In 2012 I attended my first Magento Imagine conference in Las Vegas. The conference opened with David Bandrowski of The Deering Banjo (They make banjos for Mumford and Sons don’t you know) playing a banjo and shredding with Kingson Trio (for those in the know apparently Kingston Trio is kinda a big deal in banjo circles). It was a nice opening. The reason for this was that Deering Bango was up and running on Magento Go!
2012 was the year of Magento Go. Magento had a focus and it was to give smaller businesses the opportunity to enter the Magento market on a subscription based, turnkey model. Getting the likes of Deering on board showed that it wasn’t just the ‘Mom & Pop’ & ‘Bedroom’ businesses that were suitable for Go, this demonstrated that the platform was right for more established progressive companies.
There were additional initiatives being developed to help make Magento Go a serious contended in this market place. Trusted extensions was part of this, allowing some extensions to be installed on to the Go platform.
Leap forward a year and Magento Go was not mentioned once in any keynote during Imagine 2013. The writing was on the wall that Magento Go was out of favour.
Today marked the beginning of the end of Magento Go. On the 1st February 2015 it will be closed down for good, the date chosen to minimise disruption during the busy christmas and holiday period. For many it was only a matter of time before this announcement was made. Exactly how many merchants this will affect is unclear but Magento have promised migration tools to help merchants move to a new platform.
In the long run most will be happy with this decision. I know I am. Magento Go had been a lame duck for sometime, it needed putting out of its misery. A statement can be found on the Magento Go homepage - http://go.magento.co.uk/ . It includes this line in the statement
Going forward, we’re focusing our resources on Magento Enterprise Edition and Magento Community Edition…
This made my heart sing not least because it demonstrate a commitment by Magento to Community Edition. Enterprise and Community editions offer businesses the flexibility which was restricted by Magento Go.
If you are a Magento Go customer in most cases it will make sense to stick with the Magento platform and look at migrating to the Community edition. The migration of products, data and cross transfer of knowledge will make life so much easier for you.
There is life after Magento Go. To all those affected and wondering what to do next remember there’s a community of thousands of passionate and talented Magento experts out there who want the best for your business. Between now and February 1st there are Meet Magento events and Magento Live events where you can seek expert help.
** JUST ADDED ** - Alternatives to Magento Go (derived from Magento)
There are alternatives to Magento Go. This list comprises of software that is based on Magento which may mean migrating and training will be simplified. Some of these are hosted for you. In no particular order:
Alternatives to Magento Go (not based on Magento)
If you want to move away completely from Magento then here is a selection of Non Magento based alternatives.
I’m sure there are others I could add to this list. If you have suggestions please tweet me @futurederyck and I will include them as soon as I can.
So when one door closes another one opens. This could be an exciting opportunity for your online store.