A persistent myth about WooCommerce is that WordPress and WooCommerce do not scale. It would work for small stores, but not for large enterprises.
Because we believe in dogfooding, we run WooCommerce.com on both WordPress and WooCommerce, and handle a large number of transactions.
Here are questions we get most often and the answers.
What is scalability?
↑ Back to topWhat influences scaling?
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- Traffic. The biggest influencer on your store’s performance is how much traffic you get and how well it is distributed. For example, if you are running a big sale on one product, all traffic may be concentrated on that specific product page and the cart, while other stores may have high-traffic volume distributed more evenly.
- WooCommerce code. Our team is constantly working to bring WooCommerce to new levels. Scalability and performance are high on our agenda, and we spend a lot of time optimizing code toward this goal.
- Other system code. WooCommerce will never be the only software running on your store. You likely have a theme and a few other plugins. All code can have influence on the store’s performance, and figuring out what parts are optimized will help scale.
- Server hardware. Some hosting companies or hosting packages are designed to handle large amounts of traffic. Finding a good host and the right package are key to scaling a store.
What is the maximum WooCommerce can handle?
↑ Back to topHow do I test the performance of my store?
↑ Back to top- Average “Add to cart” calls per minute is a good indication of demands on your server. Use our free Google Analytics extension to track Add-to-cart calls.
- Google Chrome Dev Tools include a timeline tool that shows how long your store takes to load and which elements are taking the most time.
- Google PageSpeed Tools allows you to test the speed of each page and gives suggestions on how to improve your store.