
Ask HN: Any direct experience using QA services - JourneymanCoder
We&#x27;re a startup building consumer website (mobile and desktop). We&#x27;re too small to test different device types, screen sizes, etc., and have noticed som QA as a service type companies.<p>Does anyone have any direct experiences with these services?
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sua_3000
Used to run QA for a startup and inherited an outsourced Applause Team for our
consumer and B2B app.

They would find bugs, but often very cosmetic things - not too many bugs in
our business logic (and not because of the absence of bugs within our app). It
also took way too much time to manage/write the test cases out (~20 hours)
since we were building out features so fast.

I looked into Rainforest QA after them. They're product seemed a better fit,
but had a bad experience when one of sales guys used there used "retarded" to
describe our current qa strategy.

Eventually I decided to dedicate our resources into building a frontend and
backend automated testing framework. This was a way better decision, which we
actually built out pretty fast.

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marie10g
JourneymanCoder, I run a QA as a service company and we employ only certified
QA people, in our office - no sourcing random talent from Upwork. We also have
a lab of ~110 devices with different screen resolutions to test services on.
That’s physical devices and real people testing on them. The pricing is
straightforward - a fixed fee per platform per hour. Would you be interested
in test-running our service for free (a few hours of testing + an hour of
reporting) in exchange for honest feedback? If interested, feel free to reach
out - contact info in my profile.

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amorphid
If you can automate testing, especially on mobile, I highly recommend it.
Building a testable app makes testing easier, whether you actually automate
the testing or not.

Mobile testing kind of sucks, automated or not. Manual testing requires an
ever increasing number of devices, and the actual testing is slow, monotonous
work (aka good testers get bored and move on).

Maybe this approach... Automate what you can, making sure it behaves right.
Use manual testing to verify it looks right, and as validation the automated
tests didn't miss something.

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joshuaduffy
As a tester myself, who's worked in multiple consultancy roles... It depends
on vendor obviously but also on time and money. Do you have a budget and a
timescale?

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samblr
Does anybody have inputs on google cloud test lab for mobile ?

