Memory Allocation - Too many characteristics

Need help resolving a memory allocation issue on this site we are building. I have 395 products (not that many), each product has up to at least 7 characteristics that I have created, some of the characteristics have up to 20 or more values. Thus, I am running into a memory allocation fatal error... To no avail, I have attempted to mitigate the issue by upping my memory_limit setting to a whopping 1024M.

Should I (would I) be better off making each of these characteristics "custom fields" instead? Not all products have the same attributes (characteristics) though.

The problem does not come from the number of products you have but from your characteristics.
You have too much possibilities. For example, if you have 3 characteristics with 10 values each, that's 10*10*10=1000 possibilities. That's already too much.
You should indeed transform some characteristics into custom fields ( www.hikashop.com/en/support/documentatio...p-field-listing.html ) or options ( www.hikashop.com/en/support/documentatio...ct-form.html#options ) so that it becomes more manageable for your server.

Characteristics should only be used when you want to change some of the information on the products (the stock, the price, the image, etc). For choices which do not affect any of that custom fields of the table "item" are the way to go.

Thank you for confirming the "custom_fields" fix, worked like a charm.