Magento 2.4.2 – Endless Digital Business Growth Opportunities

15 Feb 2021

Mike Patel

Magento 2.4.2 – Endless Digital Business Growth Opportunities

Magento store owners and developers eagerly wait for Magento’s quarterly update. And, the first release of 2021 by Magento is all set to cherish users with over 280 new fixes to core code and 35+ security enhancements packed in Magento 2.4.2.

Magento Open Source 2.4.2 not only introduces enhancements to performance and security but also significant platform improvements. The new release offers resolution for 290 GitHub issues by Magento community members and enhancements in GraphQL. Also, all the issues identified in 2.4.1 have been fixed in this version update.

The highlights include:

1) Improved Platform Quality and Performance

Magento Commerce 2.4.2 comes with several improvements in the platform’s quality and performance that offer a better experience to both developer and merchant. Businesses with complex catalogs and multi-store implementations can benefit from increased scalability of improved API performance.

VBE Improvements including Buy Now Pay Later functionality by Braintree, transactional SMS messages via dotdigital, and global shipping support by Vertex’s community codes.

2) Security-only patch

Magento 2.4.2 will allow merchants to install urgent security fixes without implementing other functional fixes and enhancements provided with the release. The security-only patch, patch 2.4.0.12 (Composer package 2.4.1-p1) offers fixes to vulnerabilities identified in Magento 2.4.1.

3) Enhanced B2B Capabilities

Magento 2.4.2 backs up online payment for improving purchase approval experience that previously supported only offline payments. However, merchants now have the flexibility to accept purchasing policies no matter what’s the payment method.

Online payment option at checkout, reminders via emails and onscreen notifications to add payment details.

The latest Magento 2.4.2 also comes with new GraphQL APIs – Company and Requisition Lists supporting important B2B use cases for headless commerce implementations.

4) Better Storefront Performance and Content Management

Introduced first in Magento 2.4, the new Media Gallery now features Image Optimization, which when enabled will allow the use of web-optimized image versions than the full, higher version stored in the gallery.

The new Media Gallery also supports the Access Control List in the Admin to help Merchants in defining user permissions. It will allow designers and/or digital agencies to access the Magento instance and manage assets directly in the system without merchants exposing the data.

Page Builder now offers content previews for mobile and desktop views while reducing the efforts of migrating content to Page Builder and customizing Page Builder CSS.

5) Faster Time to Market and Reduced Total Cost of Ownership

PWA Studio continues to improve time to market and lessen the total cost of ownership for Progressive Web Application (PWA) development. Merchants can leverage the PWA Studio’s multi-language and multi-currency support to easily and promptly launch international websites as high-performing PWAs.

6) In-product Guidance

Magento 2.4.2 brings in the concept of In-product Guidance to offer personalized and scalable in-product experiences for users. The in-product experiences will help to drive awareness for new product features, quickly get new customers onboarded, and enable users to learn high-value or under-used features.

7) Additional Updates and Enhancements

Support for Elasticsearch 7.9.x
Varnish 6.4 compatibility
Redis 6.x is now supported
Compatible with Composer 2.x
Improved quality of framework for Customer Account, CMS, OMS, Import/Export, Cart and Checkout, Targeting, and more.

To conclude, Magento 2.4.2 aims at offering more opportunities for eCommerce store owners to make their store a better and secure place for online shopping. Upgrade your store to Magento 2.4.2 to offer an uninterrupted eCommerce experience to your users.

Mike Patel

Mike Patel is a digital marketing enthusiast, innovator and President of a leading Digital and E-commerce Development Agency in Dallas, Texas. Mike holds a BS, Computer Science degree from Wayne State University and is a key player in the E-commerce development and digital marketing industry since 2004. The scope of technology in his extensive experience of more than 15 years ranges from Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PPC (Pay Per Click) management, E-commerce SEO, Google Shopping Ads and more.