When WooCommerce 9.9 was announced back in May, the headline promised massive admin performance gains, especially for stores with large order volumes.
Smarter caching, async data loading, and leaner queries were meant to make the dashboard snappier and more efficient — with Woo’s own tests showing up to 95% faster admin load times on stores with over a million orders.
Naturally, Business Bloomer Club members were eager to see how these improvements translated to real-world WooCommerce sites — particularly ones with tens of thousands of orders and a variety of third-party plugins.
It didn’t take long for reports to come in, and, as expected, the results were mixed. While some saw notable speedups across admin pages, others discovered that some plugins were actually increasing their query count by the thousands.
So — is Woo 9.9.3 actually faster? It depends.
The Original Test: 3,300 Queries on One Admin Page?
A dev kicked off the conversation with a detailed document comparing performance between Woo 9.8.5 and 9.9.3 on a live site with 44,000 orders.
The results? Meh. Page load times dropped slightly, but query counts remained high. In one case — the edit order page — query counts exceeded 3,300.
That number sparked disbelief. Why would WooCommerce need that many queries to display a single order? Further investigation revealed the culprit: FunnelKit Automations Pro, a powerful but database-heavy plugin, was responsible for around 2,500 extra queries.
Disabling the plugin shaved 2 seconds off the load time. FunnelKit’s support team responded quickly and pushed a fix that reduced the queries back to ~800 — still high, but much more reasonable.
Woo’s Benchmarks vs. Reality
The official benchmarks from Woo show stunning gains — a dashboard load dropping from 23 seconds to 1.2 seconds on a site with 1.2 million orders. But in smaller real-world tests (40k orders or fewer), the improvements are far less dramatic.
In fact, I tested my own development store (40,000 orders, 10,000 products), and found that most admin pages were either the same speed or slightly slower than before.
The only noticeable boost? Creating a new order — about 20% faster. Everything else, from order overview to product listing, remained sluggish. Perhaps, 40k orders just isn’t large enough to reveal the full benefit.
The Hidden Cost of Plugin Bloat
This thread was also a reminder that plugins can easily sabotage performance — no matter how optimized WooCommerce core becomes.
As someone explained, one client’s database was growing by 2.5GB every 10 days just from email metadata FunnelKit saved after every send.
Eventually, FunnelKit added a “clear meta” button in the tools section — but not a setting or automation. As of now, it’s still a manual cleanup job. If you’re running large automation setups inside Woo, consider offloading to systems like Metorik Engage or external CRM tools to avoid bloating your database.
HPOS and the Compatibility Catch
It’s important to note: performance gains in 9.9 only apply if HPOS (High-Performance Order Storage) is enabled.
Another developer ran before/after comparisons across three test sites — with HPOS and 9.9 enabled — and saw meaningful drops in query count, memory usage, and page load times. For example:
- Order overview: 3.2s → 1.5s, 511 queries → 438
- Product listing: 4.3s → 2.2s, 655 queries → 591
However, enabling HPOS isn’t just a flip of the switch for everyone. Customizations and plugin compatibility still block some stores from moving over. And switching with a large database may increase disk space usage — something to consider when budgets or hosting tiers are tight.
Conclusion: Real Gains Possible — But Only If You’re Ready
WooCommerce 9.9.3 can deliver real admin performance improvements, especially if:
- You’re using HPOS
- You’ve kept plugin bloat in check
- Your store has a significant order history
But don’t expect miracles without prep work. If your store is bogged down by 3,000+ queries per admin page, it’s likely not Woo core that’s to blame — it’s your plugins. Use tools like Query Monitor, isolate bottlenecks, and consider whether automation and CRM tasks really belong inside your Woo store.
And above all: measure before and after, not just once, but multiple times. Admin performance is improving — but only if we meet Woo halfway.
