u/Aggressive_Depth_772

Curious how other people structure environments for Payload CMS projects.

On a larger Payload project, we ended up with 5 environments instead of the usual 3:

• dev - normal feature work
• staging - client/team review
• production - live site
• sandbox / breakable env - fast experiments without blocking anyone
• pre-release env - staging code + production data, mainly for visual regression testing before rollout

The pre-release environment was probably the most useful “extra” one. It helped catch UI/content regressions that staging alone missed, especially when QA time got tight.

What worked:

• safer releases
• fewer surprises from real production content
• easier experimentation without messing up staging
• partial release safe

What didn’t:

• more maintenance
• more naming/ownership confusion
• probably overkill for smaller projects

I’m not saying this is the right setup everywhere, but it worked well for a larger project.

How are you setting up environments for Payload CMS? Just dev/staging/prod or do you use extra environments for QA, previews, regression testing, etc.?