an overview of PrestaShop vs. WooCommerce for various parameters:

The principle:

PrestaShop is a platform for designing eCommerce websites where one can install a plugin for adding CMS functionality and WooCommerce is a plugin adding eCommerce functionality to a CMS platform. With both, the final result satisfies the same objective but in different ways.

Themes available:

PrestaShop has a library of over 1200 themes to choose from on its official website and several other third-party templates. There is a limited library of WordPress themes of about 500 templates that are compatible with WooCommerce. While most of the WordPress themes can be modified to work with WooCommerce, it needs a high amount of designing to get it to work for an eCommerce website.

Security handling:

WooCommerce, being a WordPress plugin, has security requirements similar to that of WordPress. So, one who is familiar with all the security measures needed on a WordPress platform can easily handle the security of the website. PrestaShop, on the other hand, needs specific security measures that only PrestaShop development experts can handle. If proper measures are taken at the development stage, a PrestaShop based website can offer high-level security but the same can be achieved on a WordPress based eCommerce website with lesser efforts.

Stock management:

WooCommerce can support at most 10 thousand products. If you go beyond that, the admin side server will make it almost impossible to manage product list sorting. PrestaShop can support over tens of thousands of products and are easily manageable from the admin side server.

Costs:

Though both the software belong to the freemium category, the cost involved in making a PrestaShop eCommerce website is more than the one made using a WooCommerce. There are no free templates available in PrestaShop and you also need to get product filter plugin for the frontend. But all the costs involved make the complete website more customisable.

So, which software wins?

Though each has its own pros and cons, both emerge winners in their own variant way. While PrestaShop offers more versatility, WooCommerce offers easy backend handling and while WooCommerce offers more autonomy, PrestaShop has too good eCommerce features.

In short, WooCommerce web development solution is a good choice for small to medium scale businesses while PrestaShop web development is preferable for large-scale businesses.