I started working with Magento in 2014 at a small company that develops extensions for Magento. Over the past decade, I saw incredible growth in 2020 due to COVID-19, and now I notice that many of my former colleagues are struggling to find jobs, and overall, the number of e-commerce projects based on Magento is decreasing.
Does it mean that Magento is dying?
Based on the open statistics, depending on the region, Magento holds up to 7–9% of global e-commerce, compared to 13% in 2015 (information based on the BuildWith statistic https://trends.builtwith.com/shop/Magento)
Builtwith Magento Usage Statistics
Additionally, I've noticed that Magento's popularity is declining, and friends from other companies report a decrease in the number of Magento projects.
Well, the problem could be in companies, doesn’t it? So I asked my friend
- Hey, you have built one of the most popular Magento extensions. What’s going on with it?
.. and he provided me with such a graph:
Another graph (I promise, the last one) is simply Google interest
From all these graphs, it is obvious that the popularity of Magento is decreasing. But why? I have spent a lot of time investigating the issue and exploring the e-commerce market, especially Magento.
I decided to review and recall the history of Magento to understand why such a big project and platform are losing their popularity. That’s just my personal opinion.
What is Magento?
Let’s start with a quick overview of what Magento (also known as Adobe Commerce) is.
It’s an open-source CMS platform based on PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript. It has high-quality standards, good but complicated architecture, which allows customization of almost everything. It has, I would say, a big fan club of developers and the community, which has made significant contributions.
I have a couple of certifications and still think that it is the best CMS based on PHP, but to face the truth, it has its weak sides.
History
Let’s start with the history.
The first version of Magento was released in 2007, and it experienced rapid growth, becoming one of the popular e-commerce CMS platforms. It was based on the widely used Zend Framework of that time.
In 2015, Magento 2 was released. Under the hood, it used the same framework; however, the architecture concept was different, which made it impossible to do an easy migration, and basically, the migration was a full re-platforming (for the truth, there were migration scripts, but they worked badly and required a significant effort). That’s the first issue I explain in more detail below.
Key points in history.
In 2018, Adobe acquired Magento, promising developers and the community that nothing would change. But a lot has changed.
Issue #1. Migration.
Magento 1 was popular for all segments of the e-commerce market, ranging from small stores to big enterprises. The second version was released with a completely different architecture but still based on the same framework and with similar patterns and approaches.
Magento created some migrations for the database and even for the code, but, to put it mildly, they did not work well. The database migration script was improved over the years, but it still required experience to avoid pitfalls and execute the migration smoothly.
Everything was new, with only basic documentation. Developers learning Magento 2 had to figure it out through code and exploring how to write code correctly. I remember the first projects, and the quality of their code was far from ideal.
During the first two years, Magento 2 had numerous bugs and was not stable. The clients, who decided to switch to M2, faced a significant increase in estimates and bugs.
Issue #2. Entry barrier.
As I mentioned, Magento 2 has a very good and complex architecture that supports creating high-quality projects. But what happens if an agency with PHP developers sells Magento? Of course, they start developing without a proper understanding of architecture and M2 standards, leading to security and performance issues, and encountering unexpected bugs when they modify a class, thinking it will change behavior, but instead, it also alters another hidden (for them) functionality.
We had a lot of such clients with such terrible code. What did the client say?
We asked the Magento agency, and they quoted twice the cost of the other agency.
Ok, cool. Now the quote will be three times higher because we need to fix everything the previous agency did and implement everything properly.
Clients had to decide to pay more for qualified developers or take a chance with cheaper ones.
Issue #3. Frontend.
The architecture of the frontend allows for extending and modifying the UI without touching the original files. Developers can add blocks from any module, and it is easy to orchestrate with nested themes, etc. Such architecture allows for easy upgrades of Magento without a significant impact. For example, if a new feature is introduced with a new version, it will still work even if you have a fully customized frontend (assuming the developer develops everything properly according to standards).
But there are still some significant issues:
- Deprecation. The original frontend is built using outdated technologies such as jQuery, Prototype, and Knockout.js.
- Besides the standard frontend, there are some areas that use UI components—a way to build a dynamic frontend (like with React or Vue). However, the architecture of this solution is so complex that even experienced developers sometimes spend a lot of time implementing minor features. Of course, this approach affects the final costs.
- Implementing good performance for the frontend requires effort, as does achieving a good score in Google PageSpeed Insights.
- In 2018, Magento introduced PWA Studio — a way to build a headless solution based on React.js. But development dragged on, and developers reported a large number of bugs. Due to the rising popularity of PWA technology, many companies are building similar solutions: VueStorefront (now Alokai), ScandiPWA, etc.
Currently, another popular solution for Magento is Hyvä Theme, which allows building a frontend with the same flexibility and much better performance.
Issue #4. Adobe.
After Adobe acquired Magento, it rebranded it as Adobe Commerce and shifted focus toward large enterprise and B2B markets. They actively promote their Adobe Commerce Cloud and its services, which can be integrated into the Adobe Commerce ecosystem. They introduced numerous services that work with Adobe Commerce, such as Adobe Sensei, Live Search, and more.
The price of usage increased, and mentions of Open Source began to gradually fade.
Due to changing politics, many small and mid-market clients who initially migrated to Magento 2 have switched to less expensive platforms.
So where are all the stores now?
According to analytics from BuiltWith (https://trends.builtwith.com/shop), roughly 40% are built with Shopify.
We see that a lot of our clients migrate to another platform:
- Shopify — I believe it is the most popular e-commerce solution today.
- BigCommerce — another SaaS platform similar to Shopify.
- A composable solution — a way to build only the frontend using popular frameworks like React or Vue, and all logic is orchestrated with various services (like CommerceTools, Algolia, Stripe, etc.).
- Shopware — another solution with a similar stack (PHP and MySQL), that allows building also customizable web stores.
Very often, they refuse or simplify certain functionalities due to the limitations of SaaS solutions. However, from a business perspective, they gain many benefits such as low ownership costs, easier management, and improved store performance.
The approach to e-commerce on the web is shifting towards SaaS solutions, even platforms like Adobe Commerce and Shopware, which were initially open source, are now transitioning to a SaaS model. Is this the future? I believe so. Is it good? Well, I am an old-school developer, so I see it as a 50/50 situation — fewer ways to create something innovative and exciting, but better for business.
Conclusions
Would I still build projects based on Adobe Commerce or Magento? It depends. If the client needs to create a small fashion store, I don’t see any reason to complicate such a simple project — use Shopify. However, if the client requires complex and custom logic, B2B features, or the ability to scale, Adobe Commerce is the best solution, offering numerous opportunities for business growth.
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