Magento maintenance cost in Europe and when to migrate

In short: a Magento store costs hosting, a developer or agency retainer and extension licences every month, plus a version upgrade project every few years, because Adobe ends regular support for each Magento 2.4 release about 3 years after it comes out. Migrating pays off when that monthly total is higher than a hosted platform plan. CloudCart's team moves a Magento 1 or 2 store in up to 45 days.

This guide is for EU sellers on Magento Open Source or Adobe Commerce: what the store really costs, how long your version gets security fixes, and whether to stay or move, including when Magento, Shopify or WooCommerce is the better fit. It is written by the team behind CloudCart, an ecommerce platform used by more than 1,500 stores. Magento facts come from Adobe's documentation, and the migration conditions are on the page about migrating from Magento to CloudCart.

Magento Open Source or Adobe Commerce: what you pay for

Magento Open Source is the edition without a licence fee that you install on your own server, while Adobe Commerce is the paid edition with a licence, support from Adobe and optional hosting in Adobe's cloud. Adobe does not publish a list price for Adobe Commerce: the Adobe Commerce packages and pricing page asks you to request a quote. WooCommerce's own cost comparison estimates Adobe Commerce at $22k to $125k+ a year, a competitor's estimate and not an Adobe price. For both editions, the real cost sits in hosting, people and upgrades.

Criterion	Magento Open Source	Adobe Commerce
Licence	Open source, no licence fee	Paid, price on request from Adobe
Hosting	Your server, your responsibility	Your server or Adobe's cloud
Support from the vendor	None; a developer, an agency or the community helps	Technical support from Adobe

How much does Magento maintenance cost per month?

Magento maintenance cost is the sum of five or six monthly cost lines plus an upgrade project every few years. Agency rates differ a lot between countries, so the accurate figure is in your own invoices for the last 12 months.

Cost line	What it covers	Where to find the amount
Hosting	A server or VPS with dedicated resources, search engine, cache, backups	The monthly invoice from your hosting provider
Maintenance retainer	Agency subscription or developer hours: fixes, monitoring, bugs	The support contract or the timesheet
Extensions	Modules with yearly licences: shipping, invoices, payments, feeds, SEO, filters	Renewals in the Marketplace or with each vendor
Adobe Commerce licence	Only for the paid edition	Your contract with Adobe or its partner
Small changes	A banner, a page, a new checkout field that needs a developer	Development invoices outside the retainer
Version upgrade	Moving to a supported version, with the theme and extensions retested	The quote for your last upgrade, divided by the years between two upgrades

How to calculate your real monthly Magento cost

1. Collect 12 months of invoices. Hosting, agency or developer, extension renewals and every one-off task.
2. Add the upgrade share. If the last version upgrade was one quote and you upgrade every 3 years, add a third of that quote to the yearly total.
3. Add internal time. Your staff's hours on tickets and testing releases, at their hourly cost.
4. Divide by 12. The result is your real monthly Magento cost.
5. Compare with a hosted platform. On a hosted (SaaS) platform, hosting, security, updates and the SSL certificate are part of the plan.

CloudCart plans, billed annually and excluding VAT, are Baby Pack €14, Starter Pack €33, CC Pro €83 and CC Master €249 a month, as listed on the CloudCart pricing page. Each plan has a six-month revenue limit, up to €499,999 on CC Master, and above it the terms are agreed separately. A fair comparison runs over 24 months: your monthly Magento cost times 24, plus any upgrade that falls in that period, against the CloudCart plan times 24.

What hosting and developer does Magento need?

Magento needs its own server with several separate services and a person who keeps them updated. According to Adobe's system requirements, Magento 2.4.8 and 2.4.9 run on PHP, a MySQL or MariaDB database, the OpenSearch search engine, the Valkey cache, the RabbitMQ message queue, Varnish, Composer and the nginx web server.

Adobe supports only the version combinations listed in its tables, so each Magento upgrade can require new versions of PHP, the database or the search engine. The second large cost is the developer: when only one person or agency knows the store's code, every delay on their side stops changes to the store.

Important: ask your agency in writing for the exact Magento version, the list of installed extensions and which extension licences have expired. You need these three answers whether you stay or migrate.

How long does your Magento version get security fixes?

Each Magento 2.4 release gets security fixes only until a fixed end date announced by Adobe. Adobe's official list of release versions sets an end date of regular support for each release line, about 3 years after the release. After that date, the store either runs on unpatched code or needs an upgrade project, usually with the theme and extensions retested.

Version	Released	End of regular support
Magento 1.x	Earlier branch	Ended in June 2020
2.4.0 to 2.4.3	From July 28, 2020	Ended November 28, 2022
2.4.4	April 12, 2022	Ended April 12, 2025
2.4.5	August 9, 2022	Ended August 12, 2025
2.4.6	March 14, 2023	Ended August 11, 2026
2.4.7	April 9, 2024	May 31, 2027
2.4.8	April 8, 2025	May 31, 2028
2.4.9	May 12, 2026	May 31, 2029

Adobe also lists extended support for some release lines, for example 2.4.6 until August 31, 2027 and 2.4.7 until May 31, 2028, and describes the extension as one for Adobe Commerce customers. A Magento Open Source store should plan around the regular support date. Your installed version is shown at the bottom of the Magento admin.

Important: if you run 2.4.6 or older, your next step on Magento is an upgrade project. Put the upgrade quote next to the cost of a migration and compare the two.

When is Magento still the right choice?

Magento is still the right choice when you have your own in-house development team, a process that only works with custom code and a budget for regular upgrades. In these cases a migration brings risk without a clear gain. When maintenance is paid to an outside agency and every change waits in a queue, the numbers usually favour migrating.

Your situation	Recommendation	Why
Magento 1.x, any catalog size	Migrate as soon as possible	No official security fixes since June 2020
Magento 2.4.6 or older, an upgrade is due	Compare the upgrade quote with a migration	Both are projects; only one ends the maintenance bill
Only one developer knows the code	Plan a migration	If that person leaves, nobody knows what the store does
Every banner or price change goes through the agency	Migrate	On a hosted platform you change them yourself in the admin
In-house developers and a unique process in the code	Stay, or analyse first	Check first whether an API covers the process
Supported version, stable store, maintenance below a hosted plan	Stay	There is no technical reason to move

Businesses with an ERP, several markets and B2B price lists should also read the guide to choosing an enterprise ecommerce platform.

Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce or CloudCart: which fits whom?

A merchant leaving Magento usually chooses between a hosted platform (Shopify or CloudCart) and self-hosted WooCommerce. Shopify prices are from Shopify's pricing page in euros (Ireland) and vary by country; WooCommerce figures are from WooCommerce's own cost page.

Criterion	Magento Open Source	Shopify	WooCommerce	CloudCart
Platform price	No licence fee	Basic €24, Grow €69, Advanced €289 a month, billed yearly	No licence fee and no monthly subscription	From €14 a month, billed yearly; €1 a month for the first 3 months
Hosting and updates	Your responsibility	Included	Your responsibility; hosting $25 to $350 a month for most stores, according to WooCommerce	Included
Fee on sales	None	2%, 1% or 0.6% by plan when you use a third-party payment provider	None, only your payment provider's fees	0% on every plan
Extensions	Modules with yearly licences	Apps from the Shopify App Store	$29 to $299 a year per extension, according to WooCommerce	GLS, DHL, VAT by country with OSS, invoices and CloudCart Pay built in

Who should choose which

• Stay on Magento if you have in-house developers, complex custom B2B logic in the code and a version that is still supported.
• Choose Shopify if you sell in many countries and currencies, want the largest app ecosystem and will use Shopify Payments, so the third-party transaction fee of 2%, 1% or 0.6% does not apply.
• Choose WooCommerce if your business runs on a WordPress site with strong content and you have a developer to maintain the hosting, plugins and updates.
• Choose CloudCart if you sell in the EU and want a hosted store with a fixed plan, 0% transaction fees, European couriers and VAT by country built in, and a team that does the migration for you.

The two hosted-versus-self-hosted options are compared in detail in Shopify vs WooCommerce, and the wider European picture is in the guide to the best ecommerce platform for Europe.

What moves from Magento and what does not?

From Magento, the products with variants, images, categories, attributes, customers, articles, Google titles and old URLs all move to CloudCart. The CloudCart team moves the order history, while customer passwords, the theme and the extensions do not move.

Data	How it enters CloudCart	What to know
Configurable and simple products	Magento Importer (Magento 1.x), CSV or XML import, Admin API or our team	Each child simple product of a configurable product becomes a variant in CloudCart
Categories and attributes	Magento Importer or our team	The category tree keeps its hierarchy; properties are created from the attribute sets
Images	Together with the products	They are copied into CloudCart, so the Magento server can be switched off
Customers	Magento Importer, CSV import or our team	Name, email and group move; the old password does not, and the customer sets a new one
Order history	Moved by the CloudCart team	Kept separately with us for reference and accounting; the importer app does not move orders
Old URLs	301 redirects from a CSV file	They work for store pages; PDF files and images do not go through them
Theme and extensions	Do not move	A CloudCart theme and the built-in features replace them

The CSV import takes up to 100 products on Baby Pack, 2,000 on Starter Pack, 7,500 on CC Pro and 10,000 on CC Master. The Admin API is available from Starter Pack up. How to run each import app is explained in the guide to importing from WooCommerce, Shopify and Magento.

How does migration from Magento 1 and Magento 2 work?

The migration path depends on the version. The Magento Importer app in the CloudCart admin connects only to Magento 1.x, because it uses the SOAP v1 API that Magento 2 no longer has. From Magento 2, the CloudCart team migrates through the API or an export, or you move the data yourself from CSV files.

Magento 1.x: Magento Importer step by step

1. Create an API user in Magento. In the Magento 1 admin, create a user with API access and note the username and the API key.
2. Install the app. In CloudCart, open Apps → Magento Importer and install it. The Magento store is only read and nothing in it changes.
3. Enter the access details and choose what to import. The store URL, API username and API key; then everything, products only or customers only, plus the weight unit.
4. Follow the progress. The import runs in the background for 10 minutes to a couple of hours and ends with the number of customers and products created. You can cancel at any time, and what was imported stays.
5. Send the password email. With the option on, every migrated customer gets an email to set a new password.

Important: the app saves all migrated customers without marketing consent. They can log in after the password reset but receive no newsletters until they subscribe again. To keep your subscribers, move the consent list separately, exactly as it was; a customer who unsubscribed gets no marketing email in the new store either.

Magento 2: export or our team

In Magento 2, the standard export is under System → Data Transfer → Export, as CSV files for products and customers, which enter CloudCart through the CSV and customer imports. For a large catalog, several languages or an ERP connection, request the migration from the new store's admin, under Services → Migration.

Magento URLs and 301 redirects

301 redirects keep your Google rankings when every old URL leads to the same page in the new store. Magento URLs often end in .html, and "Use Categories Path for Product URLs" adds the category path, so one product can have several old URLs that each need a redirect.

In CloudCart, redirects are under Marketing → SEO → 301 Redirects: you add them one by one or upload them from a CSV file with two columns. The parameters gclid, fbclid and the main UTM tags pass through the redirect, so Google and Meta ads keep being counted. Google's guide to moving a site with URL changes advises keeping redirects for at least a year. The full 7-stage plan is in the ecommerce replatforming checklist.

Couriers, VAT, payments and ERP after Magento

Magento extensions for shipping, VAT, invoices and payments are code on your server and do not move; in CloudCart these services are built in.

Magento extension	What CloudCart has	More
Couriers	GLS, DHL and DHL Express built in, with live rates in checkout, pickup points and labels from the order; in Bulgaria, for example, also Econt, Speedy and BOX NOW	shipping and couriers
VAT by country	EU VAT rules by geo zone, OSS registration for cross-border B2C sales and the reasons for zero VAT printed on invoices	OSS and EU VAT
Invoices	Invoices and credit notes created from the order	invoices in the store
Card payments	CloudCart Pay with Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay and Google Pay and SEPA payouts, or Stripe, PayPal and Mollie	CloudCart Pay
Inventory, ERP and POS	Ready connections, and for any other system a connection through the API	ERP and POS integration

How stock, prices and orders flow between an ERP and the store is explained in the article on ERP systems for online stores.

Frequently asked questions

Have a question about moving your Magento store? Write to us at support@cloudcart.com.