Going live

You've built and tested your store in the test environment — this guide covers the steps to launch it: moving configuration and data to the live environment, installing apps, switching keys, enabling live payments, and verifying everything end to end.

Each environment has its own isolated database — the only objects shared between them are users and account settings (see Test environments for details). The practical implication: nothing you created in the test environment moves to live by itself. Products, settings, installed apps, and configuration all need to be recreated or copied.

Switch to the live environment with the store switcher in the dashboard, then work through your store's configuration: general settings, currencies and locales, shipping and tax settings, checkout settings, and notification toggles. Settings are managed per environment, so review each page you customized in test.

There's no built-in tool for copying records between environments, but the Backend API makes it straightforward: create two API clients — one with a test key and one with a live key — and copy collections across.

const swell = require('swell-node');

const test = swell.createClient('my-store', 'sk_test_...');
const live = swell.createClient('my-store', 'sk_live_...');

let page = 1;
while (true) {
  const { results } = await test.get('/products', { limit: 100, page });
  if (!results.length) break;

  for (const product of results) {
    await live.post('/products', product);
  }

  page++;
}

Posting the full record preserves its id, which keeps references between records intact — important when copying multiple collections that link to each other. Copy collections in dependency order (products and customers before anything that references them), and see the Migrate to Swell guide for ordering details and the $migrate flag's tradeoffs. In most cases you'll only copy catalog data — test orders and test customers usually shouldn't follow you to production.

Apps are installed per environment. During development, the CLI pushes your app to the test environment; to go live, install a released version into the live environment:

swell app install -s your-store-id -e live

Two things to know about live installs:

Updating an installed app in a live store requires incrementing the app version first — see App development for the versioning workflow.

The API key in a request determines which environment handles it — swapping keys is the actual cutover. Replace pk_test_ keys in your storefront and sk_test_ keys in your server code and integrations with their pk_live_ and sk_live_ equivalents from Developer → API keys.

Test environments only allow payment gateways in test mode, so this step can only happen in live: in Settings → Payments, connect your gateway with its live credentials and disable any test/sandbox mode. If a payment app provides your gateway, its live credentials belong in the app's settings, as noted above.

Review anything that talks to your store from outside: webhook endpoints should be your production URLs, and external services calling app functions must use the live app keys. Likewise, any scheduled jobs or integrations using a secret key should be switched to the live key.