Step-by-Step: Enabling WooCommerce HPOS for Better Performance

Key points: 

• WooCommerce HPOS (High-Performance Order Storage) improves store performance by storing order data in dedicated tables rather than WordPress posts tables.
• Implementing HPOS is straightforward through WooCommerce Settings and can deliver up to 5 times faster order processing.
• ACF PRO 6.4+ offers full compatibility with HPOS, allowing stores to maintain custom fields while benefiting from improved performance.
• Beyond HPOS support, ACF PRO enhances WooCommerce stores with flexible product layouts, custom taxonomies, and reusable components.

If you’ve noticed your WooCommerce store slowing down during checkouts or order management, you’re likely hitting the limits of WordPress’s traditional post storage system.

As your store grows, WordPress struggles with increasingly complex queries in its post tables, creating performance bottlenecks. WooCommerce’s High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS) addresses this by storing order data in dedicated tables.

Store owners who enable HPOS typically experience faster checkouts, fewer database problems during busy periods, and better handling of multiple orders at once. These improvements can make a significant difference for both growing stores facing slowdowns and those wanting to prepare their shops for future growth.

This guide explains exactly what HPOS is, the performance improvements it delivers, and how to implement it step-by-step on your store. We’ll also show how HPOS works with Advanced Custom Fields (ACF^®) so you can keep your custom data while speeding things up.

Understanding WooCommerce HPOS and its performance benefits

So what exactly is HPOS? Think of it as WooCommerce giving your orders their own special home in the database.

Before HPOS, WordPress stored all your orders in the same tables as your blog posts, pages, and other content. Now, your orders get custom tables that are built specifically for selling stuff online.

This seemingly small change makes a huge difference for growing stores. WordPress was built for blogging, not eCommerce, so the original system buckles under the weight of numerous orders.

Moving orders to their own tables brings three major improvements to your store:

1. Your store can handle busy times better

With HPOS, your database doesn’t get overwhelmed when lots of people are shopping at once, like during Black Friday or when you run a special promotion.

With the old system, your store might have struggled and slowed down just when you needed it most. HPOS helps your store stay quick and responsive even when dozens of customers are checking out at the same time.

2. Fewer failed orders and data problems

Ever had an order get stuck or simply disappear? The new system is better at handling those moments when several people complete orders at the exact same time.

For you, this means more reliable order records, fewer inventory headaches, and less time spent fixing mysterious order problems. Plus, your customers will appreciate not seeing error messages during checkout.

3. Problems are easier to fix

When order data is organized in a way that makes sense for an online store, finding and fixing problems becomes much simpler. If you’ve ever had to dig through WordPress database tables looking for order information, you’ll appreciate how much cleaner everything is with HPOS.

Not to mention, HPOS is fast. According to WooCommerce’s tests, creating orders can be up to five times faster, and the entire checkout process runs about 1.5 times quicker. This speed matters because customers (understandably) don’t love waiting ages for checkout pages to load, and many will abandon their carts if things take too long.

As a bonus, Google rewards fast websites by giving them better search results rankings.

How to enable High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS) in Woocommerce

Some good news if you’ve recently set up your WooCommerce store: Since October 2023 (WooCommerce 8.2+), HPOS comes enabled by default for new stores. But if you’re running an existing store, you’ll need to switch it on manually.

Before making any changes to how your store handles orders, always back up your entire site and database. This is your safety net in case anything unexpected happens. Here’s how to set it up: 

1. Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > Features in your WordPress dashboard.

2. First, check the box that says “Enable compatibility mode.”

3. Save your changes and wait for the background process to complete.

What happens behind the scenes is important: WooCommerce starts copying all your existing orders to the new HPOS tables while keeping the old system running, too. This means both systems run side-by-side, ensuring nothing gets lost during the transition.

Once the synchronization finishes (this can take a while for stores with lots of orders), you can return to the same settings page and select “High-performance order storage (recommended)” as your order storage method.

The technical change is that your orders now live in four specialized database tables:

• _wc_orders for basic order info.
• _wc_order_addresses for customer addresses.
• _wc_order_operational_data for status and operational details.
• _wc_orders_meta for additional order data.

Maximizing HPOS performance

While simply enabling HPOS will speed up your store, you can push performance even further with these optimizations:

• Better hosting makes a difference: If your hosting plan includes dedicated database resources and proper caching, HPOS operates more efficiently. The performance gap between basic shared hosting and optimized eCommerce hosting becomes even more noticeable with HPOS enabled.
• Update your custom code: If you or your developer wrote custom code that works with orders, make sure it’s updated to use WooCommerce’s HPOS-compatible CRUD methods instead of directly querying the database the old way.
• Database indexing helps with large stores: For shops processing hundreds of orders daily, adding custom database indexes to frequently-searched fields in your HPOS tables can make searches lightning-fast. This is something to discuss with your developer if order search performance is critical for your business.
• Splitting read/write operations: Very large stores can take things further by setting up database replication, where one database handles all the writing (new orders) and separate databases hold all the reading (order lookups). This advanced setup can handle massive order volumes without breaking a sweat.

These technical tweaks are particularly valuable if your store processes lots of orders or experiences significant traffic spikes. Later in this guide, we’ll also explore how ACF PRO works with HPOS to keep your custom fields performing well.

Measuring performance improvements

After enabling HPOS, you’ll want to confirm you’re actually getting those performance benefits. A free plugin called Query Monitor can help you track the difference.

Install Query Monitor and check these specific metrics before and after enabling HPOS:

• How many database queries happen during checkout.
• How long those queries take to run.
• Which database tables are being accessed.

You should see fewer queries hitting the WordPress posts tables and more efficient access to your new order tables. The checkout process should complete with fewer database operations overall.

Troubleshooting HPOS

Before enabling HPOS on your live store, test everything on a staging copy. This gives you a safe place to identify and fix any issues without affecting real customers.

If you run into problems, WooCommerce has a built-in compatibility checker. If any of your plugins aren’t compatible with HPOS, WooCommerce will actually prevent you from enabling it and show you which plugins are causing the problem.

To check this yourself, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > Features and look for any warnings or the “View and manage” link next to the HPOS option. You can also go directly to a special URL to see all incompatible plugins: replace “example.com” with your domain in this address: https://example.com/wp-admin/plugins.php?plugin_status=incompatible_with_feature&feature_id=custom_order_tables

💡 Advanced Custom Fields PRO 6.4 has been specifically updated to work perfectly with HPOS. This means you can keep all your custom fields for orders while still getting the performance boost from HPOS.

Disabling HPOS

If you run into problems that can’t be quickly resolved, you can always switch back to the traditional storage system:

1. Go back to WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > Features.
2. Select “WordPress posts storage (legacy).”

3. Save your changes.

If you’ve kept compatibility mode enabled (recommended during the initial testing period), this switch happens instantly because your order data has been kept in sync between both systems.

It’s a good idea to keep compatibility mode running for at least a few weeks after enabling HPOS. This gives you time to thoroughly test everything while maintaining the ability to quickly revert if needed.

How ACF PRO works with WooCommerce HPOS

If you’ve added custom fields to your WooCommerce orders, you might be wondering how the switch to HPOS affects them. This is especially important for developers and store managers who have built custom functionality around order data using ACF.

In the traditional WooCommerce setup, orders were stored as Custom Post Types in WordPress. This made working with ACF straightforward because you could simply create field groups targeted at the “order” post type, and everything just worked. No special configuration needed.

However, HPOS changes that fundamental architecture. Instead of storing orders in WordPress’s post tables, WooCommerce now uses dedicated custom tables. This shift created a compatibility challenge for many plugins that were built around WordPress’s standard way of handling metadata.

The good news is that ACF PRO 6.4 introduces full native support for WooCommerce HPOS. The ACF development team completely refactored how ACF stores and retrieves field values to ensure compatibility with HPOS’s new data structure. This update is available now, allowing store owners to benefit from both HPOS performance gains and ACF’s flexible custom fields.

What makes this integration particularly useful is that ACF PRO follows many of the same performance principles that make HPOS so effective:

• Intelligent field organization: ACF’s field groups give your custom data a structured home, preventing the database bloat that often happens with random custom fields added without a plan.
• Optimized storage patterns: When you use complex field types like repeaters or flexible content fields, ACF stores that data efficiently to minimize database overhead.
• Enhanced retrieval methods: The ACF get_field() functions are optimized for performance and now work effortlessly with HPOS data structures.
• Development best practices: ACF encourages reusing fields and creating proper data architecture – principles that align perfectly with WooCommerce’s performance goals.

From a practical standpoint, your existing ACF fields will continue to work when you enable HPOS. WooCommerce’s new order screen uses a modern React interface, but it automatically migrates custom meta boxes. This means your ACF fields will appear and function normally without any additional configuration.

Premium features of ACF PRO for WooCommerce stores

Beyond HPOS compatibility, ACF PRO offers several features that can enhance your WooCommerce store in ways that standard plugins can’t match:

• Custom taxonomies enhancement: Product categories and tags become much more powerful with ACF. Add custom fields to your taxonomies to enable detailed filtering options, like adding “material type” fields to clothing categories or “technical specifications” to electronics.
• Enhanced product pages: The combination of ACF fields and ACF Blocks lets you design custom product sections that work perfectly with the block editor. Create feature comparison tables, technical specification layouts, or usage galleries that look exactly how you want them to, all while maintaining easy updates for your team.
• Store-wide settings: ACF’s Options Pages feature lets you create global settings that apply across your store. This is perfect for managing promotional banners, storewide announcements, or seasonal themes from a single location instead of updating multiple pages.
• Better product galleries: The Gallery field gives you more control over product images than the standard WooCommerce gallery. You can easily sort, rearrange, and manage collections of product images with a simple drag-and-drop interface.
• Reusable Components: With the Clone field, you can create consistency across your product catalog. Design a “shipping specifications” field group once, then clone it across multiple product types to maintain a consistent look and data structure.

What makes ACF PRO particularly valuable for WooCommerce stores is how it bridges the gap between standard eCommerce functionality and your specific business needs. It allows you to create customized shopping experiences that match your exact requirements without heavy development work or performance penalties.

Start building better WooCommerce stores with ACF PRO today

The move to HPOS marks a significant advancement for WooCommerce stores of all sizes. With ACF PRO 6.4’s full compatibility, you no longer have to choose between performance and customization.

When you update to ACF PRO 6.4 and enable HPOS, your custom fields, product variations, and order details continue working exactly as before, while benefiting from the faster, more reliable database structure. This ensures a smooth transition with no disruption to your workflow or customer experience.

This compatibility isn’t a quick fix or workaround. The ACF team rebuilt how the plugin stores and retrieves data, making it ready not just for today’s HPOS but for whatever updates WooCommerce releases in the future. As WooCommerce continues to evolve, your ACF-powered customizations will keep pace.

Ready to create a faster, more personalized online store? ACF PRO gives you the tools to build exactly what you need while embracing WooCommerce’s latest advancements.