Magento 2.4 vs 2.3 – A Calibrated Comparison

• Support for PHP 7.4 and deprecation of PHP 7.1 and PHP 7.2
• Support for PHPUnit 9.x and deprecation of PHPUnit 6.5
• Elasticsearch 7.6.x– Magento will now be using Elasticsearch 7.6.x as the default catalog search engine. Any installation or upgrade to Magento 2.4.0 will also require the installation of Elasticsearch 7.6.x. Read more about Elasticsearch here.
• MySQL 8.0 support- The most updated version of Magento contains MySQL 8.xsupport known to deliver better performance, security, and reliability.
• Removal of MySQL catalog search engine– Elasticsearch will take the place of MySQL in this version. Installation of Elasticsearch 7.6.x is essential before upgrading the platform to Magento Commerce or Magento Open Source 2.4.0.
• MariaDB 10.4 support - Followed by the support for MySQL 8.0 is MariaDB 10.4. Magento experts suggest that merchants must deploy MariaDB 10.4 for its outstanding performance and trustworthiness.
• Migration of Zend Framework to the Laminas Project
• Decomposition of Magento Controllers
• Removal of the core integration of the Signifyd fraud protection code- Signifyd Fraud & Chargeback Protection extension is the alternative.
• Removal of core Brainee module- Check Braintree Payments to see new features.

• Deprecation of Magento core payment integrations
• Support for partial-word search for Elasticsearch
• PayPal JavaScript SDK upgrade
• Deprecation and removal of the Web Setup Wizard
• Composer update plugin
• Seller-assisted shopping

• Enhancements to customer data section invalidation logic
• Multiple optimizations to Redis performance
• Improved caching of results of SQL queries to inventory tables
• Improvement of up to 25-30% to Quick Order add-to-cart performance

Merchants can now license stock image previews with the new and upgraded media gallery. Unlike Magento 2.3, your efforts with integration in this version will be reduced.

• pickupLocations query backs up the Inventory In-store pickup option.
• categories query can now create a list of categories after applying specific filters.
• After logging in, users can add all previously ordered items into their cart with reorder Items mutation.

Magento 2.4.0 supports PWA Studio 7.0.0. Check this PWA Studio 7.0.0 Release to get through more features. Check the Magento full list of compatibility here.

Magento 2.4 introduces you to the search-friendly interface of the new media gallery. According to Magento, this gallery version is up to 30x faster than its forerunner in terms of searching, filtering, and arranging images. Although, merchants need to know that extensions deployed for the previous version of Media Gallery will not workthe same for this version

• Support for in-store pickup. The inshore-delivery method of Magento 2.4 allows users to select a certain source as a pickup location while checking out.
• Support for bundle products with multi-source mode.

• Admin can now enable JavaScript minificationand preview Email templates (Admin > Marketing > Communications > Email Templates). This fix will remove the empty popup window issue.
• Administrator accounts despite restricted permissions can now access the Admin. The log-in link navigated to a 404 storefront page made it impossible in the last versions.
• Duplicated products will not be attributed as duplicate SEO data (URL key, meta title, meta keywords, and meta description).
• Magento users can delete images created from Admin > Content > Pages >Add New Page resulting no potential errors.

• The Synchronize with Backend configuration setting can be enabled to preventerrors during checkout.
• The checkout flow will also encompass the addition of radio buttons for shipping methods.
• Now merchants can select multiple addresses to ship an order, enable Terms and conditions with the Applied Manually setting and experience the 404 error-free loadings of the order review page in the checkout workflow.
• The price updating process of the cart will also consist of the spinning icon.
• A message about out-of-stock products in mini carts will be sent to the customers before checkout. The Proceed to Checkout button will appear right after the removal of these items.
• This Magento version has customized an informative error message to let customers know when they can or can’t use the Order by SKU option due to corrupted file upload.
• The cart price rules only to child products matching the criteria rules. This is not applicable for the whole products within a bundle.
• Storefront Minicart Section will replace Storefront MiniCart Section in MFTF tests.
• The shipping address form doesn’t have any obscure coded references to the country selector component anymore.
• In Internet Explorer, when the cursor is moved to the Delete icon in the shopping cart, it doesn’t show any underlines.
• When users select the same address for both billing and shipping address, changes in the billing street are not inflicted upon the shipping address.
• The promotion region of the mini cart is changed as requested.

• Users are allowed to modify the name of a tiered product included in a scheduled update without causing any errors.
• Users can save Custom attribute values from the Admin.
• The ‘Recently View Products’ is displayed when Stores > Configurations > Catalog > Recently Viewed/Compared Products > Show for Current is set to store view
• Product images in the mini cart will remain unstretched and unaffected as there is no need to fill the whole image container anymore.
• The getBasePrice function will return a float value instead of a string.
• The product compare feature perfectly shows products according to the current user’s compare list.
• You can assign a default watermark to various themes without any significant error.
• You can edit a configurable product with many subproducts (approximately 5,000) without errors.
• Alphabetical order will now be applied to sort the attribute sets on Admin > Catalog > Products
• The use of invalid prices to filter products on the Category page will not cause any errors now.

• If customers subscribe to newsletters as a guest and then later register for a new account, their subscriptions will remain the same.
• A new PHPSession will be put into use during every password change.
• To associate a customer with a particular website, you can use the Associate to Website dropdown menu on Customers > All Customers > Add new Customer.
• Magento’snew version can automatically update the default billing or shipping addresses in the My Account section.This way, if customers use incorrect payment info and later complete the purchase with proper details, it will not affect the checkout flow.
• By enabling cron and settingUpdate By Schedule for Customer Grid indexer, the import of customer data by the Customer and Addresses (single file) option can be easily achieved.
• Creating a new customer was some chore in the earlier versions even though you enter a valid date. Magento 2.4 has successfully evoked this problem out of the system.
• Withthe default customer group setting, creating a new customer from Admin is simpler than ever.
• When a customer logs out and then logs in again, the PHPSessionId gets changed.
• Every time a customer adds a product to the cart from a non-default website, that product will be shown in the Admin. In previous versions, even the Share customer account to Global setting couldn’t help.
• From the Admin, you will only view the products customers put into their cart. It will not display the entire product list in the catalog.
• the date of birth of a customer can be edited from the Admin without resulting in any technical errors.
• You can now leave the email field empty while placing an order from the Admin.
• In mobile view, from the My Account dashboard, email address values are displayed correctly.
• Even if you click the Create an Account button on the customer registration form 100 times, it will accept the registration request only once.

• An authorization email with the expected RMA status will be shared with the customers when they request a return.
• In case the customers report a forgotten password in multi-site deployments and their accounts are shared globally, they will be able to stay on the current site. The last Magento versionsredirected the users wherever they created their accounts.
• In the order confirmation email, customers will be able to see the list of all ordered items. This feature was not available in the previous form of Magento.

• Category images are now saved in pub/media/catalog/category instead of pub/media/catalog/tmp/category.
• A bigger watermark image overlaying a smaller product image will not overshadow the visibility of the actual product.
• When you save an image to a category from the Admin, there will not be any changes in the image URL and you can access the image even after it.
• png images can be uploaded and displayed properly.
• You can make an image thumbnail by using REST and there will be no errors.
• You can add your own custom attributes to images created byBlock\Product\ImageFactory without much hassle.
• When you view a storefront from an iPhone, the display of the image will be just as per your expectations. Say goodbye to blurry and distorted product pictures.
• When the Magento_blank theme is used, you can now see the default store logo on the storefront.

The website display settings can be customized to display that taxes should be excluded, and the order summary subtotals will not show any excluded taxes. Before Magento 2.4, the defined setting in server variables was used for stores in multiple websites despite the store-level configurations

• The completion of an order will be displayed in the payment system and Magento successfully. The last versions didn’t provide the display settings in Magento.
• Magento now honors a customer’s default shipping address given that the Same As Billing Address setting is enabled by default.
• Now there is an error-proof setting to calculate the refunds for orders with discounts.
• When a new customer creates an order in multi-site deployments, it will be assigned the correct Group ID. Before Magento 2.4, merchants used the default customer group for this task.
• Administrators with restricted permissions can view an order (including invoice and shipments) from the Order pages without any hassle.
• As long as the number of a product added to the cart is higher than half of the existing product stock but lower than the total stock, customers can still proceed with the purchase.
• In case there is just 1 product remained in the stock, you can add that product to the cart from the Admin without errors.
• Instead of a report page, Magento 2.4 will skip the report page and notify with a message when the product admin tries to re-order has the number of characters exceeding the maximum.
• The refactored layout of the Sales order address information edit form will now be similar to the Admin form library conventions.
• The checkboxes will effectively work on the Products section of the Catalog > Categories.
• Re-orders can be disabled as per the merchant’s choice.
• Merchants can successfully change the re-order settings by this config: Admin > Store > Configuration > Sales > Reorder > Allow Order.
• By setting a custom price for an order in the Admin, getPrice() method will not make a return.
• Instead of a status, a state is displayed in the State Code and Title column of Admin > Stores > Settings > Order Status now.
• PDF invoices created in a GB locale will not capture the incorrect date or wrong data anymore.

• Elasticsearch 7.6.x is the new default catalog search engine. The installation of Magento 2.4.0 will initially require the installation of Elasticsearch.
• < and > symbols are properly adjusted in storefront catalog search strings.
• Running cron:run in deployments implementing Elasticsearch will show products in categories.
• A new product attribute can now be easily searched on the storefront without the full search re-index requirement.
• Now you can apply filters for a configurable product without being distracted by the display of out-of-stock items.
• Clicking on the search input box on the mobile view of Safari will not cause the viewport to resize or change in any way.

• The bug in JsFooterPlugin.php spoils the display of dynamic blocks, but it can now be fixed without errors.
• i18n method can help underscore templates by adding a string.
• The refactored section-config module will now control the errors resultedfrom requests from third-party.
• This version has eradicated the LoadCssAsync HTML format errors