Journey Test Mode

Before you turn on a journey or send a personalized message, you can confirm it's set up correctly using real subscriber and event data — instead of guessing or sending yourself a test message and hoping it's representative. You can preview how a single message will render for an actual subscriber, or test an entire journey end-to-end to see exactly how a subscriber would move through it.

What is it?

There are two related ways to validate your setup with real data: testing an entire journey end-to-end, and previewing a single message. This article focuses on end-to-end testing.

Test a journey end-to-end. From the journey editor, you can simulate how a specific subscriber would move through the entire journey — not just preview one message. You can:

• Preview a subscriber one at a time to see how the messages render for each

  • Select a subscriber by phone number or segment membership

  

  • Cycle through random subscriber profiles
  • Previews are available for one subscriber at a time (number of profiles varies by journey type)
  • View up to 10 of a subscriber's most recent events (number of events varies by journey type)
• Edit an event's payload to preview a message using data that isn't in the event yet. Useful when you're building a journey before your custom events are fully populated, for example filling in a product name and image URL to see how the message renders once real events start coming in.
  • Editing a payload only changes what you see in the preview — it doesn't affect the subscriber's actual event data in your account.
  • Note: If a macro has no value in the event payload and no fallback is set, the message won't send. Previewing with an edited payload is the fastest way to catch this before you set the journey live.

This also shows you:

• Whether the subscriber would enter the journey
• Which branch they'd go down, for every branch in the journey
• Which messages they'd receive (and which they wouldn't, based on branching and channel subscription)
• When and why they'd exit the journey
• A preview of each message (email, text, or push) they'd receive, rendered with their actual data

Where this applies:

• Journey testing works for all journey trigger types except INTEGRATION_EVENT. Here are the most common triggers of that type:
  • Shopify FULFILLMENT_DELIVERED
  • Shopify FULILLMENT_OUT_FOR_DELIVERY
  • Shopify CHECKOUT_STARTED
  • Klaviyo EMAIL_MESSAGE_OPENED
  • Klaviyo EMAIL_MESSAGE_SENT

• For journeys triggered by USER_WIN_BACK, PRODUCT_REVIEWS_REQUESTED, or TEXTED_A_KEYWORD, you can select a subscriber to test, but you can't select a specific event.

How do I use it?

To test a journey:

1. Open the journey you want to test.
2. Check the box for Test mode.

3. Identify a subscriber

• View a random subscriber’s experience by using the arrows to cycle through suggested profiles

• Search for a specific subscriber’s phone number or email address

• Select a subscriber based on segment membership

4. The subscriber’s path will be highlighted in the editor
5. (Optional) From the eligible events dropdown, choose the event to test against — the most recent eligible event is selected by default. Eligible events are limited to those from the last 90 days and must match the journey's trigger type.
   • Use this when comparing different events for the same subscriber

6. (Optional) To see or edit the event payload, open it from the modal.
   • (Optional) Edit JSON to change this preview for QA purposes. JSON changes will only be reflected in this preview, and will not affect actual subscriber data
     • Scroll down to see the subscriber's full path through the journey: which branches they'd take, which messages they'd receive, and when they'd exit.
     • Click any message in the path to open a full preview of it, rendered with the selected subscriber and event data.

Why should I use it?

Journeys and personalized messages drive a meaningful share of revenue — a broken journey or a message that fails to render correctly can mean lost sales and a poor subscriber experience. Testing with real subscriber and event data (instead of placeholder values or a single test send to yourself) lets you catch branching mistakes, missing data, and rendering issues before subscribers ever see them, so you can launch a journey or send a message with confidence instead of finding out something's wrong after the fact.