Magento Commerce 2.4 is Here: See the Latest Version 2020

Since its last big upgrade in October 2019, Magento has once again outdone itself with a new update as of July 2020. Magento 2.4.0 embraces important updates to security, giving you access to the most cutting-edge innovations in eCommerce and providing the best for your site.

Magento has proven itself to be the ultimate destination for global B2B and B2C commerce platforms. Over the years, more and more retailers and brands are choosing Magento over other platforms when it comes to leveraging businesses.

Find out more about the Magento 2.4 download requirements and advances which will optimise your business to the fullest, and the further improvements they’ve made to Magento 2.3 with a Security-only patch.

Magento Commerce 2.4 Release Highlights

The Magento Commerce 2.4 release date was July 28th 2020, and brought with it fresh features to enhance the eCommerce platform.

New B2B Capabilities in Magento Commerce

Magento 2.4 introduces amazing new features for B2B businesses:

• Approval workflows that benefit both B2B sellers and B2B buyers

• Re-ordering is 50% faster and ordering is 30% faster

• Quick orders search

• The New Media Gallery saves you time and resources on your creative workflow

Features to enhance B2C experience

• In-Store Pickup function helps to bring back value to physical locations

• Seller Assisted Shopping feature to provide an exceptional experience

• Elasticsearch is now the default search engine and supports partial-word search for better UX

Headless Commerce & PWA

Magento 2.4 supports PWA Studio 7.0.0 with features like:

• Page Builder content types for faster implementations

• Improved experience with a stronger and more complete cart and checkout workflow

• Easy customisations

GraphQL enhancements

A list of enhancements has been made to the GraphQL in the Magento 2.4 release. It comes with advanced features like:

• Inventory In-store Pickup

• Ability to fetch a list of categories that match a specified filter

• Feature to add all the products from a previous order to the cart

Magento 2.4 upgrades

Magento 2.4 introduces PHP 7.4, Elasticsearch 7.6.x, MySQL 8.0, MariaDB 10.4, and Laminas Project support. These support features are to ensure long-term compliance and improved performance.

Performance and Scale

• Multiple Redis optimisations minimise the number of queries performed on every Magento request and improve performance

• 25-30% performance enhancement for Quick Order add to cart

• Improved caching of  SQL query results to inventory tables.

Magento 2.4 Security 

While Magento is a safe platform that hasn’t seen any cyberattacks, they’ve still taken the opportunity to boost their protection by closing remote code execution (RCE) and cross-site scripting (XSS) weaknesses. There are also about 30 other security enhancements, 226 GitHub issues that have been resolved and over a hundred core code fixes.

Other new security features include:

• Enabling obligatory 2-factor authentication (2FA) for Admin accounts and optional 2FA for Magento accounts, plus multi-factor authentication for Cloud SSH access.

• Support for security.txt file

• Default disabling of data rendering for UI data providers to prevent JavaScript malware.

Magento 2.4 Requirements

The new features included in this most recent update mean that you can no longer use MySQL to search. Instead, it uses Elasticsearch, so you will have to download Elasticsearch 7.6.x before you upgrade. For all other capabilities, you are advised to use MySQL 8.x as MySQL 5.6 is no longer supported.

Also, all Magento Marketplace extensions you use with Magento 2.4 must also be compatible with PHP 7.4.x. However, Magento recommends using another version than PHP 7.4.2 because it can cause some error messages in the storefront.

For a more detailed look at all of the changes and fixes, check out the Magento 2.4 release notes.

Magento 2.3.5-p2 Security-Only Patch

At the same time, Magento has also released a Security-Only Patch, Magento 2.3.5-p2, to fix some security and performance issues with the last version of Magento. As always, though, we recommend that you download the most up-to-date version of the programme to stay ahead of the curve.

As Magento’s committed partner, SmartOSC brings you regular updates on all things Magento related. Stay posted for more Magento news, and subscribe to our blog for all the latest movements in the world of eCommerce.

Alternatively, see our website for more details about how Magento can empower your eCommerce sales, or contact us directly for help installing Magento 2.4 and to make Magento work for you.