RedPodium offers a few different ways to test your registration page depending on your needs and preferences. Testing is an important process to make sure everything is looking and exporting just as you'd expect. Testing allows to review the entire registrant and admin experience.

This guide will walk you through each way you can test and why each one might be useful.

The first and easiest way to test your registration page is by hitting save on your registration page from the builder and then clicking preview. This will launch your registration page in a new tab and place a red border around the entire page letting you know the page you're viewing for testing and previewing only.

The preview mode is best for testing the visual and communication experience of your registration page including the purchasing experience, confirmation page, and confirmation email. You can test all these without entering a credit card or paying real money - so don't be afraid to use it a lot.

Preview mode will not accept a real credit card (even if you try). It will not issue real confirmations, and will not alter any capacities limits or inventory of any items you are selling. For your convenience, Preview mode also places a dummy credit card in the billing section so you can quickly get to the confirmation page and email quickly.

Preview mode respects all actions including dates so you can test actions sufficiently.

Remember, preview mode is for simulation purposes only and is the best way to quickly test the visual experience end to end.

Given Preview mode will not process real cards nor issue real confirmations, no data will be saved to your account when using preview mode. So no reports will be generated from Registrations placed through Preview mode. To test reports, analytics, integrations, and exports, with real data, you will need to choose another testing method.

Here is a summary of what can and can't be done through Preview mode:

A second way to test your registration page is to publish your registration page with a real payment processor and enter a real credit card. The primary benefit of this method is to test that your payment processor is accepting and processing credit cards as expected, but is not useful for repetitive testing. A frequent trick to test with a real registration page is to make a low-cost registration option or issue a coupon code that makes the checkout price very low. It's not recommended to test with high-dollar test transactions.

After testing with a real credit card, you can go and cancel the registration and issue yourself a refund. It is recommended you cancel and refund immediately after your test so that your test money does not end up being part of your payout. If you allow your own test credit card charge to be paid out in your direct deposit, credit card companies will likely flag you as fraudulent use for paying yourself.

Testing with a real credit card will issue real confirmation, capacities and limits will be deducted, all data will be saved, and reports and analytics will all be generated with the registration. You cannot delete this data or tests, but you can cancel the registrations or archive the page. Testing with real credit cards should be reserved primarily for testing the payment processor. If you test your own credit card too many times, your own bank may flag your activity as suspicious and lock your card.

In the list of payment processors in your RedPodium account, you can choose an option that is called "Tester (For Testing Only)". This is essentially a fake payment processor that will accept certain fake credit card numbers. The reason you might want to add a Tester payment processor is you want to test the exports, reporting, analytics, and integrations without spending real money.

The Tester payment processor is best when deep and extensive testing is needed. For example, if you are setting up an integration with Salesforce, Quickbooks, Mailchimp, or any other integration through Zapier, you will want to test certain workflows and review how the data flows to those services. Since Preview mode does not work for this and you won't want to pay real money, the Tester Payment processor is an excellent use.

Using the Tester payment processor will allow you to issue a real confirmation to test scanning and you can practice the edit registration management workflow as well where you can practice upgrades, downgrades, cancellations and more. All exports, reports, and analytics will work with the exception of Payout Summaries and Payout Reports because there was no real funds being processed.

Be advised that data captured and processed with the Tester payment processor is just like real transactions and cannot be deleted. Most commonly customers after testing with the Tester payment processor will clone the page and then link a real payment processor to the new page (and archive the old page linked to the Tester payment processor). This allows you to start fresh with no test data.

Now when you place registrations through the Published page enter one of the following dummy credit card numbers (and be sure to enter an expiration date in the future and make up the CVV number

To simulate a decline, use 4111-1111-1111-1111 card number but make sure the amount to be charged is $5. Using the dummy credit card number for a $5 charge is programmed to always give a decline so you can test that workflow.

Q: Am I charged RedPodium fees for registrations that use the tester payment processor?

A: No fees are charged that run through the tester payment processor.

Q: What credit card numbers should I use when testing with a Tester Payment Processor?

A: You can use any of the following tester credit card numbers:

Q: What if someone tries to place a registration with a real credit card when my page is published to a tester payment processor?

A: If someone tries to use a real credit card on a page linked to a tester payment processor, the registration will be declined and they will receive this error message: