Imports of reviews are done as a background, asynchronous process, that requires your site to make requests to itself for information. As such, your site cannot block HTTP requests or imports will not begin to process. If your imports freeze without completing, your site may be blocking HTTP requests in some way.


Here are some common reasons why your site blocks HTTP requests:


  • Are you using a maintenance mode or blocking plugin? For example, a "coming soon" or "maintenance mode" plugins will block HTTP requests. Please disable the maintenance mode plugin to process imports.
  • Similarly, if your site is behind BasicAuth, background requests will fail to complete. For example, WP Engine staging sites often use basic authentication to block site access (you see a popup for credentials when you try to access the site). Please refer to this information to correct this issue, or disable basic authentication while running import of reviews.
  • Also, some hosting companies will block the requests from servers to themselves. Your host must enable requests from your site’s server (the plugin) to itself to start processing a file (sometimes called a “loopback connection”) for review imports to work.


In addition to these common reasons, the following workaround was reported to be helpful in certain cases:

  1. Install the plugin Health Check & Troubleshooting by The WordPress.org community.
  2. Go to Tools > Site Health and click on Troubleshooting tab. There, you should click on Enable Troubleshooting Mode button. Please note that the troubleshooting mode only affects you and NOT your live site.
  3. Once in troubleshooting mode, on the right select Available Plugins and then find both WooCommerce and Customer Reviews for WooCommerce plugins there. Enable only these 2 plugins.
  4. Try to do the import of reviews now.
  5. Once reviews have been imported, you can disable the troubleshooting mode and deactivate Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin.


If import of reviews still doesn't work on your site after following these steps, please reach out to your hosting support.