Painfully slow checkout [ Enfold / WooCommerce ]

The checkout process is painfully slow for our customers. From the time a customer clicks the “Place Order” button in the checkout, it takes up to 30 seconds to complete the order. It doesn’t matter if they are paying with a credit card, using a purchase order or the check option, every time it’s a long long delay.

We have several plug-ins on our live site. However, on our development site we only have 2 plugins and the Enfold theme. The plugins we are using are listed below:

1. WooCommerce 3.5.4
2. UPS WooCommerce Shipping Plug-in by PluginHive

We are using WordPress 5.0.3 with <Enfold Parent 4.5.3 & Enfold Child Theme 1.0

It doesn’t matter if we are on the LIVE site (lots of plugins) or the DEVELOPMENT site (3 basic plugins), the results are the same … a very long wait between clicking the “Place Order” button and the order confirmation page.

The only solution I found so far is to add a preloader so at least it looks like the cart is doing something.

If you’d like to experience the delay I’m talking about, please visit our development site [link provided in private content]
As I mentioned this site only has the necessary plug-ins and themes to function. Feel free to test the checkout process using Check payment.

With all my testing, I have narrowed the problem down to one of these 3 things…

1. Enfold Theme
2. WooCommerce
3. UPS Shipping Plugin

4. Could the size of our database (1.1GB) be related to the delay? Any other idea of what may be causing this long delay?

   Thank you in advance!