Can I upgrade from eZ Platform to Ibexa DXP?

With the launch of Ibexa DXP v3.2, eZ Platform v3.1 is the last version of eZ Platform to exist. The question for many is can you upgrade from eZ Platform to Ibexa DXP and how much work is it. As the version numbers of the releases suggest, the new set of products built on the Ibexa DXP technology are an evolution, not a revolution.

Upgrading from eZ Platform to Ibexa Content, Ibexa Experience or Ibexa Commerce can be very straightforward or quite tricky. This depends on the versions and the complexity of your project implementation. On a very high level the core features (content repository, siteaccesses, permissions…) of eZ Platform have been stable from v1.0, but in the details there have been significant changes from version 1.x to 3.x.

If you've started development (or upgraded to) on eZ Platform 3.0 or later the upgrade is trivial. eZ Platform 3.x and Ibexa DXP 3.x both run on the Symfony 5.x framework, so there have been no breaking changes at this level. And newer DXP features (like site factory, page builder and form builder) have also been stabilized by the time for the release of Ibexa DXP 3.2. Upgrading from 3.2 to 3.3 (LTS) should be easy as well, and from there on patch releases (v3.3.x) will be just low-risk bug fixing updates until you upgrade to a new major version: Ibexa DXP v4.x or later

If you're running eZ Platform 2.5 (the supported LTS release) then the migration can be a bit more laborsome. This largely because we upgraded from Symfony 3 to Symfony 5 between eZ Platform 2.5 and 3.0. Feature-wise all the features in 2.5 have been mature and are not dramatically different in Ibexa DXP 3.2. You will need port your codebase from Symfony 3.4 to 5.x, but there is great documentation for this and a list of deprecations in eZ Platform 3.0 which is a valuable resource for upgrading.

For customers still on unsupported eZ Platform v1.13 (or older) versions it will likely take quite a bit of work to upgrade. Along the way a lot of things have changed since the release of eZ Platform 1.0 in December 2015. What you should be able to migrate relatively easily is core content (text fields, richtext fields, images, integers, etc.) and Twig template code. What will be more difficult is porting over admin interface customizations, landing pages, static assets, etc. that have gone through major architectural changes through the years. Things are simpler with Ibexa DXP 3.2.

An upgrade from any version of eZ Platform to Ibexa DXP is feasible. For work done on v3.0+ things should be very simple, for v2.5 you will need to do some rework and for v1.0+ implementations you will likely need (or benefit from) a major overhaul of you codebase. This could be a good time for a visual refresh in addition to a technical upgrade. This is similar to if you were to upgrade from eZ Publish to eZ Platform.

With Ibexa DXP you will also need to check which Ibexa product you should upgrade to, but as a rule of thumb users of eZ Platform Enterprise Edition products can upgrade to Ibexa Experience and eZ Commerce users can migrate to Ibexa Commerce. If you are unsure of the amount of work needed or the product you need, do not hesitate to contact our partners or us. We'll help you on your way to Ibexa DXP.