Before the Domain Switches: A Roofing Website Launch Checklist for AccuLynx Shops

No sandbox, so every test lead is a real record

AccuLynx documents no sandbox or test environment, as of October 2026. Every test your website sends lands in a live AccuLynx location, next to real homeowners. That is manageable with three habits. The office creates a lead source called something like Website Test, so test jobs are easy to find and easy to leave out of reports. Every test contact gets an obvious name and your own office phone, never a stranger's. And one named person closes out the test jobs the same day.

Access comes first, because it waits on people. API keys require the AppConnections add-on, enabled from the Add-Ons section of AccuLynx's Market, and a Location or Company Administrator creates each key in Account Settings. Accounts with several locations connect each one individually, so a three-office company tests three connections, not one. The key goes into the site's server settings; we never need your AccuLynx login, and AccuLynx's docs say to treat a key like a password. Our AccuLynx API guide explains access in full, and the section starts at the AccuLynx integration hub.

The office-wall sheet: what to prove and what passing looks like

Print this, hand it to whoever owns the website, and do not launch until every row has a date and a set of initials beside it.

Forms and booking: read the result in AccuLynx, not on the thank-you page

A thank-you page proves the website believes it sent something. Only AccuLynx proves it arrived. For each test, open the job in AccuLynx and compare it, line by line, with the lead forms field map.

• The contact. First and last name in their own fields, a 10-digit phone with the right type, the email, and a mailing address only where the form asked for one.
• The job. Lead milestone, unassigned, with the property address, the lead source ID from that form, and the category, work type and trade types your office chose.
• The notes. Readable sentences built from the homeowner's answers, under 1,000 characters, with anything longer in a job message.
• The appointment. For a booking, the initial appointment shows the chosen window in your local time, even though the API takes times in UTC. A window off by five or six hours is the classic launch bug.
• The reschedule. Move the test appointment inside AccuLynx, then confirm the site receives the Job Appointments Initial Updated webhook and tells the homeowner the new time.

The online booking page explains which booking steps are live and which wait for the office; this list simply proves each one. Storm forms get extra rows of their own, covered in the storm and insurance leads guide.

Webhooks, retries and the subscription you cannot edit later

Two AccuLynx details deserve their own line on any launch plan. A webhook subscription's consumer URL cannot be changed after it is created, so the subscription for the live site is made for the live domain after DNS moves, not carried over from staging. And AccuLynx disables a subscription whose listener errors too many times, so a listener that crashes during launch week can go silent without anyone noticing.

Then rehearse failure on the sending side: break the key on staging, submit, restore it, and watch the queue retry and empty. A 429 Too Many Requests should produce a slower retry, never a lost lead. AccuLynx publishes rate limits in two places with different numbers, and the API guide quotes both with their sources.

Text-back and tracking: two checks that fail without a sound

Texting fails loudly for the homeowner and silently for you. Test it with your own phone: submit a form, receive the confirmation, reply STOP, then submit again. Under the FCC's revocation rules in effect since April 11, 2025, a stop reply to a text is a reasonable way to revoke consent, and CTIA's best practices call for one final opt-out confirmation, then silence. Confirm the site reads AccuLynx's SMS opt-out details on the contact and logs each text with Create Contact Log. If you send through your own provider, confirm the number is registered for A2P 10DLC, which Twilio says US application texting over 10DLC numbers requires. None of this is legal advice; the AccuLynx SMS page has the detail.

Tracking breaks the same way: no error, just a report months later that credits nothing to the ads. AccuLynx lists no Google Ads integration, so the site must catch the Google click ID on landing, carry it through the form and store it in a job custom field or the notes. If anyone uploads signed contracts back to Google, confirm the upload uses Google's Data Manager API, where offline conversion import moved starting June 15, 2026. The marketing attribution guide and our conversion tracking setup cover the chain, and the dashboards and reporting page shows what to build once the data is clean.

Speed, redirects and service-area pages: launch checks AccuLynx never sees

A site can pass every AccuLynx test and still lose its launch to a slow home page or a dead old URL. List every address your trucks, yard signs, postcards, ads and listings point to, and make sure each one ends at a working page with a connected form. Moving off WordPress makes this list longer, and WordPress to Next.js covers that migration.

Service-area pages need real towns and real content, not one paragraph with the city name swapped, as our service area page guide explains. The Google Business Profile should match the site's name, address and phone exactly; the map pack audit checks that for free. Four agents in Athena CMS carry part of the load after launch: Iris keeps titles, descriptions and structured data in order, Hestia keeps hours, phone and address identical everywhere, Ariadne handles internal links, and Argus watches for failing forms, broken links and slow pages.

Launch week in order, from the first key to the first real lead

1. 1

   Enable access early

   AppConnections on, one key per location, created by your administrator and pasted into the server settings. This waits on people, so it goes first.

2. 2

   Create the lead sources

   A website parent, a child per form or campaign, and a test source. The API can only pick from active sources.

3. 3

   Sign the field map

   Every form question, its AccuLynx field and its rule, approved by the office. A change after this point is a new test.

4. 4

   Build the queue before the forms

   Submissions saved on the site first, sent from the server, retried with backoff and logged in plain words.

5. 5

   Submit every form on staging

   One test per form under the test source, each checked in AccuLynx against the field map.

6. 6

   Book a test inspection

   Check the appointment's local time, then move it in AccuLynx and watch the reschedule notice go out.

7. 7

   Rehearse failure

   A bad key, a timeout, a rate limit. Nothing lost, one alert, no duplicate job.

8. 8

   Test text-back with your own phone

   Confirmation, STOP, one opt-out confirmation, then nothing further, with the log on the contact.

9. 9

   Check the tracking chain

   A test click ID captured on landing and stored on the job; tracked call numbers swapping where you use them.

10. 10

    Map redirects, then move DNS

    Every old URL points to its new page before the domain switches.

11. 11

    Create the live webhook subscription

    After DNS, for the live URL, since a consumer URL cannot be edited later. Then send AccuLynx's test event to it.

12. 12

    Close out the test jobs

    Every test record finished by the named person, and the test source excluded from reports.

13. 13

    Read the first two weeks

    Compare every submission in the site's log with a job in AccuLynx. One for one, or find out why.

Who keeps watching once the launch cake is gone

Sign-off belongs to the people who will feel a failure first: the office manager who works new leads each morning, the sales manager whose reps drive to the inspections, and the owner who pays for the ads. After launch, our hosting and maintenance plans cover updates, with no long contract, and a fresh test belongs on the calendar after any change to the forms or to AccuLynx settings.

Building new? Custom roofing sites start at a fixed $1,500 with inspection booking built in, and our web design pricing page recommends the 51 to 70 page package at $5,750, with 0% financing at 25% down. Already live? A free site audit shows which rows of the sheet your site fails today, the free mockup shows what a rebuild could look like, and (210) 346-0848 reaches a person who can walk the list with you.