Why might WP All Import cron imports fail?

Austin B.

Published: 6 January 2021Last updated: 15 July 2026

If you run a WooCommerce store or hosting a WordPress site where you need to import and export data, WP All Import is a widely used tool to manage this. It can be frustrating when the crons you set up are failing.

There are a few reasons why WP All Import cron jobs/scheduled tasks may fail to run. The methods below will optimise the crons so that they should always run successfully and at the desired time.

Switch the standard HTTP method to PHP-CGI

WP All Import uses HTTP GET calls to perform the import process, which can cause imports to time out after 5 minutes. We'd recommend optimising the method used to perform the import by switching to using the PHP command line. That way, the crons have a much longer timeout and can do all the hard work in the process itself, all while avoiding the HTTP timeout.

To do this, you can add your cron jobs using the following structure (i.e. a wget).

wget -O/dev/null http://domain.tld/wp-cron.php?export_key=XXXX&export_id=X&action=trigger

Note: the wget command is automatically converted into a /usr/bin/php70-cgi command at the server level, and may be outdated for your website/ application. We advise that websites and applications running on newer PHP versions should predefine the PHP interpreter in place of the WGET, like so: /usr/bin/php83-cgi which should look something like this

/usr/bin/php83-cgi -f /dev/null http://domain.tld/wp-cron.php?export_key=XXXX&export_id=X&action=trigger

You should replace the php83 snippet with the relevant PHP version your website/application is running on.

Create a scheduled task cron job for WP All Import

Don't run the trigger and processing crons at the same time

For example, if you run the processing cron every 5 minutes, don't perform a trigger on the hour; perform the trigger a 2 minutes past the hour to avoid collisions and job locking. The example below shows the trigger and processing crons in place, but timed so that they'll never run at the same time.

Scheduled task menu for cron jobs WP All Import

Ensuring these two optimisations are in place should ensure that WP All Import scheduled tasks complete successfully every time.