Testing your distribution
Simulate a lead to see which buyers match and why, preview what each one would receive, and check a buyer's endpoint is reachable.
Open a pipeline and click Test a lead. Fill in sample values and run it: you get the full routing decision without touching your data — which buyers were selected, which were skipped, and the condition-by-condition reason for each.
What the test console shows
- Validation — the sample is checked exactly like a real post. If it would be rejected (missing required field, malformed email), you get that error and no routing result: a lead that never gets accepted never reaches distribution.
- Selected buyers — with the rule name and tier that put the lead there.
- Skipped buyers — with the reason: conditions not met, at quota, already received this contact, prepaid balance too low.
- Why, per condition — expected value vs the value your sample carried, pass or fail.
- Delivery preview — what each selected buyer would receive in its own format: email body, webhook JSON, sheet row, SMS text. You can mail that preview to yourself; it's marked as a test and never goes to a buyer.
The decision itself is real: your buyers' current quotas, operating hours, prepaid balances and duplicate windows are all evaluated, so a buyer that's genuinely full shows up as at quota.
What a test lead does not do
Nothing about a test lead is recorded
It is not kept in your leads list, it is not deduplicated and never becomes a duplicate for later real leads, it does not count toward your plan's monthly lead quota, it does not consume any buyer's quota or prepaid balance, it creates no deliveries and is never billed. Run it as often as you like while tuning conditions.
Test leads are not scored
No quality score or grade is produced, so a condition or price rule on qualityScore / qualityGrade will not match in the test console. Check those against a real lead's routing trace instead.
Testing one buyer's endpoint
The test console proves your routing is right. To prove a buyer's connection works, use Test delivery on the rule: it builds a sample payload from that buyer's schema and field mapping and pushes it through the endpoint the rule would really use.
Test delivery reaches the real endpoint
The webhook is really POSTed, the email really sent to the buyer's address, the SMS really texted — flagged as a test, but the buyer sees it. Warn them first, or point the endpoint at a URL of your own. Google Sheets is the exception: dry run, no row written.
Common questions
Which do I use, "Test lead" or "Test delivery"? Test lead when you're asking who should get this? Test delivery when you're asking does this buyer's endpoint actually work?
The test says a buyer matches, but real leads aren't reaching it. Compare with a real lead's routing trace on the lead page. The usual causes change between runs: the buyer filled its quota, closed for the day, ran out of prepaid balance, or already had that contact.
Can I test a paused buyer? No. A paused rule is excluded from distribution entirely, so it won't appear in the results. Activate it, test, pause it again.
Should I use real customer data? No need, and don't. Type plausible fake values of the right shape — a real-looking email and phone are enough for validation to behave the same way.