Test members

Before you launch, you test. You buy your own product through the provider's sandbox or with a test card, and PayGlue creates a member in Ghost exactly as it would for a reader. That is the point of the test. It also leaves a member behind who is not a reader.

What a test purchase looks like in Ghost

PayGlue knows when a purchase was a test, because the provider says so: Polar's sandbox, Creem's test mode, Dodo Payments' test mode, Lemon Squeezy's test mode, Gumroad's test sales, and Paddle or PayPal connections that are set to sandbox. Ko-fi and Patreon have no test mode, so nothing from them is ever marked.

Such a member is created with everything a real one gets: the access, the labels, the newsletter subscription and the emails your rule asks for. That is the point of a test, you want to see the magic link arrive and the newsletter toggle flip. Two things are added so you can tell it apart afterwards:

• the label payglue-test, next to the usual four
• the line "Test purchase (provider sandbox or test mode)" in the note

If you would rather keep test members out of a newsletter while you test, set the rule's newsletter option to No for the test product and switch it back before launch.

Note: For Polar, PayGlue learns whether your token is a sandbox token when you open a product picker in the dashboard. Open one once after connecting Polar; from then on sandbox purchases are marked.

Cleaning up

Test members stay until you delete them. In Ghost Admin, filter members by the label payglue-test and delete the selection. The same filter shows you at a glance how many tests have run.

If you want to try the whole flow without leaving anything on your own site, use our demo publication at demo.payglue.io with a throwaway address; it runs on Polar's sandbox and is cleaned up regularly.