Somewhere in your building there is a server running Prophet 21 or Kinetic. Somewhere on your roadmap there is a storefront project that keeps sliding to next quarter. In January 2026 Epicor put a date on the first one. The final on-premises feature release for Kinetic, Prophet 21 and BisTrack is 2028.1. After it, new features ship only in the Epicor Cloud.
That date does not make the storefront urgent, and it is not a reason to shelve it either. It changes how you should build it. An integration designed around where your ERP runs today may need rebuilding after the move. One designed around what the ERP exposes goes with it.
Quick answer: Epicor is not discontinuing Prophet 21 or Kinetic. On January 6, 2026 it announced that the final on-premises feature release for both is 2028.1: tentatively January 2028 for Kinetic, May 2028 for Prophet 21. Future innovation will be delivered exclusively in the Epicor Cloud. On-premises 2028.1 then receives Active Support (through June 30, 2029 for P21, December 31, 2029 for Kinetic) before moving to Sustaining Support. For a storefront, the ERP stays the system of record either way. Build the integration on Epicor's published APIs, not direct database access or jobs on a local server. Then a cloud move means re-pointing and re-testing, not rebuilding.
What Epicor announced about on-premises Kinetic and Prophet 21
The source is Epicor's own news release of January 6, 2026. It sets out the final on-premises feature releases for three products and says those releases mark the move of future innovation for them to the Epicor Cloud. Epicor's Innovation Moves to the Cloud page puts it more plainly: 2028.1 is the last release to include new features deployed on-premises.
The published dates, product by product:
- Kinetic: final on-premises release 2028.1, tentatively January 2028. Active Support for 2028.1 through December 31, 2029. Sustaining Support begins January 1, 2030.
- Prophet 21: final on-premises release 2028.1, tentatively May 2028. Active Support through June 30, 2029. Sustaining Support begins July 1, 2029.
- BisTrack: the on-premises Web Browser and API release 2028.1 is tentatively July 2028, while BisTrack Desktop has an earlier final release, 2026.2, tentatively December 2026.
Two details get lost in most summaries. First, the release dates are labeled tentative, so plan against a window rather than a day. Second, the announcement names three products and no others. Epicor Eclipse is not on the list, so an Eclipse distributor should get dates from Epicor directly rather than borrowing P21's.
People search for this as Epicor's on-premises end of life. Epicor's own wording is narrower: an end of on-premises feature development, followed by defined support phases.
What happens to on-premises P21 and Kinetic after 2028?
On-premises P21 and Kinetic keep running on release 2028.1. What stops is new features. Customers move into Active Support, then Sustaining Support, which Epicor says is "to ensure ongoing security and operational continuity." Nothing in the announcement says the software switches off on any of those dates.
What Sustaining Support does and does not include is a different question, and the public announcement does not answer it. Epicor's Innovation Moves to the Cloud page sends customers to an FAQ and the Support Lifecycle Policy behind the EpicWeb customer login. You will read confident descriptions elsewhere of exactly what ends in 2029. Read Epicor's policy, or ask your account representative, before you plan a budget around anyone's summary, including this one.
Is Prophet 21 being discontinued, and is Kinetic cloud only?
No on both counts. Prophet 21 is not being discontinued. Its development continues in the Epicor Cloud, and on-premises customers get a final feature release and years of support on it. Kinetic is not cloud only today either. Epicor's announcement addresses customers running on-premises Kinetic directly. What becomes cloud only, after 2028.1, is new Kinetic functionality.
The practical meaning for an operator: whatever deployment you run, the version of P21 or Kinetic that keeps gaining features is the cloud one. Over time the gap between the on-premises 2028.1 you are holding and the current cloud release will widen. That is the decision Epicor's Ascend with Epicor migration program exists to support, and it is a decision about your ERP. Your storefront needs a design that works on either side of it.
What does not change: the ERP stays the system of record
Moving P21 or Kinetic to the Epicor Cloud changes where the ERP runs. It does not change what the ERP knows, and the storefront still depends on that knowledge.
A distributor's contract pricing, special price agreements and break quantities still live in P21 after the move. A buyer's credit limit and terms still live there. A manufacturer's availability in Kinetic is still on hand minus what jobs and work orders have claimed. A made-to-order part still deserves a promise date rather than a zero. None of that logic should be copied into Shopify. The storefront should ask the ERP and display the answer.
So a cloud move does not waste the hard design work on an Epicor commerce project. The pricing model, branch availability, and customer hierarchies mapped to Shopify company accounts and ship-to locations all carry over. Uncap Connect is built on exactly that premise: the ERP stays the system of record, and Shopify stays in step with it in both directions.
Where storefront integrations get tied to on-premises
Integrations rarely fail a cloud move because of the storefront. They fail because of ERP-side shortcuts taken years ago, when the server was down the hall and nobody expected it to leave.
Watch for these patterns in anything you build or inherit:
- Direct SQL reads against the ERP database to pull prices or stock.
- Writes into tables underneath the application, skipping its validation.
- Scheduled scripts running on a machine in your server room.
- Flat-file exports dropped onto a network share for something else to pick up.
- Network assumptions such as a VPN tunnel or a fixed internal address.
Epicor's own cloud material points in the same direction. Its Kinetic cloud tooling is framed around adding custom fields without direct database access. Its write-up of Prophet 21 in the cloud describes running stored procedures without direct access to SQL Management Studio. Neither is a full specification of cloud access, so confirm what your tier allows with Epicor. The safe assumption: the database access you have on-premises today is not what you will have after the move.
How to build an Epicor storefront integration that survives the cloud move
Six design rules separate an integration that moves with you from one that gets rebuilt.
1. Read and write through the published API surface. For P21 that is the P21 Middleware, which carries Data Services on OData version 4, Transaction API Services and Entity REST Services. The Prophet 21 integration surface has one quirk worth knowing: each customer's API reference is self-hosted at their own middleware address rather than published. For Kinetic, Epicor's Open REST API exposes business objects, BAQs and Epicor Functions as versioned services, which Epicor describes as interfaces that stay aligned as the platform evolves. That is the surface a Kinetic storefront integration should sit on. 2. Write orders through business logic. A Shopify order should become a P21 order through Transaction API Services, or a Kinetic sales order through the REST API. That way the ERP's own credit, pricing and field validation runs. Rows inserted underneath the application are a reconciliation problem now and a migration problem later. 3. Keep custom logic inside the ERP. On Kinetic, availability belongs in a BAQ and custom rules in Epicor Functions. That is why the inventory number on a Kinetic storefront depends on a BAQ. On P21, Epicor's cloud write-up lists DynaChange rules, Web Visual Rules and user-defined tables with API endpoints among its extensibility tools. Logic in those places travels with the ERP. Logic in a middleware script does not. 4. Treat the connection as configuration. The ERP's address, the API user and the credentials should be settings you change at cutover, not code someone rewrites. Nothing about the storefront should require a server in your building. 5. Size the sync to measured volumes. Epicor publishes no rate limit for P21 or Kinetic that we could verify. Design to your own order and catalog volumes, and instrument the sync from day one. Prophet 21 2026.1 added new Bulk Data API capabilities, which matters for catalog refreshes. For how this compares across systems, see what each ERP actually exposes to an ecommerce integration. 6. Write the storefront into the cutover plan. Orders will arrive while the ERP is moving. A held-order queue that preserves each payload and replays it once the new endpoint is live means no buyer is asked to reorder. After re-pointing, re-run a short list of awkward test parts and accounts through browse, price, checkout and order creation before you call it done.
Build now, wait, or move first?
It comes down to how far your Epicor decision has actually gotten.
Your cloud move has a date. Do not stack two go-lives in the same month. Either launch the storefront ahead of the ERP move on the API surface and re-point it during cutover, or launch it after the ERP is stable in the cloud. Running both cutovers at once doubles the number of things that can be wrong on the same morning.
You have not decided yet. Waiting for the ERP decision before building commerce is how a channel slips two years. An API-first integration does not care which way you go. On Uncap's Epicor projects, a Prophet 21 integration typically runs 10 to 14 weeks from kickoff to go-live, and Kinetic 12 to 16 weeks. The storefront can be earning long before Epicor's 2028 window closes.
You plan to stay on-premises for a while. Build API-first anyway. Staying on 2028.1 under Sustaining Support is a legitimate choice for some operators, but it is rarely permanent. An integration built on database shortcuts turns the eventual move into two projects.
Questions to ask before you commit
Put these to anyone quoting the work, including us:
- Which API surface does the integration read from and write to, and does any part of it touch the database directly?
- Where does the integration run, and does any piece of it live on hardware in our building?
- Which of our ERP customizations does it depend on, and will each one exist in the Epicor Cloud?
- Where does the net price resolve: in the ERP at the moment the buyer looks, or in an exported price file?
- What happens to storefront orders during the ERP cutover, and how are failed orders held and replayed?
- After we move, what changes in the integration besides the endpoint and credentials?
Then ask Epicor three things. What API access and API users does your cloud tier provide? What does Sustaining Support cover under the Support Lifecycle Policy? And if you run Eclipse or another product the January 2026 announcement does not name, what are your dates?
Proof, on Epicor
Uncap built ULE Group, an industrial and construction equipment distributor, on Shopify B2B. A real-time Epicor integration keeps inventory and pricing live from browsing through checkout. The catalog is built to scale past one million SKUs, managed through a PIM, with account-based payment terms and a cart-level convert-to-quote flow. The case study names Epicor rather than a specific product or deployment, so we will not claim it as a cloud migration. What it does show is a live Epicor integration running at catalog scale.
Uncap has been a Shopify Platinum Partner since 2013, with 380+ storefronts launched on Shopify across manufacturing, distribution and wholesale. Prophet 21 and Kinetic are two of several Epicor ERPs we connect to Shopify, all covered in the Epicor Shopify integration overview.
If 2028 is on your planning horizon, Talk to Our Experts. Bring your P21 or Kinetic version, whether you run on-premises or in the cloud, one account's pricing, and your current thinking on the move. To settle the architecture before anyone writes code, start with Uncap Blueprint. It is the paid discovery engagement that maps the integration surface, the pricing model and the phased plan before development begins.
Frequently asked questions
Is Epicor Prophet 21 being discontinued?
No. Epicor announced that the final on-premises feature release of Prophet 21 is 2028.1, tentatively May 2028, and that future innovation for P21 will be delivered exclusively in the Epicor Cloud. Prophet 21 itself continues as a product. On-premises 2028.1 receives Active Support through June 30, 2029, and Sustaining Support begins July 1, 2029.
Is Epicor Kinetic cloud only?
Not today. Epicor's January 2026 announcement addresses customers running on-premises Kinetic and gives them a final on-premises feature release, 2028.1, tentatively January 2028. After that release, new Kinetic features are delivered only in the Epicor Cloud. On-premises 2028.1 gets Active Support through December 31, 2029, then Sustaining Support from January 1, 2030.
What happens to on-premises P21 after 2028?
On-premises P21 stays on release 2028.1 and stops receiving new features. Epicor provides Active Support for 2028.1 through June 30, 2029, followed by Sustaining Support from July 1, 2029, which Epicor says is intended to keep security and operations continuous. The detailed terms sit in Epicor's Support Lifecycle Policy behind the EpicWeb customer login, so confirm them with Epicor before planning around them.
Does Epicor's on-premises announcement include Eclipse?
No. The January 6, 2026 announcement names Kinetic, Prophet 21 and BisTrack only. Eclipse customers should ask Epicor directly about their own roadmap rather than assume the P21 dates apply.
Will my Shopify integration break when we move P21 or Kinetic to the Epicor Cloud?
It depends on how it was built. An integration built on the P21 Middleware APIs or the Kinetic REST API, with custom logic kept inside the ERP, should need re-pointing and re-testing. One that reads the database directly or runs on a local server will likely need parts rebuilt.
Should we wait until after our Epicor cloud migration to launch a storefront?
Not necessarily. If the integration is built against Epicor's published APIs, it can launch before the move and be re-pointed during cutover. The one sequence to avoid is launching the storefront and cutting over the ERP in the same window, because both cutovers then share every risk.
How long does an Epicor Shopify integration take?
A Prophet 21 integration typically runs 10 to 14 weeks from kickoff to go-live on Uncap's Epicor projects. Kinetic runs 12 to 16 weeks because of BAQ configuration and production inventory mapping. Pricing complexity and catalog readiness move the number more than order volume does.
