What If We Already Using The IPN Notification URL?

Question:

I would like to know if SB require the IPN notification URL to be set in Paypal located an: My Account/Profile/Selling preferences/Instant Payment Notification preferences

Because we already have an integration using the IPN notification URL,
and because there is only 1 possible URL/account, our concern is that we would need a second PayPal account to test this setup out?

Answer:

There are three possible approaches:

Option One: Use AN PayPal IPN Forwarder

There are a number of free or premium plugins and services that forward IPNs and send them to multiple destinations. I personally have not used any to cannot make a recommendation. All I can say is that the information is highly sensitive so make sure you apply due diligence in whatever decision you make.

The plain forwarding feature is one that we will add to the plugin in the future. Right now the plugin has a feature than acknowledges and saves the IPN before forwarding which is used in option two.

Option Two: Set Up A Secondary Listener

SubscriptionBoss supports the concept of a PayPal IPN secondary listener. SubscriptionBoss will acknowledge receipt of IPNs back to PayPal then forward them on to the secondary listener URL.

Screenshot of SubscriptionBoss PayPal Notification Settings

Here, you can copy the existing PayPal IPN URL into the secondary listener URL on SubscriptionBoss Settings and then specify the SubscriptionBoss URL as the IPN listener on PayPal: http://www.yousite.com/wp-content/plugins/subscriptionboss/subb-ipn.php.

Option Three: Use The PayPal Sandbox

If your main purpose is to run an extensive test then use the PayPal Sandbox. You can set up a vendor account in the PayPal Sandbox just for testing SubscriptionBoss which has the SubscriptionBoss URL, http://www.yousite.com/wp-content/plugins/subscriptionboss/subb-ipn.php, as the IPN listener in the PayPal Sandbox.

Then in SubscriptionBoss click the checkbox so SubscriptionBoss will run dummy transactions in the sandbox instead of real transactions. You will also store your PayPal Sandbox API Username, password and signature in SB settings.

Screenshot of SubscriptionBoss PayPal Authentication Settings

When you have tested to your satisfaction, you can switch into “live” mode by clearing the checkbox and replacing the PayPal Sandbox API keys by the real PayPal API keys , then set up the secondary listener, run a final test with real money then go live.

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