Magento 2 is complete trash, stay away at all costs

[jonnystark_jonn]

Magento 2 is complete nightmare garbage to work with. I regret spending over a year trying to get this platform to work. And I didn't really do anything fancy. I basically modified the basic theme with some CSS, installed a few extension from reputable extension providers (maybe like 5 in total), and that is about it. And the store still does not work properly.

I've submitted over 30 confirmed core bugs on the M2 github in 2019. And these are breaking bugs that renders the store unusable. Things such as not being able to checkout or manage your orders.

Some highlights of M2 development:

- You fix 2 bugs and another one creeps up from nowhere

- Random bugs out of nowhere

- Breaking changes when upgrading minor versions (for example 2.3.1 to 2.3.3) breaks entire store

- Overcomplicated and **bleep**ty XML layout system

- Slow, slow, slow. You need to optimize performance a lot to get a decent loadtime of ~1 second (lol)

- Each upgrade brings new breaking bugs that make your store not work

- Upgraded your store to from 2.3.x to 2.3.3? That sucks bro, now your order emails don't work because they introduced breaking changes to SMTP

- Do you like bundled core modules that you will never use? Magento 2 has a lot of them. Enjoy spending 10 hours trying to uninstall them.

[NerdLancer]

[[ post deleted, took a breath, realised I'm being a tool ]]

[travis_detert]

No, your assessment is 100% spot on.  The current build I'm dealing with has different issues in different environments with the same codebase.  I don't know how you'd even go about creating an application with as many issues as this concentrated garbage.

[rafaelsolorzano]

I agree 100%

[Anonymous]

Yes, I agree If you are looking for a platform Skip Magento please.

Magento is for experts, Magento is testing, Test Test Test. Even if you think everything is fine most of the time it is not. Debug and test all functionality on daily bases is key.

This should not be necessary with stable software at all.

Experience

Version upgrades are Breaking things.

URL Rewrites are breaking occasionally.

Which platform has no Mail functionality by default, yes you need a extension to get it work.

This was not the case in early versions of magento.

A lot of software you not need is preinstalled.

Bugs that are resolved in version 1.x.x we see back in the 2.x.x versions.

Extensions are walking behind version upgrades of Magento. Even expansive payed extensions.

A lot of third party extensions have bugs.

Magento search is not working out of the box (clean magento install)

Magento needs to be optimized a lot to get decent load times.

Experience is needed on several parts like Content Security policy and CORS origin source sharing if you plan a multi store.

Multi store fro translations is a pain to setup.

And more and more.

Do not forget the Magento Expert Developer

If you are not a programmer, you always need one no matter what. They call themselves developers. Nice term, sounds important, sounds skilled but mark my words.

There is a handful of good ones, the most will drain your money and do not what you ask for. Magento is a money drain for Developers. It keeps flowing from there ignorant customers. And they sleep very well every day on there well financed beds by the ignorant. They do not care about your success do not be airfreight. I have Trusted a lot of these so called developers and ended op miserable with big bills and a lot of tickets unanswered. This is why they advise you to use magento. So Also Watch out for the ones with these awful ticket systems. It can be used to Drain your bank account empty.

For the beginners if you want magento No mater what:

Experience is key, lessons are to be learned. Do not make Magento your hard experience and (expansive) lesson. Before you start. Download the latest version of magento 2 with sample data and go for it. Setup a test environment and start building a simple site with a free theme install a free payment extension and shipping extension.

You can use for example Wamp or Xamp but there are other solutions.

This manuall is old but it still works.

https://docs.moodle.org/34/en/Manual_install_on_Windows_7_with_Apache_and_MySQL

I was advised to go with magento platform. I regret it every single day. But for me there is no way back because of the costs it brings with it to go to another platform.

Investigate before you start yourself do not Take any advice for granted.

[KnittyNoddy]

@Anonymousif you had the luxury to go with a different platform now, which one would you chose?

[smells_like_wee]

I can only agree 100% that Magento 2 including 2.4 is without exception the biggest steaming pile of crap you could ever have the misfortune of working with!

To give some personal background I have been an IT department manager and 3rd line support engineer for a number of years so know my way round PC's, Macs networks etc and am a trained filemaker developer. I can build you anything from a gaming pc to a bunch of servers, an entire network to a fully relational customer management database. I don't claim to be an expert but having performed these duties for some very large companies I consider myself reasonably technically savvy.

I have also built my own ecommerce store out on some 4 different platforms over the years including Magento 1 which has been in use and has run reliably for several years with no great issues and with a few extensions. So I'm no stranger to this side of things either.

The only reason I went for Magento 2 was purely as I thought that it would be a simpler upgrade process than migrating to another vendors product and want to retain all the historical customer data, logins and orders.

But oh boy Magento 2 is the king of turds alright. I had to change servers and then change numerous server configurations just to get the base package working. I mean good luck just installing the thing. And then they simply go and release an update that then breaks core functionality, (say hello to elastisearch, and docker containers oh and a whole raft of incompatibility issues). The problems just go on and on, issues with themes, even supposedly premium ones. Issues with just about every extension. Compatibility issues with different extensions. Issues with composer dependencies so you can't update the extensions because of another extension. Update one extension and a different one falls over.

There is no end, even things that you think you fixed come back to haunt you later on. 

I have had issues with migration, and then employed not one but two companies to migrate magento 1 data, and guess what there are still issues with that. 

Issues with data corruption or some other problem, previously fine products that have been edited in M2, now won't save or data that has been entered is no longer there.

I have also employed the help of two different "professional magento developers" and can't say they have done any better, in fact I have watched them equally go round and round with problems until I have had to interject and stop them, and fix the issues myself. 

The interface for CMS is like something from the early 90's and the installer is straight from the early 80's! 

I literally started this project in June and now come October I am still not able to launch the M2 site to the public and am still going round in circles fighting bugs and basic functionality issues, like the latest is customer can't login / google capatcha simply doesn't seem to function... I have zero confidence in M2, even if I get this to the point of release that it will be a robust enough platform to even keep working. And even if I could get this to 100% its still pig slow, full of bloatware and unlike the days of a robust M1 community, is now owned by Adobe who I expect will move Magento to a service / subscription platform. 

I don't know who the target market is for Magento 2, its certainly too difficult and complex for small and even mid sized retailers. They seem to be chasing large corporate customers, who I don't think would touch it or who would have a bespoke system developed anyway.. 

As a platform Magento 2 is awful in every respect, as the OP said honestly do yourself a favor and avoid it or go and do something more productive like bash your head on the wall for a few days... As if you go down the M2 route I guarantee thats what youll feel like doing after a few days or weeks!

[anim8design]

100% agree, what a pile of crap & they wonder why people are not upgrading from 1.

Half the time I can't even get the sites to upgrade to the latest crap STABLE version.

If I do manage then its a case of what did it break this time.

Clean install's are no better 2.4.0 doesn't allow me to use special characters for the database during setup & 2.4.1 gives me a malware warning when its de-compressing & no one in Adobe seems to give a crap.

We are in the process of having to have modules custom built for M2 because no one that did them for M1 have managed to get them working on M2 & we are over 18 months into the process & no where near getting it to work properly.

[tommygunner]

You may want to try the openmage.org fork for the 1.X magento version.

I've played around with Shuup and saleor.io, both are Python based shopping carts that I would say are easier to install than Magento 2. They do lack some of the Magento extensions and functionality but are almost there.

[benjamin_demay]

100% agree ! 

With my Dev team, we have made the choice to change for Sylius a real complete and clear symfony based e-commerce framework with VueStorefront. We just start the project, but development time is just 100 times more easy and speedly. 
just 2 years lost with magento. We are bored to always wait the next release with the hope of fixed bugs.