Gravity Forms
+ Test Mode

Every change to a form needs a test, and every test on a live site has side effects. The sales team gets a fake lead, the customer receipt goes to whatever address you typed, the CRM, mailing list and spreadsheet get a row, and the entries list fills up with “test test” submissions that nobody cleans up. So people test less, and broken forms reach real visitors.

The Gravity Forms Test Mode add-on makes testing safe. Switch test mode on from the admin bar, or send a client a private test link, and submit the form as a visitor would. The entry is saved and marked as a TEST entry, every notification goes only to the tester with [TEST] in the subject (or is not sent at all), add-on feeds such as your CRM, email marketing, spreadsheet or webhooks are skipped, and a ribbon above the form says exactly what will happen. Test entries are easy to find, filter and move to the Trash, and the test log shows what every test run sent and skipped.

When a tester submits a form, the add-on marks the new entry as a test entry before notifications and feeds run. Gravity Forms then asks which notifications to send and which feeds to process: for a test entry the add-on rewrites each notification so that it reaches only the tester, or skips it, and drops the add-on feeds while payment add-ons keep running. Because the decision is stored on the entry, notifications sent later in the background or resent from the entry screen follow the same rules. Test links are signed with a secret key on your site and kept in a cookie for the life of the link; nothing is sent to any outside service.