1,000 Products (No Images)
Super Speedy Imports imported 1,000 WooCommerce products in ~9 seconds — about 24× faster than WP All Import Pro (3m 48s) on the same server, with the same CSV and the same end result. Below: every per-stage timing, the exact dataset, and a download to reproduce it yourself.
Summary
- Result: ~24× faster than WP All Import Pro (23–25× across runs).
- Scenario: 1,000 simple + variable WooCommerce products, no images, fresh import into an empty catalogue.
- Tested against: WP All Import Pro 5.0.6 + WooCommerce add-on 4.0.6.
- SPRO: at this size Scalability Pro is neutral (the catalogue is too small for indexes to matter).
- Reproducible: full dataset + configs linked below.
Multiple runs (wall-clock seconds, 8 parallel workers):
| Config | Run 1 | Run 2 | Products created |
|---|---|---|---|
| SSI (no SPRO) | 9s | 10s | 1,000 |
| SSI (+ SPRO) | 11s | 10s | 1,000 |
Results
| Metric | WP All Import Pro | SSI | SSI + SPRO |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total time | 3m 48s (228s) | ~9s | ~10s |
| Records / sec | ~4.4 | ~105 | ~95 |
| Speed-up vs WPAI | 1× | ~24× | ~23× |
Per-stage breakdown (SSI, no SPRO)
Super Speedy Imports runs the import as a pipeline of bulk-SQL stages. Where the time actually went on this run:
| Stage | Duration |
|---|---|
| load-csv | 1.94s |
| import-taxonomies | 0.42s |
| insert-posts | 0.11s |
| insert-postmeta | 0.11s |
| attach-existing-images | 1.45s |
| upsert-relationships | 0.08s |
| upload-remote-images | 1.46s |
| process-variable-products | 0.06s |
| attach-gallery-images | 0.48s |
| fix-attributes | 1.65s |
| process-deletes | 0.01s |
| Total stage time | 7.95s |
Key findings
- At 1,000 products the work is dominated by CSV parsing and attribute setup, not the database writes — the actual insert of 1,000 products + meta takes under a quarter of a second.
- WP All Import processes ~4 products/second here; SSI processes ~105/second.
- This small-catalogue result is the conservative floor — the gap widens dramatically with scale (see the 50,000-product benchmark).
↔ Compare: the same test from WP All Import’s side — WP All Import Pro: 1,000 products (no images) — or read the full Super Speedy Imports vs WP All Import Pro comparison.
Methodology
Environment
- Server: Hetzner CPX32 — 4 vCPU (AMD), 8 GB RAM, 160 GB SSD, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
- Stack: WooCommerce 10.3, PHP 8.2, MariaDB 10.6, WordPress 7.0.
- Plugins: Super Speedy Imports 2.55.7 (8 parallel workers, default); WP All Import Pro 5.0.6 + WooCommerce add-on 4.0.6 (defaults).
Test setup
- Source: single CSV, 1,000 rows.
- Workers: 8 (SSI default).
- Runs: 2 per config (no-SPRO, +SPRO).
- State: fresh import into an empty WooCommerce catalogue; snapshot-reset between runs.
- Images: none in this scenario.
Rules & measurement
- Same input file, same hardware, same import scope, same expected end-state (1,000 products created) for both plugins.
- Headline figure is total wall-clock duration; records/sec is derived from it.
This is not intended as a universal benchmark — your data shape, hardware and hosting will differ. It is one carefully controlled, fully reproducible scenario.
Dataset
- Products: 1,000 (mix of simple and variable).
- Taxonomies: product_cat, product_brand, plus variation attributes pa_color and pa_size.
- Metadata: SKU, regular/sale price, weight.
- Images: none.
- Scale: 1,000 products — the small-catalogue floor.
Reproduce
Everything needed to repeat this run is in the bundle below: the CSV feed, the taxonomy definitions, the Super Speedy Imports config, the WP All Import template, and our raw timing results.
- Download: ssi-benchmark-1000-products.zip
- Contains:
shirt-test-1000.csv,taxonomies.json,ssi-import-config.json,wpai-template-export.json,results-ssi.json,results-wpai.json, and aHOW-TO-REPRODUCE.md.
Steps (Super Speedy Imports)
- Clean WooCommerce site with Super Speedy Imports installed.
- Register the taxonomies:
wp ssi import-taxonomies taxonomies.json - Create the import:
wp ssi create benchmark product /path/to/shirt-test-1000.csv ssi-import-config.json - Run it:
time wp ssi <id> --workers=8
If your results differ significantly, tell us — we’d like to know.
FAQ
Is this realistic?
It’s a deliberately clean, small scenario — a 1,000-product fresh import with no images. It’s the floor, not the headline; larger catalogues show much bigger gaps.
Were images included?
No. This scenario isolates the database and product-build work. See the 50,000-product benchmark for image handling.
Why is SPRO separate?
Scalability Pro accelerates serving and recurring updates on large catalogues. At 1,000 products it makes no meaningful difference, which is exactly what the numbers show.
Can I reproduce this locally?
Yes — download the bundle above. The numbers will vary with hardware, but the relative speed-up should hold.
