21st February, 2020
A year ago we were very excited to announce that Foster Made acquired Expresso Store and, along with that, our anticipation for developing a roadmap to make continued advancements to the product. In the months that followed, we made some key improvements to get Store up-to-speed and meet pressing technology requirements (including PSD 2 and SCA). All considered, it is with mixed feelings that we are announcing the plan for Expresso Store’s end-of-life and end-of-support while also being excited to announce that we are in the initial stages of executing a much larger plan with CartThrob.
TL;DR
We’re doubling down on CartThrob; here are the key dates for Store’s end-of-life.
| March 1, 2020 | Active development of Expresso Store will terminate. |
| May 1, 2020 | Licenses for Expresso Store will no longer be available for purchase. |
| Dec 31, 2020 | Expresso Store bug fix support ends. |
How we got here
When we took over both Expresso Store and CartThrob from Happy Cog over a year ago, we did so with the belief that the ExpressionEngine market would benefit from the continued support of multiple major commerce products. At the time, product sales were split roughly 50/50 between the two platforms, and we had no intention of shutting either platform down. We had visions for both products, and saw a way that both could continue to coexist in the marketplace.
While we still believe that the ExpressionEngine market can and should support multiple commerce products, it has become clear to us over the last 14 months that the investment required to advance and support both products in a way that the community desires, and deserves, is not one that we can sustain for both products simultaneously. Because of that, we do not believe that it is beneficial to customers, and the broader EE market, if we divide our attention to push two products forward.
Ending a product is a hard decision to make. We’re aware of many of the reasons that Expresso Store users chose Store over CartThrob. However, we’ve developed a clear sense of where we want CartThrob to go, and we believe we can make CartThrob a product that shines for both CartThrob’s audience as well as Store’s. We’re really excited about the plans we have in the works — to improve, grow, and support CartThrob in a way we haven’t seen done before. Stay tuned as we’ll be sharing more about all that in the near future (and sign up for CartThrob’s newsletter if you want to be in the loop).
What does this mean for Store customers now?
There are a number of unique scenarios. Here are a few.
As you make your decisions, please note one more very important consideration — ExpressionEngine 6 will be coming out soon. We don’t know the full extent of changes that EE6 will entail, but if there are major changes that affect Store, we will not be updating Store to work with EE6.
But, why? Where do I go from here?
We understand this can be hard news to hear. Especially if you’re a loyal Expresso Store customer or if you were excited about the future of Expresso Store after it changed hands or even if you’re just a member of the EE community who wants to see a more vibrant commerce add-on market. We hear you.
We’re looking on the bright side of things from our end, and we hope you can join us. We’re excited about continuing to support the EE community by meeting robust commerce needs for ExpressionEngine through CartThrob. We’re working on improving CartThrob to be the best dang version of itself, and then some. So yes, this is the beginning of the end for Expresso Store, but to quote some late 90’s wisdom, “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” We’re ready to welcome this new beginning.