Sandbox Sites are dedicated, standalone environments built for safe development, testing, and prototyping. Unlike staging sites, sandbox sites are not connected to production and are designed for flexibility — giving developers and agencies a clean space to experiment without risk.
You can create one sandbox site per production site. If you’re on a 1-site plan, you’re allowed one Sandbox Site in addition to one Staging site.
Why Sandbox Sites?
Until now, Pressable offered production and staging environments — but we saw the need for more flexibility in the earlier phases of a project. Staging sites are great for pre-launch work, but not ideal for quick experiments or collaborative development. To align with this workflow, Sandbox Sites use development for the WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE, whereas Staging sites use staging.
Sandbox Sites were created to fill that gap. They provide a clearly labelled, dedicated environment for building and testing in the early stages — helping teams work faster and more freely. With one Sandbox Site available per production site, users can enjoy a more complete and streamlined workflow, all without adding complexity or cost.
This article covers how Sandbox Sites work, how to set them up, and how they differ from staging and production environments.
Creating a Sandbox Site
You’ll see the Sandbox option when creating a new site on your Pressable Control Panel.
Domains cannot be attached to Sandbox Sites. However, if you have a custom staging domain, you can use that for your Sandbox sites as well.
When created, these sites are automatically protected by Basic Authentication via the pressable-basic-authentication plugin.
When created, Sandbox sites are automatically protected by Basic Authentication via the pressable-basic-authentication plugin.
A “Sandbox” flag is shown beside the domain in your site list and also on each site’s dashboard for quick identification:
You can filter your site list to view sites by Environment Type. By selecting the Sandbox Only option, you will see a list of all your Sandbox sites.
Site Actions for Sandbox Sites
Convert a Sandbox Site to Staging or LIve
A Sandbox site can be converted to a Staging site or a Live site. Upgrading a sandbox site to live will make it billable and allow custom domain connections.
Switching it to staging keeps it free of charge while activating staging capabilities.
Convert a Site to a Sandbox Site
A staging site or a live site can also be converted to a Sandbox site. Before a live site can be converted, make sure that any domains are removed from the site.
Clone any site as a Sandbox Site
A Sandbox Site can also be cloned just as any other site on Pressable. When cloning any site, you can now choose to Clone as Sandbox Site.
You can view your clones – either staging clones, sandbox clones or live site clones from your site’s settings page. The icon next to the site name will indicate ifit is a Sandbox or Staging site.
Managing Data on Sandbox Sites
- The Pressable Backups (default/on-demand) and Automated Restore features work on Sandbox sites as well.
- Just like any other sites on Pressable, the Data Sync feature can be used to push content, database, and filesystem changes from a Sandbox Site to any other site.
Jetpack can be enabled on Sandbox Sites as well, to provide additional security and monitoring features.
API Support for Sandbox Sites
The Pressable API now includes full support for Sandbox Sites:
- Create a Sandbox Site via the
Create Siteendpoint (sandbox: true) - Clone an existing site as a Sandbox via the
Clone Siteendpoint - Convert an existing site (live or staging) to Sandbox
- Convert a Sandbox site to Staging or Live via new endpoints
Refer to the API documentation for complete usage details and examples.