EBay Shuts Down Magento Go & ProStores – Puts 10,000+ SMB’s at stake

If you’re one amongst those businesses whose online stores thrive on eBay’s Magento Go hosted ecommerce solution & ProStores, then this news might come to you like a bolt from the blue – EBay’s senior vice president Mark Lavelle has officially confirmed the shutdown of Magento Go on Feb 1, 2015, at the Magento Go website in an open letter to all merchants. Two days earlier i.e. on July 1, 2014; Magento marketing head Craig Peasley announced on its official blog that they will be transitioning their Magento Go & ProStores merchants off and will finally stop providing customers support for these two products on February 1, 2015.

Magento’s range of solutions powers businesses of all sizes while giving the power, flexibility & features to serve hundreds of eCommerce clients across the globe. Both its hosted eCommerce packages – Pro store & Magento Go helped many small & medium-sized businesses sell their products & services online.

Moreover, these platforms allowed users to create a customizable virtual storefront using their own IP by providing a complete eCommerce solution that included domain registration, hosting & a shopping cart along with secure payment processing as well.

Why EBay took the tough decision?

According to multiple resources, it was confirmed that Magento Go never succeeded in pulling customers against other eCommerce giants – Big commerce & Shopify who were its biggest competitors in the eCommerce marketplace and succeeded in targeting more sophisticated online sellers across the globe than Magento did.

Moreover, the official announcements made by eBay spokesperson, Marketing Head & senior VP revealed that Ebay plans to continue focusing on its two other flagship products – Magento Community & Magento Enterprise Edition that can better support & equip small & medium size merchants in the fast-evolving e-commerce landscape as well as developing the next generation of their platform – Magento 2.

In another news put forward by Recode.net, it came out that Magento previously cut dozens of employees(nearly 50) including its product & marketing departments as well while realigning its focus on its other two eCommerce software products – Magento Enterprise & Community edition that has made big success in past few years. EBay’s spokeswoman Kelly Henry confirmed the job cuts without discussing any particular no. of individuals who are being laid off.

She also told that they are consolidating their local businesses to focus more deeply on developing core Magento products that are serving more than 2,00,000 merchants worldwide. However, in an interview with Magento marketing head Craig Peasley, it was revealed that the company does not expect further layoffs related to the shutdown of both of its businesses – Magento Go & ProStores.

How EBay’s hard move is going to impact the merchants running Magento Go e-shops & ProStores?

The closure seems to affect more than 10,000 small & mid-sized businesses that relied on Magento Go & ProStores to fuel their online stores and generate millions of dollars from their huge online customer base.

As an impact of this sudden news, online sellers across the globe are really disappointed to learn that the platform is going to close in early 2015. In multiple conversations with CEO’s of different ecommerce brands, it came to light that merchants are finding it difficult to find a new platform & migrate all information to a completely fresh eCommerce solution without affecting sales & inventory. The situation worsens further for those Managing Directors who are hardcore Marketers & are not at all equipped with technical terminologies and challenges of eCommerce website development.

However, eBay announced to all Magento Go & ProStores merchants to take advantage of the checklists, planning resources & special offers in their Migration center to enable everyone to smoothly migrate to other eCommerce providers.

It also suggests using Bigcommerce for those who want to continue with hosted shopping carts while upgrading to Magento Enterprise Edition & Magento community edition if it fits their requirements. In an endeavor to further help its clients, eBay has posted a variety of resources online to help merchants decide on other options.

Darlene Shirran, the CEO of Lamppostglobes.com – an online store powered by ProStore, told Ecommercebytes that it would be very tough to remove a store that was by far the most successful & fetched majority of the online sales for her.

However, she was grateful to eBay for giving notice before 7 months of finally closing the stores in early Feb 2015. All she is concerned about as of now is finding the right eCommerce provider & migrating her store for a new transformation.

Just like Shirran, the fate of other 10,000 small businesses is undecided & can make them lose millions of dollars in taking the big risk of handing over their stores to new vendors. Despite Ebay’s senior management continually claiming to ensure that the transition will be as smooth & seamless as possible; selecting right vendor who can successfully migrate their store to other platforms would be a challenging task.

If you’re also one amongst those unfortunate store owners who are hit by this sudden shutdown, we can successfully migrate your Magento store to Bigcommerce or any other hosted or licensed platform of your choice.

Regardless of which version your store is currently running on, we can easily shift your product inventory along with fully-featured shopping cart to another platform. In case, you are yet to choose as to which eCommerce solution suits you, our migration experts & ecommerce application developers will love to talk & suggest a better option that fits all your selling requirements.