Out of Memory Error with Many Shipping Methods in a Zone

Hi there @asolutions101,

Thanks for reaching out.

It is possible the PHP Memory Exhausted error you’re experiencing is due to the large number of shipping methods in a Zone. Dealing with complex shipping setups, like yours, can lead to memory issues and slow site speeds.

However, increasing the WP_MEMORY_LIMIT can help to some extent, but as you’ve noticed, it does not fully resolve the issue nor speed up the process.

Here are a few suggestions that you might try to see if they make any difference:

1. Try to simplify your shipping setup if possible. Having 50 methods/instances available in the zone could be causing the system to overload.
2. Consider using a shipping plugin that allows you to manage complex shipping scenarios more efficiently.
3. Run a conflict test to check if there’s a plugin or theme conflict by disabling all plugins, leaving only WooCommerce and a default theme.

Lest us know if you still need further assistance on this, and we’ll be happy to help.

Here’s the ironic part…we did simplify it. A lot. In the past, we had twice as many methods in a zone because we presented residential and commercial rates to our customers. We have since streamlined that. For many years, it worked well.

These issues began when we updated from Woo 8.3 to 8.8 and simultaneously updated the UPS plugin to 3.4 to 3.6. We are forced to use the more recent UPS plugin due to UPS authentication changes. Testing with Storefront, Woo, and UPS alone was not fruitful.

We also discovered during our testing that a rate is requested through each instance of a shipping method in a zone. For example if there are 10 instances of UPS set up in the zone by origin zip code, the method in Cart will return all 10 rates. While there are plugins available that will hide the rates conditionally, they do so after the requests, so it only masks any issues. The problem is most evident when a carrier API like Old Dominion or Estes takes 3–8 seconds to return a rate (times how ever many instances are enabled).

That seems…inefficient. So, there needs to be a way to assign a shipping class directly to a method instance and only request rates from that instance. We tried the old Mike Jolley “bulky package” code, but ‘ship_via’ => ‘ups’ appears to be limited the parent method rather than instances (e.g. ‘ups:318’). Unless someone knows correct syntax that would work…

We are considering ShipperHQ as a full replacement but having to spend nearly $10k per year for it is not a thrilling prospect.

Hello Acoustical Solutions

Thank you for your reply.

May I ask which UPS plugin are you using?
Also, could you tell me which web hosting are you using?
Tell me the exact plan/package you have for your site.

I am trying to understand if it is possible to resolve this issue by allocating more server resources.
Another possibility is that the UPS plugin is not designed to handle that many instances.
Have you asked this question from about the UPS plugin support?

It would be helpful if you could share your site’s System Status Report.
You can find it via WooCommerce > Status.
Select Get system report and then Copy for support.

Once you’ve done that, you can paste the text in https://gist.github.com
After that, you can paste the Gist link here in your reply.

Looking forward to your response. ??

Best regards.

Zubair,

We are using the standard WooCommerce UPS Shipping plugin from Woo.
Host = Kinsta, Custom Enterprise plan.

Before I post anything to GitHub I am doing some additional testing on a resource-constrained staging site that is running the last setup that worked. This was UPS 3.4.2 and Woo 8.8.2. On that setup, when I change destinations it takes approx. 4 seconds to refresh. I am currently adding dozens of items to cart to see if I can trigger the memory error.

My next step is to update the staging site Woo to 8.9.2 and test, then roll UPS forward to a more recent version and see which version (if any) breaks. It may be possible to narrow in on the issue at that point if it is caused by the UPS plugin.

I will update this when I have time.

Hi @asolutions101,

Thanks for the additional details. Please try everything in the latest version first, I see the UPS plugin is currently at version 3.6.4, for instance!

If you still have issues after updating, kindly open a new ticket in our internal ticketing system. Since this relates to a premium extension, please get in touch with us directly via [Woo.com → My Account → Support] for further help with this.

You may need to log in to the account used to purchase the extension before you can access that page. As per the [forum guidelines], no support for premium extensions is provided here, but we will be happy to assist you further from there.

Thanks!
-OP

After more testing we have determined that it is most likely the UPS plugin. Our next step is to contact support for that plugin to see if we can obtain different archived versions from 3.4.3 to 3.6.3 and step through those to see which version breaks our setup.