How to Test Your Funnel Before Going Live: Test Mode

Written By Stefan S.

Last updated 15 days ago

We have created a “Test Mode” feature that can be found on your Campaigns dashboard.

Test mode can be enabled by going to the Campaigns Area and selecting Test Mode from the Campaign’s Status column.

Once test mode is enabled, you can test transactions using the landing page buttons or via the funnel checkout links without the fear of processing a payment. All other integrations attached to the campaign will still trigger for testing purposes.

After you go through the checkout page submission, you will see the Test transactions here:

When in test mode, we do not record test transactions as part of your live sales or traffic stats.

We will send IPN notifications to all 3rd parties to create things like Membership accounts, register customers for webinars, add customers to your email list, etc…

When you are happy with the results, simply enable the Active status for the campaign to return to actively processing transactions.

 Important Notes related to Test Mode 

PLEASE NOTE

In order to prevent confusion with real emails, test transactions will not trigger vendor “sales emails”.

We do recommend using a real email address when creating test transactions, or live transactions meant for testing purposes, as customer sales emails and other relevant emails would still trigger for the created transaction and/or subscription.

This will help avoid an increase of your email bounce rate.

Only live purchases will trigger vendor emails. You can set a product to $1 and make a live purchase if you need to test vendor-related emails.

In order to prevent fake shipping orders being sent, test transactions will not trigger shipping integrations if they are attached to the product.

Only live purchases will trigger shipping integrations.

More Important Notes about Test Mode purchase attempts:

If you have products in the sales funnel that share different campaigns, both campaigns will need to be placed in test mode if making test purchases.

In order to prevent confusion with affiliates, test mode transactions do not record an Affiliate related to the test transactions.

Subscriptions created in test mode will automatically cancel after 30 test rebill transactions have occurred related to the subscription. The subscription’s Status will be changed to Completed when the transaction limit is reached.


Testing API Calls while in Test mode may have a few limitations. While you can run calls for most actions, changing subscription terms by upgrading/downgrading customers to other plans would not be possible while in Test Mode, a Subscription record would need to be made in an Active campaign instead.

On October 4, 2023., PayKickstart has incorporated a testing logic for Funnels before they are launched:

New Logic:

  • Active Status → Test mode: Will not change product status.

  • Test Mode → Active Status: Will not change product status.

  • Active Status → Disabled Status: Will change all products to disabled status.

  • Disabled Status → Active Status: Will change all products to active status.

Additional Logic Notes:

  • Only Active campaigns can be switched to test mode.

  • Test mode Campaign can only be switched to Active status.

  • If the Campaign is disabled: Test mode cannot be selected.

  • If the Campaign is in test mode: Disabled mode cannot be selected.