Summary:
If your WooCommerce store is experiencing slow or failing checkouts related to the UPS shipping plugin, you’re not alone. This guide outlines how to troubleshoot common UPS plugin conflicts that lead to hanging checkouts, “No shipping options were found” errors, and even fatal cURL API failures—plus how to restore checkout stability.
Issue background
A WooCommerce store using a third-party UPS shipping plugin encountered persistent checkout problems. Customers faced blank checkout pages, or received the error:
No shipping options were found for your address.In some cases, the site threw fatal errors linked to failed API calls, disrupting the checkout flow and preventing orders from completing.
Diagnosis
The development team used a mix of staging site testing and log analysis to isolate the issue:
- Staging site replication: Confirmed the issue replicated even with all non-WooCommerce plugins disabled.
- Theme compatibility testing: Switching to a default theme like Twenty Twenty-Four ruled out template conflicts.
- Shipping log review: Enabling debug logging in
WooCommerce → Settings → Shipping → UPSrevealed repeated cURL errors like:
cURL error 28: Operation timed out after 5000 milliseconds- Malformed UPS response: Logs occasionally showed:
ups_error: Error parsing UPS response - expected XML but received empty response- System status: Checked the WooCommerce status report to confirm PHP version and memory limit were sufficient (PHP 8.1, 512MB limit).
Resolution steps
- Update UPS plugin and WooCommerce core
Ensured compatibility with latest WooCommerce and PHP versions. Some older plugin versions failed to handle UPS rate limit responses gracefully. - Verify API credentials
Double-checked that the UPS Access Key, User ID, and Account Number were all valid and linked to an active UPS shipping account. - Extend timeout threshold
Increased API timeout setting in plugin to 10 seconds to accommodate UPS server delays during peak hours. - Fallback shipping method setup
Added a flat-rate backup method so that customers could still check out if the UPS API failed. - Clear transients and cache
Used WooCommerce tools to clear shipping transients and force regeneration of rates. - Firewall and hosting check
Verified the host allowed outbound requests toonlinetools.ups.com, which the plugin depends on for rate calculations.
Final outcome
With updated credentials, increased timeouts, and fallback methods in place, the UPS plugin resumed stable operation. Checkout no longer hung or failed, even under load, and no further cURL or XML parsing errors appeared in the logs.
Struggling with UPS or shipping plugin errors like cURL error 28 or No shipping options were found? Contact Freshy — we can help diagnose and correct shipping issues that hurt your conversions.
