How AB Split Test Handles Local & Staging Environments

Does activating a license on a WordPress staging site affect your license count?
No. AB Split Test is built to recognize common staging setups.

Using AB Split Test on Staging Sites

When you're setting up A/B tests, it’s common to want a safe space to experiment before pushing changes live. Whether you're working locally or testing on a hosted staging environment, AB Split Test is designed to support these workflows without using up your license activation.

How It Works

AB Split Test licenses are meant to activate on one live, production site.

But many sites also have a staging or development version. AB Split Test automatically detects and excludes these environments from license activation checks, so you can test freely without affecting your live setup.

Hosting Providers We Support

AB Split Test recognizes staging environments from many popular WordPress hosts, including:

• WP Engine
• InstaWP
• Cloudways
• Kinsta
• GoDaddy
• FlyWheel
• BlueHost
• HostGator
• SiteGround

These environments are handled automatically — no extra setup required.

Supported Subdomain Patterns

In addition to known hosts, AB Split Test also supports common subdomain formats often used for staging and QA environments:

• *.staging.example.com
• *.test.example.com
• staging-*.example.com
• dev.example.com

We also automatically ignore local development domains like:

• example.local
• example.test

These environments are fully supported and will not count toward your license activation.

Support for WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE

AB Split Test respects the WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE constant introduced in WordPress 5.5.

If your site defines this constant with values like staging, local, or development, AB Split Test will treat the site as non-production — regardless of the domain.

define( 'WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE', 'staging' );

This is especially useful for developers or teams working across multiple environments.

Summary

Environment Type	License Activation?
Live site (example.com)	✅ Yes
Local domains (.local, .test)	❌ No
Common staging subdomains (staging., dev.)	❌ No
Known host staging environments	❌ No
WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE = staging	❌ No