You’re able to test your integration with Paddle through a range of different methods, some of which are specific to the type of product you’re looking to sell.

Sandbox

The best way to test your Paddle integration and checkout flow is with our sandbox environment.

• If you’re new to Paddle, make sure you sign up for a live account first so we can get your account verified. In the meantime, you can already sign up for a sandbox account and test while we make sure your production account is ready to start selling.

• If you’re already with Paddle, sign up for a sandbox account to experiment and test your integration in the sandbox environment.

Using the sandbox you can:

• Use test cards to simulate successful or unsuccessful transactions, and test 3D Secure authentication experiences with no limitations
• Experiment with your checkout branding before surfacing it to customers
• Test the end-to-end customer experience, review automated emails, check access management, and more

Testing on sandbox avoids polluting your live data or metrics, with everything kept separate from your live account.

Live Testing

Once you’re happy with your implementation in Sandbox, there are still ways of testing your checkout and expected customer flows from your live, ‘production’ setup. Although note that testing with real (even refunded or discounted) transactions might confuse your reporting.

Full purchase & refund

The above method is useful to ensure you’re happy with the monetary flow of transactions.

Having set up your product or subscription plan with Paddle you should be provided with a checkout link. Visit this and purchase (optionally use a discount code), running through the on-screen instructions.

Following this you’re able to issue yourself a full refund at zero cost – instructions on how to do this can be found here.

The method above is the most true-to-life test of a checkout.

Discounts for products

Having set up a product (one-time) in your dashboard, as well as being provided with a checkout link, the ability to add discounts for your product should also become available.

Set up a 100% off discount, and apply this during the checkout process to test.

This particular test is useful for learning more about the user-flow post-purchase, seeing what emails are delivered, and more. For information on customizing these emails, see here.

Test plans for recurring billing

When setting up recurring billing with Paddle, we recommend setting up a range of test plans, listed with a free price. These plans will still use the same webhook events system as the paid plans – sending an HTTP POST to your webhook endpoint for each action against a subscription (such as a subscription payment, plan change, or cancellation). The same events a paid plan will need to sync with.

Once you’re happy your recurring billing integration is complete, and in sync with your own site we recommend running through some full purchase tests (to be refunded).