Why is the Paypal website so slow?

[ScirraTom]

Hi there,

New to this forum.  I'm a web developer for Scirra.com

We sell mainly via Paypal.  Logging into Paypal, searching for transactions, the entire experience is frustratingly slow.

Why is the website so slow, and what are the plans to fix it?  If it continues to be as slow as it is we're happy to find a faster service.

Here's a breakdown of normal times I observe logging in and finding a transaction:

Paypal homepage: 3.5 seconds
Login page: 11 seconds
Processing login: 7 seconds
Getting to homepage: 12 seconds
Click history: 14.5 seconds
Click find a transaction: 4 seconds
Find a transaction on email: 11.5 seconds

I would expect a website like this to load under a few seconds per page.  Clicking the history button and it taking nearly 15 seconds is unusually poor performance.  I'm not even sure how you could write the history page to take that long to load.

[baytrading1]

Thanks I will try this on their facebook page

[kernowlass]

Your welcome, let us know how you get on contacting them via facebook as it would  be nice to see if that is a better option than phoning.

[DivvyDeal]

PayPal Lucy, Have you managed to make any changes? I am not noticing a huge difference in the speed.

Is this a generic issue? Do you need to invest in infrastructure? Is it geo-specific? Is anyone internally asking these questions and then answering them and fixing them?

Thanks DivvyDeal

[baytrading1]

Can we please highlight this once again?

Thanks

[MrSteve007]

By far the slowest banking site I've ever experienced.  Running reports is extremely frustrating and I use PayPal for very few transactions.  It literally took more than 5 minutes to download a Monthly Financial Summary report from August of last year that contained 15 transactions! 

Just for the initial "summary view" report to load: over 30 seconds. 

To open the "view details" page: over 30 seconds to load. (also I'd prefer to skip the summary view and come directly here but can't)

The report only shows 10 transactions per "page" so for each pagination click: 30 seconds to load.  There's not even an option to load more on the same page which is ridiculous.

Download to PDF: over 5 minutes!

(logged out and back in, went through the whole slow set of steps above and retried the PDF download as I had to believe there was some error.... took 45 seconds on the second attempt)

Download to CSV: took about 30 seconds (but only after the initial PDF download)

I thought it may be a problem based on using Chrome browser.  Logging out and logging into IE I was presented with an entirely different interface which baffles me.  The "Money" section also had an error that the "information is unavailable at this time".  I couldn't even navigate to Reports as there was no option showing for it! 

The amount of time I wasted trying to download a year's worth of reports has made me really question if I'd want to continue using PayPal (as we don't currently run a lot of transactions) or suggest it to my business clients.

Hopefully PayPal is working to address this problem.

[HowardSue]

It's PayPal I'm using my iPad and a our desktop makes no different At times the information comes up quick on my iPad We can only hope the folks at PayPal will look in to the slow down loads I doubt it will change It's the same with the slow refund It took twenty day for a refund from J C Penny's Thank You

[Angellizbeth]

Yesterday and today (26th July 2014) have waited so long for login to process that have given up... I am talking more than ten minutes to load and still never did load before i shut it down.... How are we supposed to manage our occounts if paypal (|UK) doesn't let us in to our accounts?

[tombomb]

Hi Lucy

I experience far slower load times then reported here. For me to search for a transaction via the customers email address (advancd search) it takes between 3 - 7 minutes. Every time!! it is VERY frustrating.

can anything be done?

Its always been this slow.

[Queequeg]

Seconded, thirded and 4thed to the original post.  It's so frustrating that I can go to another website, print a couple of packing slips, and come back to Paypal still updating a confirmation number for another 3-4 seconds.  I regularly multi-task waiting on Paypal to load something (and updating confirmation numbers is one of the things that Paypal is quicker at).  It has been this way for me as long as I can remember, across multiple computers, homes, and internet connections.  I even installed Google Chrome to see if it would help and maybe it was a browser issue.

I actually upgraded my account to a full merchant account and found it got worse...because where in regular Paypal you are taken straight to your transactions where you can print labels, the merchant account forces me to go to an overview screen before I can go to the transaction screen...costing me another 15-20 seconds per transaction (because after I print a label I have to go back to the overview page first). 

I moved to Shipworks and Stamps.com, because for whatever reason, they can load data from Paypal faster than I can.  I can print a batch of 8-10 labels from Shipworks in about the time it takes to do 1 through Paypal.  Even just hitting the update button in Shipworks only takes about 8 seconds to log in to Paypal and retrieve all my transactions, about 45 seconds less than it would take me to log in manually and move to my transaction screen.  Having to copy over confirmation numbers is annoying though, as Paypal doesn't allow 3rd parties to pass the data back and update it automatically. (though that is a gripe for another time)

When I had extra time in my day, it didn't seem like such a big deal...but with the heavy growth our business has had, it makes more sense to use 3rd party software than to fight with Paypal any longer.  Since I've stopped using Paypal for  a shipping mechanism, I've regained over 90 minutes a day to my schedule.

It gives me a little chuckle that Google's first auto-finish for 'why is paypal' is 'so slow'.  Just doing a quick Google search shows that this is not in any way a new problem, and has in fact been around for years without being addressed.  Casual users are likely more tolerant of it, but the more volume you do, the more obvious it is. 

[LongHauler]

I find it terrible slow too and the page like never fully loads