In a digital world, a website or mobile app that doesn’t work properly can spell disaster – customers give up and simply go elsewhere. But testing those websites and apps as you build them is expensive and time-consuming because you must be confident they will work seamlessly on whatever device, operating system or browser the user has at hand – and there are multiple possible combinations. Enter Atlanta-based start-up TestGrid, which thinks it has the answer.
“More than 250,000 new websites and 2,000 apps are launched every day around the world and the attention to detail in maintaining them for the best user experience is getting sharper,” says Harry Rao, founder of TestGrid. “Our aim is to increase access to varied testing, quickly and removing the burden on capital expenditure.”
To do so, TestGrid offers the infrastructure that developers need to run sophisticated testing – both physical and cloud – but at a far lower cost than they could secure for themselves, and with additional services also available to reduce their time and spending commitments further.
To illustrate the point, Rao says that spending on testing a new mobile app could easily cost $500,000. You might well buy 20 different devices – all the ones most popular with your customers – to try out the app on. You’ll be paying a testing team to run the tests, as well as developers to build programmes for automating testing, so that you don’t have to do the work manually on every single combination. Add in the costs of delayed time-to-market, while everyone does the testing work, and the process rapidly blows a hole in the whole project.
TestGrid’s solution is a platform that aims to slash the resources required to deliver the same level of testing. Rao claims the cost of doing the same testing in this example through TestGrid could be as little as $20,000.
To achieve that, the platform offers an on-demand architecture that enables users to simulate testing on their websites and apps on any browser, operating system and device. The platform is available via public or private cloud, or enterprises can install it on site. It also comes with automation features that allow the user to set up their tests on one configuration and then roll them out across multiple other configurations without having to intervene manually. Importantly, this testing feature doesn’t require the user to write their own scripts to program the roll-out, meaning that no development expertise is needed.
TestGrid founder and CEO Harry Rao
Rao argues that a one-stop-shop solution of this type is long overdue, pointing out that testing currently require the use of multiple tools and technologies. “We’ve needed to consolidate for decades but it’s 2022 now and this has just got to happen,” he argues. “There are so many different parts of the testing equation and we need to bring them under one roof.”
TestGrid has been developing the platform with the help of feedback from early adopters over recent months, but has already acquired 20,000 users through the public cloud version of its tool, plus more than 50 large enterprises who have opted for the private cloud or on-premises solution. The company operates with a software-as-a-service model, with plans starting from around $49 a month.
Rao expects adoption numbers to grow rapidly in the coming months given the demand for testing. “We’re only just getting started and there’s so much to do,” he says. “The lack of sufficiently fast and scalable infrastructure can slow down the development and deployment of software, and this is exactly where our testing solutions can help.”
