What’s new in Magento 2.4.5 – and why you should make the switch
With nearly two decades of web development experience behind us now here at 21Digital, we are Magento 2 specialists, with a long history of designing, developing and launching high-performing eCommerce solutions for our clients. The Magento 2 platform is constantly being improved upon, and recently it’s seen one of its most significant upgrades: switching from version 2.3.5 to version 2.4.5.
Now, we admit that they’re not particularly snappy monikers, so the differences between them might not be immediately obvious from just a glance at their names. But Magento 2.4.5 features some serious improvements, all designed to make your site even sharper, sleeker and easier to use. This week, we thought we’d tell you a bit more about them, as well as talking a bit more about why it’s such a good idea to make the switch – and how we’ve achieved it for one of our own clients at 21Digital!
Why should you upgrade your site to Magento 2.4.5?
OK, so there’s a short answer, and a long answer.
The short answer: Magento 2.3.5 – the older version – is now no longer being actively supported, so switching to the newer 2.4.5 version ensures that you can continue enjoying optimum performance and security, as well as a range of new features.
The long answer: Support for all Magento 2.3 iterations of the platform officially ended on the 8th of September 2022, and the programming language php7.3 (which is required to run any Magento 2.3 version) ceased to be supported last year, in December 2021.
In case you need a quick refresher, ‘end-of-support’ or ‘end-of-life’ refers to a situation in which a company ceases support for a product or service. In the case of Magento 2.3.5, this means that basically no more official updates or new security patches will be available for this version.
If you’re still using it for your own eCommerce site, this has implications for the following aspects of your site:
- Performance
- Security
- Compliance
- User experience
Magento 2.4.5 brings a range of improvements to these different elements of your site, while giving you access to a variety of powerful new features. We’ve summed up some of the more significant ones below!
Our roundup of Magento 2.4.5’s most significant new features
There are a lot of reasons why Magento 2 has long been the preferred eCommerce platform for us (and so many of our clients) here at 21Digital – its user experience and quality-of-life improvements are second-to-none! Here’s just a sample of what you can expect from Magento 2.4.5.
Security
- For improved security two-factor authentication (2FA) is required for all admin users and cannot be disabled
Performance
- Faster cart and checkout performance
- Faster reordering
- Faster add-to-cart performance for quick ordering
- A much quicker and greatly improved search function, called Elasticsearch
- Various scalability improvements (including Redis optimisations), resulting in better performance
User experience
- Improved Media Gallery
- A new feature called Seller-Assisted Shopping (essentially allowing store owners to log in as a customer to assist shoppers)
There’s also a couple of further improvements that don’t quite fit into the categories we’ve outlined above, such as the Page Builder feature.
It’s another testament to the sheer level of customisation Magento offers, so if you’ve got something specific in mind for your own site, don’t hesitate to let us know!
As a multi-award-winning agency specialising in lead generation and e-commerce, we keep all our skills in-house, so you can count on us to provide award-winning web design and web development skills to help your business grow. Our services also encompass technical SEO, Google Ads, digital consultancy, social media marketing and email marketing.
Give us a call on 01254 660 560, and let’s talk!
