Upgrading Adobe Commerce 2.4.4 or Moving to Shopify Before Support Ends
Adobe's regular support for the Adobe Commerce 2.4.4 release line ends on April 12, 2025. If your Magento store runs on it, an upgrade project is coming either way. That makes this a good time to compare an upgrade with a move to Shopify.
Published Jan 22, 2025. Author: Ecomm Guys. 4 min read.
Key Points
- Adobe gives each Adobe Commerce release three years of standard support from its release date.
- Regular support for 2.4.4 ends April 12, 2025, and for 2.4.5 on August 12, 2025.
- Adobe doesn't patch third-party dependencies such as PHP, MySQL, or search engines that reach end of life.
- An upgrade and a replatform both need planning, testing, and budget, so compare them side by side.
- A Shopify migration done well keeps URLs, redirects, and rankings intact.
What Ends on April 12
Adobe's lifecycle policy gives each Adobe Commerce version a three-year standard support window from its general availability date. During that time, Adobe provides quality fixes, security patches, and on-call support. Adobe's released versions page lists April 12, 2025 as the end of regular support for the 2.4.4 release line, and August 12, 2025 for 2.4.5.
Adobe's policy also notes that it doesn't provide fixes for third-party services and software dependencies, such as PHP and MySQL, that reach end of life during a support period. Staying secure means keeping those up to date too.
Adobe updates its lifecycle policy from time to time, including the options for extended support. Check the current policy page and ask your Adobe account team what applies to your licence before you commit to a timeline.
Why This Is a Decision Point
An Adobe Commerce upgrade is rarely a quick patch. Moving up a release line often means updating extensions, custom modules, the theme, and the server stack, then testing everything again. Many merchants we speak with treat it as a project of its own.
If you're going to spend that time and budget anyway, it's worth asking whether the same effort should go into a platform where hosting, security patches, and core upgrades are handled for you. Shopify is a hosted platform, so there's no version to upgrade and no server stack to patch.
How the Two Paths Compare
Neither path is right for every store. Here's how we frame the comparison with Magento merchants.
- If you upgrade, you keep your data model, extensions, and custom code, but you take on the next upgrade cycle and its server stack.
- An upgrade means less change for staff who know the current admin, but the same total cost of ownership questions come back in three years.
- Moving to Shopify removes hosting and version upgrades, but custom features need to be rebuilt as apps, Shopify Functions, or theme code.
- Moving to Shopify needs a careful data migration and redirect plan, which is where most of the risk sits.
- Either way, the project needs testing, a launch plan, and someone who owns the SEO details.
Protecting Rankings in a Migration
The biggest worry we hear about leaving Magento is losing search traffic. It's a fair concern. Magento and Shopify use different URL structures, so product and category URLs almost always change.
A planned migration handles this with a full URL map. Every old product, category, and content URL is matched to its new Shopify URL and set up as a 301 redirect before launch. We also carry over page titles, meta descriptions, and structured content, check that internal links point to the new URLs, and resubmit sitemaps in Search Console on launch day. After launch, we watch crawl errors and rankings closely for the first few weeks and fix anything that slipped through.
Get Two Estimates
Start by confirming which version you run and what support applies to it. Then get two rough estimates: one for an upgrade to a currently supported release, including extensions and testing, and one for a migration to Shopify, including data, design, and redirects. Compare what each option would cost over three years, starting with the first project. Include the cost of hosting, extension licences, and developer time to keep each option secure, since those running costs often decide the answer more than the project itself.
Want a straight comparison for your store? Book a call with our team. We migrate stores to Shopify, and we'll tell you if an upgrade makes more sense.
Sources
- Adobe Commerce lifecycle policy Adobe Experience League
- Released versions Adobe Experience League