Best Practices for Testing Entri Sell

Entri offers three Sell providers to choose from: GoDaddy, IONOS, and Squarespace. The right choice depends on your use case. Consider where your users are located, the TLDs each provider supports, and the pricing and commercial terms each one offers. If you're not sure which option is the best fit, please reach out to your account executive.

Overview

Testing the Entri Sell flow requires some care. Because domain purchases involve real payment processing and fraud detection systems, testing in the wrong environment or without the right configuration can result in blocked orders, unexpected charges, or domains registered to real accounts. Following the practices below will help you test reliably and safely, and provide specific recommendations for each provider:

General recommendations

1. Use Debug Mode When You Don't Want to Purchase Domains

If your goal is to test the UI flow or validate your integration without actually registering a domain, enable debugMode in your purchaseDomain config:

entri.purchaseDomain({
  applicationId: "your-app-id",
  token: yourToken,
  debugMode: true,
  dnsRecords: [...],
  // ...other config
});

When debugMode: true is set, the payment step is skipped entirely, and the user is taken directly to the success/congratulations screen. No domain is purchased, and no card is charged.

Use debug mode when:

• You are validating UI flows or callback behavior

• You are running automated or repeated tests

• You don't need a real domain to be registered

2. If Not Using Debug Mode, Use a Valid Credit Card

When testing the full purchase flow without debugMode, a real (valid) credit card must be used, even in the testing environment. Invalid or fake card numbers will cause the payment step to fail.

3. Account for Registration Time and DNS Propagation

The domain purchase process is not instantaneous. There are two stages that take time after a successful payment:

1. Domain registration: The registrar needs to process and review the domain registration before it becomes active. This typically takes a couple of minutes, but the provider reserves up to 48 hours for a registration review in some cases.

2. DNS propagation: Once the domain is registered, DNS records still need time to propagate across the internet before they are resolvable.

Both stages are expected behavior, not errors.

When building your integration, make sure to:

• Inform users that some time may pass after the purchase before everything is fully active

• Avoid treating a brief delay in DNS resolution as a failed purchase

• Use webhooks to receive reliable status updates on when a domain has been successfully configured

You can configure your webhook URL in the Entri Dashboard to receive sell events once the domain and DNS records are fully set up.

IONOS

This registrar markets a broad TLD catalog (they're one of Europe's largest registrars, so ccTLD coverage tends to be strong, especially European ones), but while testing this provider you may need to follow some instructions to avoid problems:

1. Always Use a Dev or Staging Application ID

The first rule of testing Entri Sell is: do not test in production.

Entri provides a dedicated testing environment for IONOS integrations. When your integration is pointed at this environment:

• Fraud checks are bypassed (except in Mexico)

• There are no restrictions on the number of domains that can be registered

• Email whitelisting is not required

• The freeDomain parameter and other options work without limitations

Contact Entri Support to confirm your testing environment is properly configured before you begin.

2. Understand Why Testing in Production Can Trigger Fraud Flags

The production environment has active fraud detection. Repeated test purchases, especially with inconsistent billing data, mismatched addresses, or cards that don't match the registrant information, can cause orders to be flagged as fraudulent.

Consequences of testing in production:

• Orders may be rejected or placed on hold

• Your integration's production standing could be affected

• Legitimate user purchases may be impacted

This is why the dedicated testing environment exists. Always use it for any non-production testing. For additional guidance on working with IONOS in production, refer to the IONOS General Guidelines article in our Help Center.

3. Free Domains Are Limited to One Per Account

The freeDomain: true parameter allows you to offer a domain at no cost to a user. This feature has an important limitation: only one free domain can be registered per account.

entri.purchaseDomain({
  // ...
  freeDomain: true,
});

When testing free domain flows:

• Do not attempt to register multiple free domains with the same account, as subsequent attempts will fail

• This feature must be enabled by Entri Support before it can be used

• It should only be offered to paid users only on your platform

4. Production Purchases Require Real, Consistent Billing Information

If a purchase is made in the production environment (intentionally or accidentally), the fraud filter will evaluate the order against the billing information provided. For the purchase to succeed:

• The billing name, address, and contact details must be real and accurate

• The credit card must match the billing information

• The data provided in whiteLabel.sell.contact (if prefilled) must be consistent with the payment method used

Running tests or submitting dummy billing data in production is very likely to result in the order being blocked. If you accidentally trigger a production purchase during testing, make sure the billing data is valid; otherwise, the order will not go through.

For GoDaddy and Squarespace, there are no specific recommendations besides the general one.

Need help configuring your Sell integration? Visit the Entri Developer Docs or contact Entri Support.