Modernizing a legacy Magento store in just 3.5 months

About the project

Kinetics already had a Magento store in place, but it struggled to support a growing, multi-market business. The platform was built by a previous agency and carried significant technical debt: circular dependencies, broken CMS pages, placeholder content, and incomplete integrations, including a missing UK VAT validation.

Where Magebit came in was to take over, stabilize, and rebuild this system. The team resolved core architectural issues, completed critical integrations, and upgraded the platform to a modern, scalable Magento setup ready for relaunch.

Client challenges

Taking over and rebuilding a multi-market B2B and B2C store brought a specific set of challenges:

1. Upgrade Magento without breaking existing functionality
2. Resolve technical debt from a fragmented legacy codebase
3. Support multi-store, multi-language operations
4. Enable both professional (B2B) and consumer (B2C) journeys
5. Complete missing integrations, including VAT validation for the UK
6. Migrate business-critical data accurately
7. Handle country-specific shipping rules
8. Deliver a controlled, risk-free go-live

The role of Magebit
^{Where digital magic comes to life}

In just 3.5 months, Magebit turned an unstable Magento store into a production-ready platform, rebuilt, upgraded, and launched across multiple markets without disruption.

• Replacing legacy Magento with a faster frontend 
  Magebit upgraded the platform to Magento 2.4.7-p and rebuilt the frontend using Hyvä, replacing heavy, outdated frontend layers with a lightweight architecture. This resulted in faster load times, improved Core Web Vitals, and a cleaner, more responsive website experience.‍
• Killing technical debt at the core 
  The inherited codebase introduced circular dependencies, broken CMS components, and incomplete integrations. Magebit restructured the system at its core by resolving architectural issues, restoring functionality, and closing critical gaps, such as UK VAT validation via HMRC. We also replaced the previous shipping setup with a full DHL integration.‍
• Structuring multi-market commerce
  Magebit implemented PRO customer registration with EU and UK VAT validation to support multi-market B2B and B2C commerce. We also built an HMRC VAT API integration from scratch. This is a complex post-Brexit requirement that many agencies aren't well-versed in.‍
• Delivering a controlled, production-ready launch
  Magebit executed a full data migration across products, customers, orders, and content while integrating 17 external systems. The platform launched across 5+ localized storefronts (Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, the UK, and International) in four languages.
  
  Through dry runs and testing, the go-live was completed without critical disruptions, followed by Core Web Vitals optimizations to improve speed and responsiveness.