WooCommerce Speed Test Authorize.net API

Problem: Slowness during WooCommerce Checkout with Authorize.net enabled. After clicking the Place Order button on Checkout page, the processing can take 40-150 seconds to reach the /order-received/ Thank You page.

Isolate whether the delay is coming from:

• Authorize.net’s test gateway, or
• Your server’s outbound connection to them.

Here’s how to test Authorize.net’s response time directly using curl via SSH.

Why use SSH? SSH lets you run commands directly on your hosting server (like curl). That’s the only way to test whether your hosting server is slow to connect to Authorize.net. This tells you how fast the server itself can reach Authorize.net.

On a Mac, run this in Terminal (example format):

ssh mycpaneluser@123.45.67.89

• Replace mycpaneluser with your SSH Username
• Replace 123.45.67.89 with your IP address

Accept the SSH fingerprint (first time only)

You’ll see something like:

The authenticity of host '123.45.67.89' can't be established...
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

Type:

yes

Enter your password. Note: you won’t see the characters as you type (or copy-paste). Just type (paste) your cPanel password and press Enter.

Once you’re logged into your server via SSH using Mac Terminal, run this curl script in Mac Terminal:

curl -X POST https://apitest.authorize.net/xml/v1/request.api \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "getSettledBatchListRequest": {
      "merchantAuthentication": {
        "name": "YOUR_API_LOGIN_ID",
        "transactionKey": "YOUR_TRANSACTION_KEY"
      },
      "includeStatistics": false
    }
  }' -w "\n\nTotal time: %{time_total}s\n"

This sends a test API request to Authorize.net’s sandbox and shows how long it takes your host to talk to Authorize.net

Replace "YOUR_API_LOGIN_ID" and "YOUR_TRANSACTION_KEY" with valid sandbox credentials.

That -w flag shows the total response time. If it’s >1–2 seconds, that may indicate a problem.

• If you see Total time: ~0.8s → your server is fast
• If it’s over 3–4 seconds or stalls → slowness is on your host’s side (likely outbound HTTP bottleneck)

The results I got back were: total time: 0.398358s (very good)

That confirms:

• Authorize.net’s sandbox API is responding fast (only 0.39 seconds)
• The host’s server is not the source of API slowness
• ✅ Your outbound HTTPS connection to Authorize.net is healthy

SOURCE: Instructions from ChatGPT