Store "500 Server Error", Loads Extremely Slow

[Mythimorph]

I've been using Square Online for about a month. Ever since launch I've noticed it's been incredibly slow to load and have been getting complaints from my customers about it.

I have over 140 items so far and seem to get the most issues when loading the "shop all" page or anywhere it has to populate such a long list of items (I'm using the smallest pagination display available, 60 items, but sure wish it could be smaller if that would help it load quicker).

Sometimes it will load at a reasonable speed, sometimes it will take a frustrating maybe 20 seconds or so to load and you can't even tell it's doing anything, and other times it simply times out with a "500 server error" message... and I've been getting that one a LOT more often in the past few weeks.


The very first thing I did was spend hours updating all the images in my store to be replaced with significantly smaller file sizes than they were (average size is now only about 70kb per image) but that hasn't seemed to help.

I've tried both on desktop using a hardline of about 100 Mbps download speed to test the high end, and on mobile using wifi on about 2 Mbps download speed to test the low end... no significant differences have been noticed in the website loading and I'll get the error often on both.

Usually I can get the site to load after a refresh or two when I do get this error. I've also tried wiping my cache with inconsistent results. I am using Google Chrome for all tests.

I'm currently using the free plan. If I continue to have such slow loading speed issues, I may be forced to change platforms for my store altogether. Square Online/Weebly's software has its many, many quirks and can be terribly slow at times as well, but I've learned to understand and work with it and have ultimately really happy with the final results for building my store. I just want my customer's experience to be positive with responsive load times.

Any idea what's going on here? :<

Anyone else having these problems?

My store: https://mythimorph.square.site

-Riley

[Mythimorph]

As a follow up to this issue, I contacted Square support but they were not able to re-create the issue. I decided to go ahead and upgrade my site to the Performance plan and make the most of it, hoping it works out in the long run.


I was told to message support if I experienced it again. This time I was able to capture a demonstration of the issue I'm having on video which is uploaded here: (6:37) https://youtu.be/lNm2FrNtH1g If this video is unbearably hard to watch with how slow it is, I don't blame you! Imagine how my customers trying to navigate the site must feel!


You can see it starts out with my homepage having a bit of trouble loading the featured images, after a few seconds I decided it would be a good opportunity to start recording since I had a feeling it was doing one of its slow loading hiccups again. And I was right.

After more than 20 seconds the featured images finally pop up (and I used a stop watch for timing all of this). I test out navigating through the site a bit; the category images load up fine, but soon as it's asked to display product images it grinds to a halt again.

The first page (showing 60 product images) took 45 seconds, the second page took 52 seconds, and the 3rd page (showing 50 images) refusing to load at all... the whole page seemed to flicker at 1 minute, but I gave it a full 2min and 15 seconds before I tried refreshing the page and was met with a blank white screen.

Nothing loaded after 35 seconds so I went back to the homepage from the address bar and it popped up right away. Checked all the pages again with no loading errors. At the end I pull up a speedtest to also demonstrate it isn't my connection speed that's causing this (94mbps download).


I have not gotten the "500 server error" message since my first post here.

Figure I might as well keep this thread updated with my experience and hope the issue can be resolved.


-Riley

[Spicklewitch]

I get this all the time. The website is slow and it comes up with the error 8/10 times and it’s infuriating. I also have an issue with the pictures I’ve uploaded, as they are pixelated. Just the pictures, not the writing. Again annoying. I pay for mine, I think £22 a month and so far I’m not impressed. 

[lisato]

I have the exact same problem and support doesn’t do anything to help. Of course when it’s called in it’s working fine for them. They mentioned re-publishing your website will help but still have issues.  95% of the time website is slow as well as when I’m developing. I’m paying for the service and not satisfied. Anyone know of any alternative to Square. Tried Shopify but the limits on options did not work for me.