WooCommerce: Fix WP Memory Limit issue

WordPress automatically limits your PHP memory to 40MB. This may result in your WooCommerce website being slow to process information, searches, product uploading and so on.

1. Open your wp-config.php file

Use an FTP software to access your WordPress files. You can find wp-config in the main installation folder. Open it, or download it so that you can edit it.

2. Add the following line of code

define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '1000M');

3. Note: do not add it at the bottom!

You will need to add the code above this line:

require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-settings.php');

…or it won’t work!

This is it!

Where to add custom code?

You should place PHP snippets at the bottom of your child theme functions.php file and CSS at the bottom of its style.css file. Make sure you know what you are doing when editing such files - if you need more guidance, please take a look at my guide "Should I Add Custom Code Via WP Editor, FTP or Code Snippets?" and my video tutorial "Where to Place WooCommerce Customization?"

Does this snippet (still) work?

Please let me know in the comments if everything went as expected. I would be happy to revise the snippet if you report otherwise (please provide screenshots). I have tested this code with Storefront theme, the WooCommerce version listed above and a WordPress-friendly hosting.

If you think this code saved you time & money, feel free to join 17,000+ WooCommerce Weekly subscribers for blog post updates and 250+ Business Bloomer supporters for 365 days of WooCommerce benefits. Thank you in advance!

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Rodolfo Melogli

Business Bloomer Founder

Author, WooCommerce expert and WordCamp speaker, Rodolfo has worked as an independent WooCommerce freelancer since 2011. His goal is to help entrepreneurs and developers overcome their WooCommerce nightmares. Rodolfo loves travelling, chasing tennis & soccer balls and, of course, wood fired oven pizza.

10 thoughts on “WooCommerce: Fix WP Memory Limit issue

  1. My woocommerce orders are failing on frontend, with the notice ‘error processing checkout, while the order goes through on backend. The customer don’t see the order received page.this is happening for random orders.do you think it’s a memory issue.i have increased wp_memory_limit from 256 to 512M.

    1. Looks more like a plugin conflict – possibly a payment plugin. Try to see if there is any pattern and that should help you identify the problem. Or test the checkout without all plugins except WooCommerce, and reenable one by one until you find the culprit

  2. I don’t know if you are still looking at this, but i have a woocommerce wordpress site that gets an out of memory error consistently with 2Gig allocated. This is defined in php.ini, and wp-config. I’ve also tried adding to .htaccess, and have RlimitMem max set as well… WordPress shows allocated memory of 2G in admin panel. I know its a plugin issue, but i’ve stripped down to theme and woocommerce plugins only and still get the errors. Any other tricks you know of i may be able to try? I’m hosting in AWS on a Centos box.

    1. Try disabling ALL plugins except Woo

  3. I will use 512MB limit in php.ini and wp-config also, it is working good.

    also can disable cart fragments for super speed:

    https://wordpress.org/plugins/disable-cart-fragments-littlebizzy/

    mostly Woo sites don’t need those cart frags anyway.

  4. Hi! If i have a 4GB RAM virtual server and running Woocommerce on it what is the ideal WP Memory limit to set for a woocommerce site?

    Thank you!

    1. It should be at least 64MB Norbert. Take a look here. Hope this helps 🙂

  5. I’ve changed to define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘128M’); But WooCommerce still sees WP Memory Limit at 40M.

    Not sure what more can be changed.

    1. Hello Heidi, thanks so much for your feedback. Unfortunately in this case you’ll need to contact the hosting provider, they have probably set a limit that you can’t override unless you ask them. Let me know how this goes. R

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