Note: Originally posted on the 2nd July – we are re-publishing on our new website.
After hearing unconfirmed reports last week that eBay was considering closing down its software-as-a-service (SAAS) ecommerce platform, the official notification has now been given to store owners and the wider teach community. Magento Go, and its older equivalent ProStores, will be shut off on February 1st 2015.
There have been rumours circulating for months, ever since Magento Go failed to gain enough traction in the SAAS market against stiff competition from the likes of Shopify and Bigcommerce, fuelled by news that Magento were planning to release staff earlier in the year. But until now we haven’t known that eBay would actually pull out of this section of the market.
MagentoGo (and ProStores) were aimed at the low to mid-end of the market, complementing the Magento Community and Enterprise editions aimed at the mid and high-ends of the market, respectively. eBay have agreed a deal with Bigcommerce, who will offer a transition package for customers to migrate their stores across to the newer platform.
Given the lucrative size of the market, it is no surprise that there is such strong players providing excellent platforms. At TheGenieLab, we specialise in ecommerce and have many years experience working in a wide range of platforms. We have chosen to focus on Shopify and Magento Community Edition, because we believe that they are the best in the market, at the low-mid and mid-high ends of the market.
In particular, we long ago decided that Magento Go couldn’t really match up to Shopify in terms of performance, features and user experience, and so moved away from working on it. It now looks as though our own experience was mirrored by others in the industry.
We are happy to provide some free consultation on this for anyone currently using Magento Go about choosing your next best step.
As Shopify Experts, give us a call on (UK) +44 (0) 2920 837 438 or (US) +1 305-762-0130, email wish@thegenielab.com or jump on our website’s live chat.