Before pushing an NPS survey to your users, verify that it looks right, appears on the correct pages, and targets the right audience. There are several testing methods — use whichever fits your situation.

Choose a testing method

Preview in the Builder

Use this for a quick visual check of colors, labels, and content while you're still building.

1. Open your NPS survey in the Appcues Builder.
2. Click the Preview button (the eye icon in the top toolbar, next to Target & Publish). Enter a Preview URL. The survey renders as an end user would see it.
3. Walk through both steps: verify the score question text, endpoint labels ("Not likely" / "Very likely"), the "Ask me later" button text, and the feedback question on the next step.

Preview does not test targeting, frequency, or sampling. It also won't submit real data — use a Permalink or a published test for that.

Test with a Permalink

Permalinks are the fastest way to see the survey live in your app and test a real score submission. They bypass all targeting rules (page, audience, frequency, sampling), so the survey shows immediately.

1. Find your NPS survey ID. Open the survey in Studio — the ID is in the URL (e.g., https://studio.appcues.com/nps/abc123-def456 → the ID is abc123-def456).
2. Append the ID to any URL in your app using this format:

https://yourapp.com/any-page?appcue=YOUR_NPS_ID

3. If the URL already contains a ?, use & instead:

https://yourapp.com/dashboard?page=3&appcue=YOUR_NPS_ID

4. Open the Permalink in your browser while logged in to your app. The NPS survey appears immediately, regardless of targeting settings.
5. Submit a test score. The response shows up in the survey's analytics page within minutes.

The survey must be published for Permalinks to work. See Permalinks for more details.

Test page and audience targeting

Preview and Permalinks don't test whether your targeting rules are working correctly. To verify that the right users see the survey on the right pages, use one of these methods. 

Publish to a staging environment

If you have a staging environment with Appcues installed, this is the safest way to test end-to-end.

1. Add your staging domain to your Appcues account if you haven't already.
2. In the survey's targeting settings, under Environment targeting, select Only the domains I choose and check only your staging domain.
3. Set sampling to 100% and minimum page views to 0 so the survey shows immediately during testing.
4. Click Push changes. The survey is now live only on staging.
5. Log in to your staging environment as a test user who matches the audience criteria. Navigate to a targeted page, meet the page view threshold, and confirm the survey appears.
6. After testing, update the environment targeting to include your production domain and push changes again.

Publish to internal testers 

If you don't have a staging environment, publish the survey to production but restrict the audience to internal users.

1. Create a Segment that targets only your team — for example, email contains @yourcompany.com.
2. In the survey's targeting settings, under Audience targeting, select Users in a Segment and choose your internal segment.
3. Set sampling to 100% and minimum page views to 0 so the survey shows immediately during testing.
4. Click Push changes. Only users in your internal segment see the survey.
5. Test as one of those users. Verify the survey appears on the correct pages and doesn't appear on excluded pages.
6. After testing, update the audience to your production segment and restore your production sampling and page view settings.

Use the diagnostics tool

The diagnostics tool lets you check whether a specific user qualifies for the survey without publishing.

1. On the survey's targeting settings page, click Check eligibility.
2. Enter a user ID. The tool shows whether the user matches the audience conditions.

This is useful for debugging why a specific user isn't seeing the survey after it's published.

What to verify during testing

• Appearance: Score buttons render in your brand color. Color contrast correctly against your site background. Labels display your custom text. The feedback question shows after selecting a score.
• Page targeting: The survey appears on pages you've included. Navigate to excluded pages and confirm it does not appear.
• Audience targeting: Log in as a user who matches your segment or conditions — the survey should appear. Log in as a user who doesn't match — it should not.
• Score submission: Submit a score via Permalink. Check the analytics page to confirm the response recorded with the correct score value and any feedback text.
• Localization (if configured): Test with a user whose locale property matches one of your translated languages. Verify the question, labels, and feedback prompt all render in the expected language.

Reset user profile

If you've already seen the survey and it won't show again (because you've completed the frequency cycle), you can reset your user's experience history:

• Reset all experiences: Go to Segments & Users, find your user, and click Reset User Profile. This clears all Appcues experience history for that user — Flows, Checklists, NPS, everything. Use with caution if you have other live experiences.

If the survey isn't showing during testing

• Permalink not working? Make sure the survey is published. Unpublished surveys can't be triggered via Permalink.
• Targeting seems correct but survey doesn't appear? Check the Appcues debugger — open it and verify all rows show green checkmarks. Red errors indicate an installation issue on that page.
• Domain mismatch? Expand "User Identified" in the debugger and check that _hostname matches a domain in your environment targeting.
• Priority conflict? If a Flow has a higher weight than the NPS survey and the user qualifies for both, the Flow shows instead. Check the priority order with View Flow priority in the targeting settings.
• Already completed the survey this cycle? The frequency setting blocks repeat views. Reset your testing state (see above) or wait for the cycle to expire.

See Troubleshoot NPS for a full diagnostic walkthrough.

If it's still not working, collect:

• NPS ID (from the URL on the settings page)
• User ID of the test user
• The URL where you're testing
• Screenshot of the debugger showing installation status

Then contact Appcues support.