Important Update About Adobe Business Catalyst End of Life
More than two weeks have passed since the End of Life Announcement for Business Catalyst. During this time we have listened to your feedback on a variety of channels in addition to speaking directly with our partners. Two pain points we’ve heard consistently are the timelines for closing down Business Catalyst along with the ability to upgrade trial sites to paid. Recognizing that these are challenges that many partners face, we have decided to modify our plans in order to ease your transition out of the Business Catalyst platform, as follows:
1. We are extending the End of Life timeline from 2 years to 3 years, with the end of life now scheduled for March 26th, 2021. We hope this additional year will give our valued customers and partners sufficient time to move clients to a different platform.
2. We are extending the ability to upgrade trial sites to paid until August 27th, 2019 (was June 18th, 2019). This new date provides you with 5 months past the End of Life Announcement to close all of your on-going projects.
Thank you providing your feedback and insight. We know this is a difficult transition and are committed to help you succeed in the effort to migrate your sites to new platforms.
Adobe Announces the End of Its Business Catalyst CMS
On March 26th, 2018 Adobe announced the end of development for its Business Catalyst content management system (CMS). Existing websites on Adobe Business Catalyst will no longer be hosted by Adobe starting March 26th, 2020. To learn more, visit the Business Catalyst Wikipedia page.
Adobe CMS Discontinued – Impact to Businesses
What Does the Discontinuation of Adobe Business Catalyst Mean for You?
With the discontinuation of Adobe Business Catalyst, Adobe “encourages customers to download their data and migrate to other systems well before March 26th 2020,” after which data will be deleted. In other words, if you haven’t moved your website, it will no longer be visible online.
You must begin the process of moving your website several months ahead of time.
 If your website is currently built using the Adobe Business Catalyst platform, the website will need to be moved. Webolutions Web Design & SEO Company encourages Adobe CMS users to contact their website migration experts to better understand the steps involved to move their website. “In our experience, clients are not fully aware of the time required to move a website from one content management system to another”, said Mike Hanbery, Director of Business Development for Webolutions.
The End of Adobe Content Management System
According to Adobe’s announcement:
Why is Adobe discontinuing Business Catalyst?
“Adobe is committed to delivering exceptional software and services to our customers. It’s in our nature to innovate and try new things, and it was in this spirit that we acquired Business Catalyst in 2009. As we re-focus on products that broadly provide our customers with the most value, we are now announcing the end of life for Business Catalyst. We thank our Business Catalyst users and want to help them make a smooth transition to a third party service.”
Will my site be closed down?
“At this time, all sites will continue to be live, and the public will see no difference in your site. However, starting with March 26th, 2020, all sites will no longer be live and they will not be accessible either to the general public, or to the site administrators. Please find an alternative platform for your site and data before this date.”
Will I still have technical support for Adobe Business Catalyst?
Yes, until March 26th, 2020. Currently, Adobe’s support team will give a higher priority to cases about the off-the-platform migration questions, in addition to critical security, compliance and availability issues.
Adobe Announces Shut-Down of Business Catalyst CMS
With the announcement to close its CMS, a common question customers are asking is “What CMS Should I Move to?” Adobe does not provide any recommendations for its clients. For this reason, Webolutions provides recommendations for moving your Adobe Business Catalyst website to other well-known, easy to use content management systems.
Need to Move Your Adobe Business Catalyst CMS?
Below, you will find alternatives to Business Catalyst.
Top 5 Alternatives to Adobe Business Catalyst
Source: w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all
With close to 2 billion websites online, what website CMS platforms are the most popular? When moving your Adobe website to another CMS, why not start by considering the most popular content management systems? We provide the following list of the most popular Adobe Business Catalyst alternatives.
1. WordPress
WordPress is by far the most popular content management system and accounts for just over 60% of the CMS market. Why is WordPress so popular? WordPress is the top website CMS because of how easy it is to use, and IT’S FREE! Combine ease of use with the ability to add functionality through free and premium WordPress plugins, and you’ve got the perfect combination that warrants this as your next website CMS.
2. Joomla
Joomla was built from the ground up as a CMS and content management is what it does the best. There are hundreds of options and dozens of interface screens to help you create, organize, sort and display content in any number of ways. Additionaly, some systems allow for only one active theme across an entire website, and in many cases this is adequate. Joomla makes it easier to make different templates for different page.
3. Drupal
Another CMS on our Adobe Business Catalyst alternatives is Drupal, an “out of the box” web content management and customizable platform — to help you build the right tool to serve your content management strategy. Business and technology leaders use Drupal to create real-world enterprise solutions that empower web innovation. When assessing Drupal, it’s important to envision your goals and ask “Can Drupal be used to build this?” The answer nearly always is “yes”. Drupal includes native features and module extensions.
4. Shopify
Shopify is a complete commerce platform that lets you start, grow, and manage a business. With Shopify you can create and customize an online store; sell in multiple places, including web, mobile, social media, online marketplaces, brick-and-mortar locations and pop-up shops; and, manage products, inventory, payments, and shipping. Shopify is completely cloud-based and hosted, which means you don’t have to worry about upgrading or maintaining software or web servers. This gives you the flexibility to access and run your business from anywhere with an Internet connection.
5. Squarespace
Squarespace is another popular CMS; however, unlike WordPress it is not free and cannot be hosted on your own server. Squarespace is a website builder, blogging platform and hosting service. This CMS is ideal for those do-it-yourself-ers who don’t have any previous web design or development experience. Similar to WordPress, you can install different themes to help get you started.
Move Your Adobe Business Catalyst Website to WordPress
Our favorite website platform is WordPress because it is intuitive and easy to use. Additionally, when websites are built using Webolutions’ enhanced WordPress CMS, they tend to rank much better than other websites, especially when combined with ongoing search engine optimization.
How Much Will it Cost to Move My Website?
The cost to move a website from Business Catalyst elsewhere depends upon several factors, including the size of the website, its existing functionality and inclusion of any additional design or functional elements.
