Is Magento ignoring small & medium size etailers by shutting down Go and ProStores?

If you are using the Magento e-commerce platform for your online selling business, you could face a road-block in your activities soon if timely action is not taken. E-commerce platform Magento, which is owned by eBay’s enterprise division, has announced that it will soon close down Magento Go and ProStores, two products designed for small to medium size online sellers. Around 10,000 merchants currently use the products.

To facilitate and educate customers about moving their businesses to other platforms,

• Notices and informational guides have already been posted on the company website

• Current customers are being re-directed to the “Migration Center” dashboards

Magento’s email to customers mentions that the move to stop these products was not an easy decision and that they understand it may not be welcome news. The products will be normal and operational till 1st February 2015, which is after the busy holiday season. Customer support will also be provided in this transitional phase.

How will Magento help in the transition?

• Magento customers, who will be affected, can choose to move well before the holiday season.

• eBay named competitor Bigcommerce as its official migration partner, mainly because it has prior experience in porting Magento customers.

Bigcommerce announced that it has moved about 6,000 ProStores customers to its platforms earlier, in addition to around 6,000 customers from other competitors. With more than 50,000 customers, facilities offered by Bigcommerce include:

• Tight integration with PayPal

• Supports selling on eBay

• Special incentives for customers transferring from Magento

Why is Magento making this move?

According to a statement posted online by Mark Levelle, SVP, Product and Strategy at eBay Enterprise, Magento wants to focus on Magento Enterprise Edition and Magento Community Edition, both solutions that offer better support and better features for small and medium merchants to prosper and keep pace in the rapidly expanding e-commerce space.

Quite contradictory, it is interesting to note that:

• Magento Community – open source version of Magento platform – has previously been aimed for larger retailers who required more flexibility with their codes.
  
  
• Enterprise Edition – was previously aimed at those with online sales in millions clients.

What does Magento’s document to Go site owners say?

In the documentation sent by Magento to Go site owners, it says that the decision to shut down services was mainly due to “changing market requirements”. The newer versions will provide features no included in Go, like new responsive reference theme, payment options to streamline checkout, etc.

Although the same document mentioned that Magento “remains committed to small and medium size businesses,” the move is more indicative of its choice to support much larger clients.