Imports and Exports Aren’t Running at their Designated Time

If you’ve set an import or export to run hourly, for example, but you notice they’re not running hourly, but instead less frequently, it’s likely they aren’t getting executed because there is no traffic to the site.

Automated imports and exports are managed by the in-built WordPress cron manager, which relies on visitors coming to the site to execute. So if an import is scheduled to run at 1pm, but nobody visits the site until 3pm, it wouldn’t fire until then.

Sites with lots of traffic probably wouldn’t notice this, but a development site, or a site with little traffic, probably would.

Should you require imports or exports to fire closer to their designated frequency the best solution is to set up the WordPress cron to run as a server cron job.

Your hosting company should be able to assist with setting up a cron job as described above if you are unsure.