Task · Account settings

Test in the sandbox

Open a copy of your whole account where you can try things without touching real sales.

6 steps · About 2 minutes

Your account comes with a sandbox: a copy of it holding every event, kept up to date from the real thing. You can register, refund and check people in there without any of it reaching your real orders, your real attendees or your real money.

1. Open the account switcher and select Switch to sandbox

   The switcher is your account's name at the left of the account bar. The pair at the top of the panel, above your other accounts, shows where you are and the switch to the other side. You arrive on the same screen you were looking at, so switching from an event's attendees puts you on that event's attendees in the copy.

   go.tito.io/acme/admin

2. Work in the copy

   A yellow bar across the top of every screen says where you are. It also says when the copy last updated, with Refresh to bring it up to date again and Leave sandbox to go back.

3. Register for your own event and see what comes out

   View event page at the foot of an event's sidebar opens the copy's own event page in a new tab. A dark strip across the top of it says the page is a copy and nothing on it is charged for real, so anyone you send the link to sees that too. Buy a ticket and the whole of it happens for you: the order page, the confirmation email, the ticket, and the ticket scanning at Check-in. The places you use come off the sandbox's own count, so your real event stays exactly as full as it was.

   There's nothing to set up first. Paying in the sandbox is simulated, so there's no card to type in: you pick what happens instead. Simulate a successful payment puts the order through as a real one, and Simulate a failed payment leaves it waiting so you can see what a buyer sees when a payment fails. In your orders list you can narrow to Test payment to see the ones you put through this way.

   Refunding one of those orders is simulated too. The tickets stop working and the places go back on sale. The order page and the buyer's email both say the refund was simulated.

   acme.go.tito.io/summer-fete

4. Try the other ways people register

   Every address your event answers on in your real account answers in the copy too. Portals, audience pages, application pages and widgets are all there, with the same dark strip across the top saying the page is a copy. A widget has its own snippet in the copy, pointing at the sandbox's address, so you can paste it into a test page on your own website and register through it the way your buyers do.

5. Connect your own sandbox to see your own ways to pay

   A simulated payment shows you what Tito does, and says nothing about whether your own payments work. An owner can connect a Stripe sandbox or a PayPal sandbox of their own: the yellow bar offers both, and either takes you to Integrations in the copy, where connecting works the way it does in your real account. Stripe and PayPal both ask you for a sandbox rather than a live account. Payments in the sandbox then go to that account and nowhere else, the simulated checkout steps aside, and the connection stays there through every refresh. Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link and the local ways to pay come from the account taking the payment, so this is the only way to see the ones your own buyers get.

6. Go back to live when you're done

   Leave sandbox in the bar, or Switch to live in the switcher. Both bring you back to the same screen in your real account.

   Switching only affects you.

   Two people on the same account can be in different places at the same time, and moving to the sandbox doesn't move anyone else.

   Set everything up in your real account.

   The sandbox follows it one way, so the screens that change how an event is set up aren't there. Prices, questions, ticket types and settings live only in your real account, and the copy picks them up the moment you switch in. Switching from one of those screens keeps you with the same event and opens its overview.

Good to know

• Guest lists arrive empty. The lists themselves come across so you find them where you left them, and the people on them never do, so you add the addresses you want to test with.
• The sandbox has its own web address, made from your account's name with sb- in front. Search engines are told to skip every page in it, so a copy of your shop stays out of results.
• Everything you do in there is separate. Its ticket types have their own places, so you can sell an event out in the sandbox with every real place still on sale.
• Emails from the sandbox really send, so you can read what an attendee reads. Every subject starts with "Test" and a dot. They only ever reach an address somebody typed into the sandbox.
• Only an owner can connect a Stripe sandbox, the same as payments in your real account. Everyone else on the account can register in the sandbox either way.
• Your automations run in the sandbox, and a step that posts to an address you typed still posts. A step that sends to a service you've connected is skipped, so a test registration never reaches Slack, Zoom or anything else on your Integrations page. The run says which service it skipped.