WooCommerce Multisite – Product Import Script Extremely Slow

Hi @diegomane,

Thanks for sharing those details, really helpful background!

From what you’ve described, the slowness is likely coming from the way WooCommerce processes product updates rather than any server limitation. Each update triggers a number of hooks, taxonomy syncs, and image or variation processes, which can add up quickly in a multisite setup.

Here are a few suggestions that should help improve the performance:

1. Import in smaller batches – Try processing 100–200 products per batch instead of large chunks. WooCommerce can struggle when too many updates trigger at once.
2. Disable unnecessary processes during import – Temporarily turn off caching, image optimization, or other plugins that hook into product saves (especially image resizing or SEO plugins).
3. Optimize your import logic – If your script uses standard wp_insert_post() and update_post_meta() calls, consider using bulk operations or WP-CLI to reduce overhead. Tools like WP All Import have optimized routines for large imports.
4. Check database performance – Make sure your product and postmeta tables are indexed and periodically optimized. Even powerful servers can slow down if the database queries pile up.
5. Multisite overhead – Each sub-site loads its own plugins and hooks, so imports across multiple stores can be slower than expected. You might test one store as a standalone install to compare performance.

To help narrow this down, could you please share a bit more detail?

• Roughly how many products (and variations) are imported per site daily?
• Are product images being imported from external URLs or already hosted locally?
• Are you updating existing products or creating new ones each time?

These details will help pinpoint where the biggest bottleneck is.

You can also check:

• Speed optimizations for large WooCommerce imports
• WordPress StackExchange: speeding up CSV imports

Let us know what you find, we’ll be happy to dig in further!