This July 28 be ready for the new Magento 2.4 version both in Magento Commerce and Magento Open Source! This big release will deliver to merchants new functionalities and capabilities that will allow them to operate more flexibly with a more powerful and secure platform.
Here is the full detailed information on the release of Magento 2.4:
- Why Upgrade to Magento 2.4?
- Improved Security, Quality & Performance
- Making PWA Development Faster and More Reliable
- New B2B Capabilities in Magento Commerce 2.4
- Inventory Management (MSI) Enhancements
- New Rebuilt Media Gallery for Greater Flexibility in Assets Management
- Additional Q2 Releases
Want to learn about Magento 2.4 in a webinar format? Click here.
1. Why Upgrade to Magento 2.4?
Whatever your business industry or vertical, Magento 2.4 has something that will help your business thrive and streamline your process. Merchants will soon be able to take advantage of numerous capabilities. From creating engaging, content-driven shopping experiences, to benefiting from flexible and improved workflows, here are the main reasons this upgrade is essential for your business.
Security, quality & performance: merchants will maintain high security, ensure long-term compliance, and consistently deliver a great customer experience on the latest technologies with substantial performance improvements.
Streamline B2B purchasing with Magento 2.4 B2B capabilities, merchants can streamline their purchasing workflow and improve their customer service.
Lower cost and time to market for headless and PWA storefronts: with expanded GraphQL coverage, updated Venia styling, robust cart, and checkout workflow, merchants can reach shoppers on all digital touchpoints and perform great headless e-commerce experiences.
Manage assets faster and more easily: with improved search, filtering, access control, and licensing in the completely rebuild Media Gallery.
Improve conversion rates and reduce cart abandonment: with improved checkout options from BOPIS fulfillment using Inventory Management and support for alternate payment methods like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Venmo via the Braintree VBE.
To help you better compare Magento Commerce 2.4 benefits VS. earlier versions, you can take a look at this table of all the available features on each respective Magento versions.
2. Improved Security, Quality & Performance
The Magento 2.4 release brings with it many dramatic improvements in the aspects of security, platform quality, and performance.
Security
- Two-factor authentication will now be required for all Magento admins
- Updated components like MySQL, Maria DB, and the Laminas Project to the latest, most secure versions and libraries
- They will be shipping more than 30 security fixes and improvements
Platform Quality
- They introduced the new Composer Updated Plugin that will make upgrades safer, more automated
- Expansion of GraphQL API
- Support for the latest versions of tech stack components like Elasticsearch 7 and PHP 7.4 to ensure long-term compliance and improve performance
Performance & Scale
- Redis optimizations provide greater scalability and ability to serve high traffic volumes without the performance degradation by making the cache runs twice as fast
- Page loads up to 43% faster at high traffic volumes
- B2B module improvements: up to 50% faster re-ordering for large orders, up to 30% faster quick order add-to-cart functionality
- Adding configurable products to cart is 11% faster
3. Making PWA Development Faster and More Reliable
With Magento 2.4, the PWA studio team will be releasing their latest version: PWA Studio 7.0.0. Features include:
- New Venia landing page built with Page Builder content types for faster implementations
- Updated experience with a more robust, complete cart and checkout workflow
- New extensibility framework makes it easier to customize and extend the capabilities of PWA Studio
4. New B2B Capabilities in Magento Commerce 2.4
Magento is doubling down on the B2B commerce module by adding new capabilities focused on B2B businesses’ critical needs: spending control, sales & customer service, and performance & efficiency.
Spending Control
The 2.4 release empowers buyers to create a personalized approval workflow. New features will:
- Empower buyers to create customized approval rules
- Streamline purchasing with an automated approval process
- Provide purchase order transparency to buyers
- Ensure quotes are approved too
- Assign approval permissions to each company role
- Be compatible with any offline payment method
- Have a responsive design
Seller assisted shopping
This new capability will benefit all customers on Magento, both in the Commerce and Open Source version. It will offer exceptional service with seller-assisted shopping that allows the customer service department to manage orders directly, create quotes, troubleshoot issues, and more.
Accelerate B2B purchasing
Magento 2.4 will boost B2B purchasing efficiency by making it easier for buyers to find previous orders with new search functionality. Buyers will now be able to search and filter by SKU or product name, order or invoice number, person who created the order, order status, and date or value range.
5. Inventory Management (MSI) Enhancements
The Magento 2.4 release will be expanding its core capabilities to manage inventory and multiple locations to provide shoppers with more choices in the purchasing process, such as in-store pickups. This upgrade will allow more flexible omnichannel fulfillment options in a much needed COVID-19 era.
Buy online and pick up in-store (BOPIS)
- Easily set which locations are eligible for pickup in admin settings
- Store attributes such as hours can be shown on storefront
- Shoppers can select pickup location during the checkout
- Email notification to customer when orders are ready for pickup
Additional Inventory Management updates
- Support for bundled products with multiple inventory sources
- Performance improvements to page load time
6. New Rebuilt Media Gallery for Greater Flexibility in Assets Management
With the new 2.4 release, expect to save time and resources with a completely new and rebuilt Media Gallery. With the next generation of Adobe Stock management, it will provide greater flexibility for assets management in Magento.
Streamlined access to Media Gallery
- Access to Media Gallery from Admin navigation
- Merchants can now provide creative stakeholders, such as designers and external agencies, with direct, controlled access to the Media Gallery without worrying, giving access to their full Magento.
Faster search and easier asset management
- Return search and filtering results exponentially faster (>10x)
- Search and filter images based on new image details
- See how often and on what type of content an image is used
Improved Adobe Stock Workflows
- Search, preview and license Adobe Stock images from Media Gallery
- Augment image details with attributes and tags from Adobe Stock
- Filter on Adobe Stock attributes, including licensing status
New Media Gallery – Things to know
- The new Media Gallery has been rebuilt and is a separate module from the ”old” or current Media Gallery
- The integrations that interact with the current Media Gallery will need to be updated to add compatibility with the new Media Gallery
- In 2.4 the new Media Gallery will be on by default, but the current Media Gallery will remain available
7. Additional Q2 Releases
In addition to their core commerce new features, the Magento 2.4 release will update those following components.
Product recommendations powered by Adobe Sensei
This function is now fully integrated with Page Builder which provides an even more streamlined workflow with:
- Drag & drop recommendations onto pages when using Page Builder
- Add recommendations to additional entity types
- Display recommendations to specific customer segments
- Place recommendations on individual product pages
- Add styling elements and customize headings
Improved Cloud Developer experience and scalability
Magento 2.4 will see improvements in its cloud infrastructure.
Addition of Microsoft Azure Cloud
- Available now for both commercial and enterprise segments
- One-stop-shop for customers seeking a multi-cloud solution
- Solution at par with AWS – identical architecture, performance and scalability
- Identical pricing and SLA contract
Enhanced Integration Environment
- Developers use the Integration environment to develop, deploy and test
- Small and designed for specific purposes
- PRO customers get two large integration environments with 4 times performance
- SKU’s for new cloud and Managed Services customers
Split Architecture
- Infrastructure to support large merchants and traffic spikes during seasonal demand
- Scale web tier horizontally to handle increased web traffic
- Scale core services (database, cache) vertically to minimize latency
- Maintain steady, predictable performance and offer a responsive shopping experience
Securing logins with two-factor authentication (2FA)
The Magento 2.4 release will provide an extra layer of authentication with the upgrade of their 2FA by:
- Making the Admin and other login portals more secure
- Reducing the attack surface for skimming attacks
- Decreasing operational costs associated with security incidents
2FA will be implemented throughout Magento on the Magento.com Account, on the Cloud Admin, and the Store Admin.
Migrating Braintree payments integration to Vendor Bundled Extension
The core Braintree payments integration has been migrated to become a Vendor Bundled Extension. Merchants using the core Braintree integration automatically migrate to Braintree VBE when upgrading to Magento 2.4. This change will allow the following:
- Boost conversion rates with new capabilities. Merchants will retain all the functionality of the core Braintree integration while adding capabilities that encourage conversions support for new payment options like Venmo, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.
- Stay current with regular, frequent updates. Becoming a VBE enables Braintree to deliver more frequent, independent updates to regularly add new functionality, quality, and performance improvements, and ensure long-term PCI/PSD2 compliance.
We Are Magento Certified Partners
As a Magento Solutions Partner, we can help your business make a seamless upgrade to Magento 2.4 to stay ahead of the game and benefit from the latest technology.
Whether you’re looking for an update or to re-platform, we offer a full range of Magento services to meet your needs. Contact us to book your free one-on-one consultation today.