We want to upgrade our current Magento 1.4.0.1 installation to 1.9.1.0 till autumn this year. The only thing we are unsure about is the future support of 1.9.1.0 since Magento 2.0 will be released end of 2015 (perhaps fully functional mid of 2016).
Do you assume that 1.9.1.0 will be supported for the coming 4-5 years by the developers or third party providers? Or do you think that it will be much shorter?
[EDIT]
Magento has extended the support for Magento 1 until further notice.
[/EDIT]
AFAIK Magento 1.x will still be supported for 3 years after 2.0 comes out of beta by Magento itself.
As far as support from third party provides, this is totally opinion based.
So here is my opinion.
I'm sure that not all the merchants will move to 2.0 and there will still be a market for Magento 1.x a few more years after the support is ended.
So if there is demand for 1.x extensions they will still offer it because...money.
I bet that every large extension provider will work side by side for 1.x and 2.0. Most of them will offer migration tools for their extensions from 1 to 2.
It's almost certain, that there'll be CE 1.10.x, CE 1.11.x and so on. Magento 2 has no clear upgrade path from Magento 1 and because of that vast majority of existing stores will postpone full overhaul as much as possible. I'm also pretty sure that even after Magento 2 launch there'll be plenty of new stores that still use Magento 1.
As far as I know eBay has committed to support Magento 1 for at least three years after launching Magento 2 and I've heard promises that some of the Magento 2 updates will be back-ported to Magento 1.
TL;DR: There's no reason to abandon enormous and profitable market called Magento 1 and move over to relatively minuscule Magento 2 market. It's going to take years before Magento 2 becomes viable market and there's no way that vendors would stop churning out stuff for Magento 1 platform meanwhile.
According to me, There will be support for Magento 1.9.1.0. Currently most of the Magento Developers are working on Magento 1.9 version.
The support will not stop suddenly but it will gradually decrease.
Magento community has so many certified developers who are certified on 1.x
You will definitely find someone who works as freelancer according to your need.
As you can see here :
so many ecommerce sites are running on Magento 1.8 and older version.
Until all the sites will be upgraded to Magento 2 there will be support for Magento 1.9.
ONGOING MAGENTO 1 SUPPORT
Magento has announced, that "Magento 1 has been and will continue to be supported for the foreseeable future".
The formerly announced date (November 2018) is no longer an issue.
The "End of Life" of Magento 1.x is deferred at some indefinite future date with a "minimum 18-month notice before we make any changes to our support levels".
https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/ongoing-magento-1-support
https://www.meet-magento.com/news/breaking-end-of-magento-1.x-support-extended
There's still some people running Os-commerce and Harald had that stuck at version 2.2.2 for years so it stands to reason that Magento 1.x will be around for a long time too.
I'm sure you'll be able to find someone to work on it even after official support has ceased. In fact, we still get the occasional upgrade or work request for Os-commerce. I worked with that platform so much that it's like riding a bike when one comes in. I doubt if Magento 2 agencies will be turning away 1.x work anytime in the future.
Magento 1.x will be supported for some time (3 years at least as others have stated).
If you've ever used quick books, I'd liken it to this. Yes, you will be officially supported, but all the good extension developers will be moving on to 2.0 since it's the future. Of course independent developers will always be available at a cost.
Your questions to extension companies regarding 1.x extensions will get answered, but slowly your priority will fade to them. What used to take 1 day to get an answer, will now take two weeks. I would anticipate (speculate) even as early as Q1 2016 1.x questions will just annoy most extension developers.
So yes, you should still definitely update to 1.9, but you should also be slowly calculating a plan to upgrade probably later this year to 2.0. It is painful, but it is the only way.
Good luck!
Magento has announced that Magento 1 will be supported for 3 more years after Magento 2 has been released (is out of beta). The "General Availability" will be end of 2015. So Magento 1 will be supported at least until end of 2018!
If you look at other software, Typo3 for instance, you will see that after those 3 years you could probably buy more years of support from Magento itself. Magento won't support Magento 1 longer, as it is no longer profitable, but if there are many Magento 1 customers willing to pay, then it will be profitable for Magento.
In a lot of answers I read that people think there will be a lot of (or some major) parties that would be giving support on Magento 1 after those 3 years. But I don't think this support is that reliable as it is splintered over so much parties and could end up with compatibility issues between those split offs and extensions from vendors.
By the way, if you look at Magento's Imagine event as being the place for big announcements, I think Magento 2's official and festive release will be April 11-13 at Magento Imagine 2016. So Magento 1 would then be supported until April 2019 ;)
Magento announcement:
Magento Open Source 1 software security patches thru June 2020
Magento Open Source versions 1.5 to 1.9 will receive software security maintenance until June 2020.
https://info2.magento.com/M1OpenSource.html
https://magento.com/blog/magento-news/supporting-magento-1-through-june-2020
Although Magento 2 has been around for some time (first announced in 2010, but a new beta is available in 2015), many e-commerce business owners may still be pondering whether upgrading to Magento 2 is feasible. By discussing the Magento 1 vs. problem. Magento 2, by looking at various important aspects, we aim to help them make the right decisions.
We will discuss all important aspects: From the necessary development through budgets, new functions to support issues, both official (provided by the company) and unofficial (provided by the Magento community).
We will discuss the following topics:
Magento 2: The Magento 2 brings fundamental changes to the famous e-commerce platform. In addition to increasing overall functionality, it has a big increase:
At the technological level, in modularity (both backend and frontend), in terms of performance. Obviously, Magento aims to consolidate Magento 2 and expand its functions, making it more attractive especially for larger companies. The official development team added new features to Magento 2 every three months - this applies to the Magento Community and Company Edition. Magento 1 vs. Magento 2 - When should I improve? If your e-commerce store is the Magento 1.x version is running smoothly, does not have a problematic feature, generate orders and income, operates under a version that is not outdated,
then, in Q2 2017, for at least a few more months, there is no need to rush to upgrade to Magento 2.
You must have started planning but if you think long term, We recommend you to update immediately if:
