I am a tester at uTest.com. uTest uses crowdsourcing to test software. From a one-man shop to a giant corporation, it can be cost or time prohibitive to get the right setup to test your software across all necessary platforms. Imagine if you need to test your web app across all major browsers. That might comprise 6 browsers, but to be really thorough you need to test those 6 browsers in major OSes too – Google Chrome in Windows 7 is not the same as Google Chrome in Mac OS X. You may even wish to test your web app in different versions of those browsers – IE 8 is not the same as IE 9.
What is a software developer to do? Acquire various platforms, browsers, maintain updates, etc.? What about Android – hundreds of phones running different hardware, different OS versions, different resolutions? The ideal solution would be to have a team of testers on call with all of the devices you need to test running the OS you need tested with the skills to do the necessary testing for you.
That’s where uTest comes in. With nearly 100,000 testers across the world, uTest can get you precisely the hardware, OS, and skill-sets you need to find bugs as soon as possible. Do you need a team of 5 uber-testers with top-notch hardware to test your high-end indy game? uTest can do that. Do you need a group of 200 testers to load test your server? uTest can do that too. Functional, Security, Load, Usability, and Localization – uTest has experts in every category ready to find the bugs you need to squash.
uTest works hard to integrate testing into your current development cycle. Whether you need a 24-hour turn around on your newest RC, or a specific suite of tests run according to your specifications, uTest can handle it.
Many companies look at testing as a necessary evil – a time-sink that just eats the bottom line. QA does take time; time that could be spent coding new features or thinking up new strategies. But if you really want your users to have the best experience possible while using your app, then it has to be tested. But you don’t have to test it yourself. Hand it over to uTest and you will get quality reporting as fast as you need it. That way your dev team can focus on developing new things and spend less time and money fixing the old ones.
Like I said, I’m just a tester. I’m not a salesman, I’m not being paid for this (though there is a referral program, so please pass my name along if you do sign up after reading this!). I just love how uTest is revolutionizing the testing world. I’m learning a lot from it, and hope to write about that more in the future.