Yellow.ua: Magento 1 to OpenMage 19 Case Study | StageM
Yellow.ua is a Ukrainian electronics and appliances retailer — Apple, Samsung, Dyson, plus the full range of smartphones, laptops, TVs, and home appliances. Dnipro-based with a physical showroom in DELMAR MALL and operations across Kyiv. 6,000+ products in catalog. Credit, installment, bank transfer, cash on delivery, and a crypto (USDT) payment option that's still rare in Ukrainian retail. We've been Yellow.ua's Magento partner since 2023. The platform runs on Magento 1.9.4.5 — a deliberate technical choice, not a default. The store is heavily customized, working reliably, and serves customers daily. A Magento 2 migration would mean rebuilding a complex platform that already does what the business needs. Instead, we upgraded Yellow.ua to OpenMage 19, the community-maintained Magento 1 fork with active security patches, and operate ongoing maintenance, custom development, and integration work as the platform continues to serve the business.
The challenge
Yellow.ua is the case study that contradicts a default assumption in the Magento agency space: every Magento 1 store needs to be migrated to Magento 2 eventually.
In some cases, that's true. In Yellow.ua's case, it isn't.
The store is a 6,000-product Ukrainian electronics retailer running on Magento 1.9.4.5 — the final version of Magento 1 before Adobe's end-of-life. Over years of development, it accumulated extensive customization: custom checkout flow, custom catalog logic, payment integrations including the cash-on-delivery and bank-transfer workflows Ukrainian retail expects, courier delivery for Kyiv and Dnipro, Nova Poshta integration for the rest of Ukraine, and a USDT cryptocurrency payment integration with cashback — a feature still rare in Ukrainian eCommerce.
By 2023, the standard agency playbook would have said: rebuild on Magento 2.
The honest assessment said something different. Migrating a heavily-customized 6,000-product Magento 1.9 store to Magento 2 would mean a six-figure migration project, six to twelve months of development, and a meaningful risk of breaking workflows that currently work reliably daily. All to land on a platform that — for Yellow.ua's specific scale, customization profile, and operational reality — wouldn't deliver proportional value.
The real question was simpler: how do we keep this Magento 1 store secure, performant, and supportable for as long as the business chooses to stay on it?
Adobe officially ended Magento 1 support in June 2020. That meant no more official security patches, no more Adobe-led platform fixes, and a steadily-growing gap between the supported Magento 2 ecosystem and the Magento 1 stores still running production businesses. For most Magento 1 stores, that's the end of the road.
Yellow.ua needed an agency that knew the alternative path: continued operation on Magento 1, supported by the OpenMage community fork — a Magento 1 codebase actively maintained by the open-source community with security patches and modern compatibility updates that Adobe stopped shipping.
That's where StageM came in.
The solution
Our partnership with Yellow.ua spans 2023–2025 of active development and continues today as an ongoing support engagement. The work split into four phases — though the rhythm is closer to a long partnership than a fixed project.
Phase 1 — Audit, Stabilization & Strategic Decision (2023)
The engagement began with a strategic audit — not "how do we migrate Yellow.ua to Magento 2," but "what's the right long-term platform direction for this specific business?"
We examined:
Customization depth — how much custom code lived in the codebase, how much would survive a migration cleanly, how much would need a rebuild
Business model fit — does Magento 2 offer features Yellow.ua actually needs that Magento 1 doesn't deliver?
Risk profile — what's the security exposure of staying on Magento 1.9.4.5 vs. the operational risk of migrating?
Cost reality — what would the total cost of ownership look like over 2-3 years for each option?
The honest answer for Yellow.ua: stay on Magento 1, upgrade to OpenMage for active community security support, and invest the saved budget into operational improvements and custom feature development.
Stabilization work that first phase:
Full technical audit — Magento 1.9.4.5 version state, server config, log analysis, module inventory
Caching baseline — Redis configured for sessions and backend cache
Image optimization, lazy loading, frontend performance improvements
Security baseline — 2FA for admin accounts, automated tested backups, basic Content Security Policy
Custom code review for the major customization areas (custom checkout, catalog logic, payment integrations)
Phase 2 — OpenMage 19 Upgrade (2023–2024)
OpenMage is a community-maintained fork of Magento 1, supported by an active open-source community after Adobe officially ended Magento 1 support in June 2020. OpenMage continues delivering security patches, PHP compatibility improvements (PHP 7.4 and 8.x support), and modern infrastructure compatibility that Adobe stopped shipping.
For a Magento 1 store that intends to remain on Magento 1 architecture, OpenMage is the only credible long-term path. We delivered Yellow.ua's upgrade to OpenMage 19 (the LTS line, currently the most stable production-grade OpenMage release).
The upgrade scope:
Codebase migration from official Magento 1.9.4.5 to OpenMage 19 — file-level replacement of core files, custom module compatibility verified across the codebase
PHP compatibility validation — OpenMage 19 supports modern PHP versions; we verified compatibility for the runtime Yellow.ua was running
Module compatibility audit — every third-party and custom module verified against OpenMage 19's modified core
Security patch alignment — patches that OpenMage shipped post-Adobe-EOL applied to Yellow.ua's codebase
Testing cycles — multiple staging cycles validating the upgrade against production data before the live cutover
Custom checkout preservation — Yellow.ua's custom checkout, payment, and delivery workflows survived the upgrade intact
After Phase 2, Yellow.ua runs on actively-maintained code with security patches still arriving — the operational risk of being on a legacy platform meaningfully reduced.
Phase 3 — Custom Development & Integrations (2023–2025)
Beyond the OpenMage upgrade, the partnership across 2023–2025 covered the standard ongoing development a 6,000-product retailer needs:
Custom checkout — Yellow.ua's checkout is one of the customizations that survived through the OpenMage upgrade. It supports the full Ukrainian retail buyer journey:
Single-page checkout optimized for mobile
Multi-method delivery selection (showroom pickup in Dnipro, Nova Poshta to any branch, own-courier delivery for Kyiv and Dnipro addresses)
Multi-method payment with conditional logic per payment type
Payment integrations:
Cash on delivery — still the dominant payment method in Ukrainian eCommerce
Bank transfer (Р/С) — for B2B-style invoiced purchases
USDT cryptocurrency payment — Tether USDT with cashback for crypto buyers, a payment method still rare in Ukrainian retail. The integration handles wallet verification, transaction confirmation, and exchange rate display in UAH
Credit / installment options — partner-bank financing for higher-ticket purchases (laptops, TVs, appliances)
Delivery integrations:
Nova Poshta — Ukraine's dominant parcel courier, integrated for nationwide delivery to branch offices
Own courier fleet — Yellow.ua operates direct delivery for Kyiv and Dnipro orders, with address-aware routing
Catalog operations:
6,000+ product catalog across electronics and appliances verticals
Multi-language storefront (Ukrainian + Russian) with full translation coverage
Product attribute management for technical specifications across the catalog
Search and faceted filtering for the buyer flows electronics customers actually use
Phase 4 — Ongoing Support (2025–Present)
By 2025, the major upgrade and development work transitioned into ongoing support mode. Yellow.ua reaches out for occasional engagements: targeted custom features, integration adjustments, performance refinements, support response when something needs attention.
This is what a healthy long-term Magento partnership looks like once the heavy lift is done — light, responsive, available when needed, not engineering work for engineering's sake.
Key Deliverables
Magento 1.9.4.5 → OpenMage 19 LTS upgrade (community-maintained Magento 1 fork)
Strategic platform direction audit — informed decision to stay on Magento 1 architecture rather than migrate to Magento 2
Custom checkout module maintained and enhanced through upgrade
6,000+ product catalog maintained across electronics and appliances
Multi-method payment integration: cash on delivery, bank transfer, USDT cryptocurrency with cashback, credit/installment partner financing
Multi-method delivery integration: Nova Poshta nationwide, own courier fleet for Kyiv/Dnipro, in-store pickup at Dnipro DELMAR MALL showroom
Bilingual storefront (Ukrainian + Russian)
Security baseline: 2FA, automated tested backups, CSP, ongoing patch coverage via OpenMage community
Performance optimization: Redis caching, image optimization, lazy loading
Custom module preservation through the OpenMage upgrade
Ongoing support partnership (2023–present)
Results
Yellow.ua continues operating on its upgraded platform — Magento 1 by deliberate choice, OpenMage 19 for active security support, custom workflows intact.
Strategic outcomes:
Migration cost avoided — Yellow.ua continues operating on a stable, customized platform rather than absorbing the six-figure cost and six-to-twelve-month risk of a Magento 2 rebuild that wouldn't have delivered proportional business value
Security posture maintained — OpenMage 19's active community security patches keep the platform protected long after Adobe's Magento 1 EOL in June 2020
Custom workflows preserved — checkout, payment integrations, delivery logic, multi-language storefront, and the USDT cryptocurrency option all survived the upgrade intact
Long-term partnership — engagement model transitioned smoothly from active development (2023–2025) to ongoing support, with the platform stable enough that the business owns its operational priorities, not its platform
Platform reality:
6,000+ products in production
Multi-channel delivery operational (Nova Poshta + own courier + in-store pickup)
Four active payment methods including USDT crypto
Bilingual storefront serving Ukrainian customers
For a business where the platform serves the business — not the other way around — that's the result that matters.
Technologies & Tools
Magento 1.9.4.5 → OpenMage 19 LTS (community-maintained Magento 1 fork)
PHP 7.4 / 8.x (OpenMage compatibility)
MySQL / MariaDB
Redis (session & cache)
Custom Magento 1 modules: custom checkout, USDT cryptocurrency payment integration, multi-method delivery routing
Payment integrations: cash on delivery, bank transfer, USDT Tether crypto, credit/installment partner financing
Delivery integrations: Nova Poshta, own courier fleet (Kyiv/Dnipro), in-store pickup
Bilingual setup (Ukrainian + Russian)
WebP image optimization, lazy loading
2FA + automated tested backups + CSP security baseline
Ongoing OpenMage community patch coverage
Related Reading
This project illustrates a methodology principle we cover in our framework:
→ How to Rescue a Magento 2 Store Without Rebuilding It — the same "rescue, don't rebuild" thinking applied to a Magento 1 store