Benchmark & Customer Test Tools

The settings page ships two tools that answer the two questions you actually care about:

• “Are my per-visitor prices correct?” → the Test tool (“See what each customer sees”, Main tab).
• “Which Ajax Type is fastest and still correct on my server?” → the Benchmark (Settings tab).

Both run against your own shop’s products and need no configuration. Neither changes anything or requires you to save first — they read your live, unsaved settings.

Test — “See what each customer sees” (Main tab)

Proves that different visitors get the prices you expect, side by side, so you can see at a glance that your cache isn’t collapsing everyone onto one price.

How to use it:

1. Choose By country or By customer.
2. Pick the two subjects to compare — two countries (defaults to your base country vs a contrasting market), or two customers (defaults to Guest vs a suggested user). You can search for any specific user.
3. Press Test. A popover shows the shop prices each subject would get, product by product.

The Ajax Type dropdown (top right of the popover) lets you re-run the same comparison through any Ajax Type — Normal Ajax, Normal REST, Fast Ajax, Fast REST or Ultra Ajax. This is the quickest way to confirm a type is safe for your store: switch to it and check the prices still differ where they should. If a type shows identical prices for visitors who ought to see different ones, that type is not returning your dynamic prices and shouldn’t be used. (Fast and Ultra types use the live plugin list from the Settings tab.)

What it runs: each subject is fetched as a real loopback request — a forged login session for users, a country override for countries — exactly like a real visitor, not an in-process shortcut. This matters because pricing plugins build their customer context when the request starts; an in-process user switch would show every user the same price, which would be misleading.

Benchmark (Settings tab)

Times how long the prices request takes for all five Ajax Types, on your shop’s own products, and verifies each one returns the same prices as a full page load. It’s how you pick the right type with evidence instead of guesswork.

How to use it:

1. On the Settings tab, press Benchmark. A popover opens immediately and fills in each type in turn, top to bottom, in the order they appear.
2. Read the result:
   • The times for each type (fastest is highlighted as the winner).
   • The price-match check: “✓ Every type returns the same prices as the full load”, or a specific type flagged “✗ prices differ — not safe here”.
   • The recommendation: “✓ To use it — set Ajax Type to X”.
3. Set your Ajax Type to the fastest type the benchmark marks as safe, and save.

The subject dropdown (top right) re-runs the whole benchmark as a guest, a country, or a specific logged-in customer. Always benchmark as a member/customer who gets special pricing, not just as a guest — member-only rules (memberships, wholesale tiers, role discounts) only fire for that customer, so a type can look perfectly safe for guests yet return base prices for members. The benchmark catches this and refuses to recommend the offending type.

What’s timed: the server-side work only — from the moment PHP starts handling the request to the moment the response is ready (fastest of several samples). Connection setup, loopback overhead and your machine’s background load are deliberately excluded, so the numbers reflect the real difference between types rather than network noise.

A note on local vs live results: on a lightly-loaded dev site with few plugins, the fast types save little and the winner can vary between runs within the noise — that’s expected. The gap between Normal and Fast/Ultra grows with the number of active plugins, so the benchmark is most meaningful run on the real (staging or live) site with its full plugin stack. For translating those timings into a whole-page speed change, see Measuring the Performance Win.

Sharing: the benchmark result can be downloaded or copied as a branded image.

Putting them together

The reliable workflow before switching away from the default:

1. Test (Main tab) — confirm Normal Ajax already shows the right per-visitor prices.
2. Benchmark (Settings tab) — run it as a guest and as a member, note the fastest type marked safe for both.
3. Switch Ajax Type to that type and save.
4. Test again through that type’s dropdown, and spot-check a live product page and a member session.

Further reading

Related products

Super Speedy Ajax PricesFully cache your shop – correct prices, stock and dynamic pricing for every visitor