Understanding NetSuite Account Types
In addition to the live production account, NetSuite provides customers with various types of accounts to use to run their business. An account is simply a place to work.
Types of NetSuite accounts include:
The Production Account
The production (or live) account is where you do the daily work necessary to run your business. Most users will spend most of their time working in the production account.
Users access their production account by opening a browser window and going to system.netsuite.com, and entering their email address and password. For more information, see Understanding NetSuite URLs.
The Release Preview Account
All customers with a NetSuite production account can request access to a Release Preview account when it is available. Release Preview is available twice a year, right before each NetSuite release. This account lets you test your daily business processes with the new features available in the upcoming release.
Initially, only users with an Administrator role have access to the Release Preview account.
A user with an Administrator role must log in to NetSuite at system.netsuite.com, and change roles to the Release Preview Administrator role. An Administrator can grant access to Release Preview to other users as needed for testing.
Users can also access their Release Preview account from the New Release portlet.
See the Release Preview Guide and the Release Preview Guide for more information.
The Sandbox Account
A NetSuite sandbox is a safe and isolated account where you can develop new processes and applications. You can use a sandbox to test and train your employees in existing integrations and processes without affecting your production data. The data in the sandbox is a copy of your production data. The sandbox can be refreshed from production, bringing in new data and customizations. Each refresh overwrites the previous sandbox. You can purchase one sandbox or several sandboxes to allow for development and testing teams to have their own accounts in which to experiment.
Production and sandbox roles are clearly labeled in the Account Type column on the My Roles page. Account administrators and system administrators can modify the sandbox account name by adding a suffix to help distinguish it from other accounts.
See NetSuite Sandbox for more information.
The Development Account
The NetSuite development account is a place that is isolated from your production account in which teams can develop solutions. The development account provides an improved experience for developing NetSuite customizations. NetSuite development accounts never contain production data. This separation of development accounts prevents in-progress customizations from being overwritten by refreshes, as can happen in sandbox accounts, and enables controlled access to sensitive, restricted, and financial data. These lightweight accounts support rapid deployment and testing processes.
The development account is isolated from the production account, but not in the same way as a sandbox account. For example, invoices will be created and email will be sent from this account, so ensure that you use only test data in this account. You should not add real customer information, such as contact information, to a development account.
The development account can be selected from the My Roles page.
The best time to begin using development accounts is at the start of a new project. It can be difficult to migrate to a development account if you are already in the middle of a development project in your sandbox. You should you finish your existing projects in your sandbox before starting new projects in your development account.
You need multiple development accounts if you have multiple large projects which need distinct accounts for User Acceptance Testing (UAT).
For more information about development accounts, see NetSuite Development Accounts.