Going Live: Test Mode & Store Availability
Before your storefront takes real money from real customers, you'll want to try the whole checkout yourself. TimberCloud's Test Mode lets you do exactly that with a safe test card. This page covers Test Mode and its banner, how storefront features unlock as you move up plans, and the "store unavailable" messages a visitor sees if your subscription lapses.
Availability: Test Mode, checkout, and payments are part of the full commerce storefront — Commerce and up (paid plans). On the Free plan the storefront is a Request-a-Quote inquiry form with no checkout to test.
Test Mode: trial checkout safely
When your storefront is in Test Mode, a sticky amber banner appears across the top:
Test Mode – No real payments will be processed. Use test card: 4242 4242 4242 4242
While the banner is showing, checkout behaves exactly like the live experience — configure a product, add extras, choose shipping, and pay — except no real charge is made. Use the Stripe test card below to complete a payment end-to-end:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Card number | 4242 4242 4242 4242 |
| Expiry | Any future date (e.g. 12/34) |
| CVC | Any 3 digits (e.g. 123) |
| ZIP / postal | Any valid value |
This lets you (and your team) walk the full shopper journey — add to cart, configure options, complete the add-ons step, check out, then track and pay from the order page — before a single real customer sees it. Turn Test Mode on or off from your storefront/payment settings; see Payments.
Important: Being in a free trial is not the same as being in Test Mode. Once Stripe is connected and activated and Test Mode is off, your storefront takes real payments — even during a 14-day trial. Always confirm Test Mode is off before you announce your store, and confirm it's on while you're just testing.
A good pre-launch test run
- Turn Test Mode on.
- Open your embedded storefront on your website.
- Add a product to the cart and configure its options (watch the Visual Configurator if your product has a panel grid).
- Add a per-product add-on, then complete the order-wide add-ons step.
- At checkout, try Carrier Services to pull live rates, then pay with 4242 4242 4242 4242.
- Open the resulting order, refresh tracking, and try the Pay Remaining Balance flow and invoice-PDF download.
- When everything looks right, turn Test Mode off to go live.
How features unlock by plan
What your storefront can do is set by your subscription plan — the same embed code behaves differently depending on where you are. Nothing needs to change in your website's HTML when you upgrade; the storefront switches automatically.
| Plan | Storefront behavior |
|---|---|
| Free | Request-a-Quote inquiry form — configure options and submit an inquiry. No cart, accounts, payments, or pricing. Monthly request cap and a non-removable "Powered by TimberCloud" footer. |
| Commerce and up | The full commerce storefront — cart, customer accounts, Stripe checkout, live carrier rates, order tracking, pay-online, reviews, and the Visual Configurator — with the TimberCloud footer removed. |
Note: The Visual Configurator (2D/3D product preview) and Carrier Services (live shipping rates at checkout) are bundled into every paid plan — Commerce, Build, Production, and Enterprise. There's no separate add-on to buy for either. Higher tiers (Build and up) add dashboard-side power like Reports, Purchasing, and the 3D Kitchen Designer, but the customer-facing storefront capabilities are all present from Commerce.
See Subscriptions & Plans for the full tier breakdown.
"Store Unavailable" states
If your TimberCloud subscription isn't in good standing, the storefront replaces your catalog with a branded message so shoppers aren't left staring at a broken page. Active and trialing subscriptions always render normally; the states below are what a visitor sees otherwise:
| Subscription status | What the visitor sees |
|---|---|
| Active or Trialing | The storefront renders normally — a trial counts as live. |
| Past due | "This store is temporarily unavailable due to a past due payment. Please contact the store owner." |
| Unpaid | "This store is currently unavailable due to unpaid subscription fees…" |
| Canceled | "This store is no longer active. The subscription has been canceled…" |
| Paused | "This store has been temporarily paused by the owner. Please check back later." |
| Incomplete / setup not finished | A "Store Setup Incomplete" message. |
The takeaway: keep your subscription current so your storefront never goes dark. If you ever see one of these messages on your own live embed, check your billing status — restoring the subscription brings the storefront right back.
Next Steps
- Payments — connect Stripe, and turn Test Mode on and off
- Subscriptions & Plans — how features unlock across tiers
- Storefront Features — the full customer-facing experience to test
- Setup — install the storefront before your test run
- The Free Inquiry Storefront — the Free-plan experience