Your Magento store is running out of time. Adobe has published end-of-life dates for Adobe Commerce and effectively abandoned Magento Open Source — meaning no more security patches, no bug fixes, and no official support once your version hits its deadline. If you're still on Magento and haven't made a plan, you're operating on borrowed time.
What Adobe Commerce End-of-Life Actually Means
End-of-life (EOL) doesn't mean your store stops working overnight. It means Adobe stops issuing security patches for that version. Every vulnerability discovered after the EOL date goes unfixed. Your store becomes an increasingly attractive target for hackers, and you lose the ability to demonstrate PCI DSS compliance — which can directly affect your ability to process card payments.
Here are the specific EOL dates merchants need to know:
- Adobe Commerce 2.4.4 — Reached EOL in April 2025
- Adobe Commerce 2.4.5 — EOL April 2026
- Adobe Commerce 2.4.6 — EOL August 2026
- Adobe Commerce 2.4.7 — Current supported version, EOL approximately 2028
- Magento Open Source — Adobe has stopped issuing independent security patches; it follows the Commerce timeline but with no enterprise support whatsoever
If your store is on 2.4.4 or earlier, you're already on EOL software. If you're on 2.4.5, you're past the deadline. If you're on 2.4.6, you have until August 2026.
Why "Just Upgrade" Isn't the Answer
The obvious short-term fix is upgrading to 2.4.7. It buys you until 2028. But before you go down that road, understand what a Magento version upgrade actually costs:
- Development time: 4–12 weeks for a store with moderate customisation
- Extension compatibility: Many third-party extensions don't support the latest version immediately, requiring replacements or rewrites
- Testing overhead: Full regression testing across every custom feature and integration
- Cost: Typically $15,000–$50,000+ depending on complexity
You pay all of that to stay on a platform that has a 2028 expiry date — at which point you do it again, or finally migrate. Most merchants who run the upgrade math realise they're spending migration money without actually doing the migration.
The Bigger Picture: Adobe Is Moving Away from On-Premise Commerce
Adobe's long-term direction is Adobe Commerce Cloud — their SaaS offering running on Adobe's infrastructure. On-premise Magento is not where Adobe is investing. Every release cycle, the gap between what Adobe builds for Commerce Cloud and what gets backported to on-premise grows wider.
Magento Open Source is even further down the priority list. Adobe has made no public commitment to its long-term roadmap. The community edition serves as a marketing entry point, not a platform Adobe is actively developing for production commerce at scale.
Merchants who stay on Magento are betting on a platform whose vendor has partially moved on. That's a significant business risk, regardless of when your specific EOL date hits.
What Are Your Real Options?
Strip away the short-term fixes and merchants on Magento have three paths:
- Upgrade to Adobe Commerce 2.4.7 on-premise — buys 2 years, expensive, repeatable problem
- Move to Adobe Commerce Cloud (SaaS) — Adobe's preferred option, complex migration, high ongoing cost, starts at $40,000/year for enterprise tiers
- Migrate to Shopify — clean break, modern platform, fully managed hosting, Shopify handles security and updates, built-in checkout with industry-leading conversion rates
For the vast majority of merchants running stores under $50M in annual revenue, Option 3 makes the most financial and operational sense. Shopify has no EOL dates. Shopify handles PCI compliance at the platform level. You stop paying for infrastructure, security audits, and upgrade cycles.
The Cost Comparison: Staying on Magento vs Moving to Shopify
A typical $5M revenue Adobe Commerce merchant running on-premise is paying:
- Hosting: $800–$2,000/month (dedicated servers, CDN, WAF)
- Adobe Commerce licence: $22,000–$40,000/year for Commerce edition
- Development retainer for patches and upgrades: $2,000–$5,000/month
- Security scanning and PCI compliance tools: $500–$1,500/month
That's $60,000–$120,000/year in ongoing platform costs, before you touch a single feature. Shopify Plus for a $5M store costs $2,500/month ($30,000/year) and includes hosting, security, PCI compliance, and Shopify's continuous platform development. The migration pays for itself inside 12–18 months in most cases.
What a Magento to Shopify Migration Actually Involves
A well-executed migration moves:
- All products, variants, images, and metafields
- Full customer database with account history
- Historical order data (typically last 12–36 months)
- 301 redirects from every existing URL to preserve SEO equity
- Theme rebuild in Shopify Liquid (or a premium pre-built theme)
- App replacements for your Magento extension stack
- ERP, POS, and fulfilment integrations reconnected
A typical mid-size store migration takes 8–16 weeks with an experienced Shopify development agency. Done correctly, you don't lose Google rankings, you don't lose customer data, and you don't lose order history.
Act Before the Deadline — Not After
The worst time to start a migration is after your EOL date, when your store is already running without security patches. The best time is now, while you have a working store to migrate from and time to test everything properly before cutover.
If your version hits EOL before your migration completes, you have a problem. Build in enough lead time — realistically 3–4 months minimum from first conversation to go-live.
Ready to Move Off Adobe Commerce?
TheDeki is a Shopify development agency that specialises in platform migrations — including complex Magento to Shopify projects with large product catalogues, custom integrations, and ERP connections. We've migrated stores of all sizes and we know exactly where the problems are before they happen.
Book a free migration consultation with TheDeki. We'll review your current Magento setup, outline what a migration would involve for your specific store, and give you a realistic timeline and cost — no obligation, no pressure.
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