Adobe Business Catalyst™ is reaching the end of its service life.

Eventually the service will be discontinued, forcing those using the platform to migrate whether they want to, or not. On the other hand, the end of Business Catalyst support, planned for March of 2021, gives users enough time to make the choice to migrate before having it forced upon them. 

Adobe will completely stop hosting existing sites still on Business Catalyst on March 26th of  2021. Adobe has cautioned its current customers to download their data and  before inevitably losing their chance to do so by waiting for service to expire. Current Adobe customers website data will be retained by the platform up to March 26, 2021.

However, any data not migrated by this date will face permanent deletion. So even Adobe wants your site to take stock, prioritize your data and make a move to a new platform. Adobe has gone so far as to partner with several entities to offer transition services and solutions. But as with most silver bullet solutions we caution that most of these “download all website data” solutions are plagued with unforeseen difficulties, troubleshooting and bugs. After scanning through just a few of these business catalyst partner websites and their customer forums it’s clear that encountering issues is a common problem.

Well the news here isn’t much better. While Adobe will continue to host data through the end of life, clients will experience a scaling down of the available support and platform maintenance.  Adobe itself states “We will continue to repair critical issues (related to security, payments or customer data for example) when they appear, however, the work will be limited to bugs that have a high security or high stability risk. We will not be fixing minor items with small impact or that have a workaround which can be used.” Boiling down to the fact that all general upkeep and optimization support will be left to users. When asked directly through the integrated support live chat on Adobe Business Catalyst™ support page a grimmer picture emerges.

So what comes next? It’s important to know that this is expected. You can’t grow and improve without some pain. The trick is ensuring that after  that you end up in a better place than the one you’re currently in. To go through moving your site from Adobe Business Catalyst™ to another content management system and without changing anything is missing a major opportunity to optimize content, update branding and visuals as well as critically examine your sites layout to ensure you are putting yourself in the best possible position following migration.

You have four options each more attractive than the previous. First you can do nothing, migrate your data and allow your site to face deletion. Two, you can move your site as it currently exists with an Adobe partner and get minimal if any improvements as you are migrated much in the same state to a new platform while navigating the issues previously mentioned which come with these silver bullet approaches (FTP downloads,  scrapes etc.).

Three, you can attempt to migrate yourself and face the challenges of migrating content to a new platform alone without a trusted and experienced partner with your site's success in mind or fourth you can partner with an agency like Watermark ensuring a tried and true partner will be with you each step of the way committed to your making the migration as easy as possible and that your site is better for having made the leap. We are a boutique full-service advertising agency with experience in web design, web development and fulfilling our clients' desires in combining industry experience with artful execution.

While the process of migrating a website is not without its difficulties, technicalities and intricacies, it’s also coupled with an opportunity to better your online presence, drive traffic to your website, and grow your audience. Watermark has a scaled plan with the singular goal of making your site the best it can be in a timely and efficient manner. today so we can help you with your needs or download our Great Migration pdf above.