Magento is one of the world’s most flexible ecommerce platforms. It provides hundreds of thousands of merchants with exciting functionality for their stores, and thousands of extensions to boost performance. For those evaluating different options, a comparison of open-source vs. hosted platforms can be very insightful.
Upon its initial release (nearly a decade ago), this version of the shopping cart was a turning point for the platform. Magento 2.1's features and capabilities, which were significant at its release, impressed many and allowed businesses to drive sales and performance. Moreover, it included numerous bug fixes and several impressive enhancements.
When giving a glance at Magento 2.1 Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE) we can’t but notice that both versions offer amazing functionality improvements. Taking into consideration that EE has some extra features, the CE, in its turn, is not left behind and softly accumulates the best modifications.
Magento 2.1. New Features: CE and EE
Upon its introduction, both Community Edition and Enterprise Edition featured impressive and useful improvements. This included numerous new features, functional fixes and security advances, like Braintree hosted fields, improved management interfaces and PayPal In-context check-out, and some other handy updates.
- Braintree Hosted Fields
- Improved Management Interfaces
- search for customer and order information;
- create new products faster and with minimal effort;
- create new content easily.
- PayPal In-Context Checkout
- allows customer to pay via PayPal without leaving your site;
- saves customer details for future purchases and allows to checkout without re-entering their details.
At the time, Braintree improved its integration with Magento 2.1 and added the support, called ‘Hosted Fields’. This technology helps to collect securely all sensitive payment information in checkout and provides you with full control of layout and check out styles. By the way, these ‘hosted fields’ are invisible to customer and exist insensibly within your HTML.
Upon its release, both Magento EE and Magento CE included this important new feature which streamlines the the search for information in Admin panel. Now you can easily:
PayPal functionality in Magento 2.1 included in-context checkout, a new feature at the time, that aimed to boost conversion rates. This feature:
Due to In-Context Checkout feature your customers will have no need to enter a PayPal ID and password when making future purchases.
Other minor Magento 2.1 new features and improvements for CE and EE:
- You can successfully import and export CSV files with data that contains special symbols (those that are not escaped during file processing).
- There are two new web API endpoints that permit you to process refunds from orders to invoices (you don’t need a patch for that now).
- Large catalogs are processed more swiftly and accurately, a benefit often enhanced by ultimate data migration service packages. When migrating extensive data, a migration preview service can ensure everything is transferred as expected. (now the catalog/product indexer doesn't require a large temporary table memory allocation in MySQL for large catalogs).
As mentioned, both versions of Magento 2.1 offered significant improvements upon their release, but there are some that only EE can boast of. Check out what interesting enhancement it can propose to you.
What about new Magento 2.1 EE impressive features?
- Staging and Preview
- Elasticsearch
- User-friendly dashboards
- it facilitated for you creating and scheduling personalized promotions and combining them easily in more extensive marketing campaigns;
- with this improvement now you could preview changes across the store, including products and checkout pages, from the outset;
- Release of Cloud Edition
- Now there was no need of system administrator assistance between your code and deployment, it was fully automated;
- Cloud Edition plan had eight active environments for development and staging available for free;
- You could also possess many inactive environments if you wanted to;
- Now you were able to increase the amount of memory and CPU;
- Third party plugins and custom scripts - dubious quality; some entities could not be supported; basic technical skills are required;
- Developer hiring - very expensive, but efficient;
- Automated tool usage - easy, save, fast and cheap.
This improvement enables you to stage, schedule, preview and approve different content easily. It also facilitates greatly the task of content management for non tech-savvy user.
It is one of the best search engines that was designed to handle large catalogs. Elasticsearch provides highly relevant results and supports 33 languages out-of-the-box; in Magento 2.1, it replaced Solr.
When Magento 2.1 EE was introduced in the cloud, it aimed to provide entrepreneurs with simplified integration with existing systems, it gave the ability to concentrate on sales and marketing only. Comparing to SaaS commerce, the Cloud Edition reduced a lot expenditure on the deployment and management.
If you decided on Cloud edition, you wouldn't have to deal with infrastructure issues and would have more time for developing your brand, successful marketing strategies, etc.
This was a short review of features, because at the time, Magento 2.1 had much more to offer. Its countless extensions, better performance, and stability were significant reasons to upgrade. For those looking to optimize their current e-commerce operations or planning a platform shift, a clear roadmap for successful re-platforming is essential. You might also find our comprehensive Magento data migration guide helpful for planning your next move.
How to upgrade to Magento 2.1?
Upon its release, there were many ways to upgrade your Magento to Magento 2.1, and here were the most commonly used:
Let’s take a look at the last alternant of upgrading your Magento store to Magento 2.1. using automated tool, e.g Cart2Cart. With this service you can forget about troublesome manual data input, plugins installation and script writing, because all the data you need will be transferred automatically.
Cart2Cart will move your orders, products, customers, attributes, categories and other entities you want from your current Magento to a desired Magento 2.x version automatically. While Magento 2.1 is now an older release, the service supports various Magento 2.x versions for migration.
What you need for that? Nothing troublesome, just follow couple of simple steps and enjoy your store updated to a desired Magento 2.x version (note: Magento 2.1 is an outdated version; migration to the latest Adobe Commerce is generally recommended):
- Register a Cart2Cart account.
- Provide your current Magento store URL and download the Connection bridge.
- Provide your new Adobe Commerce/Magento 2.x store URL and download the Connection Bridge.
- Choose what entities you wish to transfer.
- Set the Free Demo migration.
- Click “Start Migration” to proceed with full data transfer.
Start your Free Demo migration right away! Magento 2.1 was, at the time, a significant advancement for the platform.
Monthly Update – December 2025
As we approach the end of 2025, the e-commerce landscape is increasingly shaped by advanced AI and hyper-personalization. Businesses are now expected to offer seamless, tailored experiences that anticipate customer needs and preferences. This extends beyond product recommendations to dynamic pricing, personalized content delivery, and adaptive user interfaces, all powered by sophisticated machine learning algorithms. The emphasis on ethical AI and data privacy continues to grow, requiring transparent data handling practices and robust security measures to maintain consumer trust. Furthermore, the integration of augmented reality (AR) for virtual try-ons and immersive shopping experiences is becoming more mainstream, transforming how customers interact with products online.
For merchants looking to stay competitive, optimizing for mobile commerce remains paramount, with streamlined one-click checkouts and progressive web apps offering superior performance. Exploring omnichannel strategies that unify online and offline touchpoints is crucial for a consistent brand experience. When planning a platform migration, consider systems that offer deep integration capabilities with AI tools, robust analytics, and a flexible architecture to adapt to future technological shifts. Partnering with experts who understand both current trends and the intricacies of data migration is essential for a successful transition into the new year.
For more details, explore our FAQ section or schedule a call with a migration expert.
