Crowdsourced Testing: The Ultimate Crowdtesting Guide

In-house testing methodologies fail when software products approach the production phase, and testing under real-world conditions becomes critical. 

Simulated environments used in in-house testing do not capture the diverse user interactions, geographical variances, or application behavior across different device configurations.

This is where crowdsourced testing comes into play.

Crowdtesting validates the app’s behavior in natural and user-centric environments. With testers mimicking real end-users, it bridges the gap between controlled quality assurance (QA) environments and the unpredictable nature of actual user interactions.

In this article, we delve into crowdsourced testing, revealing its potential to unlock a new era of software quality and user satisfaction in the dynamic world of mobile applications.

Table of Contents

Crowdsourced Testing 101

Crowdsourced testing is a software testing strategy that uses a remote, diverse workforce to augment internal QA resources. 

This strategy often uses a third-party software testing vendor to combine full-time employees with part-time testers, allowing teams to scale-up or down based on project requirements

The approach offers significant benefits, such as testing under unique and realistic conditions (across different devices, locations, and connectivities) while being cost-effective, efficient, and flexible.

Here are the main features of a crowdtesting strategy:

  • Expert Testers: When you engage certified testers, they are current on the latest strategies and best practices. When you outsource or augment your team with freelance testers, you also get a fresh perspective that can help eliminate unconscious bias in the testing process.
  • User-Centric Testing: Crowdsourced testers outside your company deliver insights into how real users interact with the software.
  • Real Users on Real Devices: For example, Testlio’s crowdsourced testing solution holds a global network of 10,000 expert testers with more than 1,200 real device/OS combinations in hundreds of countries.
  • Global Emphasis: Fully vetted and fluent testers conduct functional, UI, language localization, linguistic, and translation quality testing for you.
  • Cost-Effectiveness: Hiring burstable crowdsourced testers is a more economical solution than maintaining a full-time in-house testing team.
  • Scale: Crowdsourced testing is also inherently flexible, thanks to freelance workers from across the globe, and tests performed in different time zones and evenings and weekends — when traditional in-house QA testers aren’t working.

    That flexibility also helps considering the variable cadence with software releases. Some may be created and released in days, while others require greater effort and time.

Tracing the History of Crowdtesting

Before the advent of the internet, software testing was primarily done by in-house teams—or in some cases, through limited external beta testing. 

Organizational and geographical boundaries, familiarity bias, and a limited number of testers constrained testing.

Let’s take a look at three phases of crowdtesting history:

Early days: Before the internet

Software testing was confined to in-house teams or small external beta groups. Geographical and organizational boundaries limited the diversity of testing. Moreover, the lack of real-world scenarios restricted the testing scope.

Internet revolution

The internet changed the way we test software.

Software developers began distributing their products globally, which allowed them to receive feedback from a much larger user base. 

Crowdtesting, as we know it today, was born.

Crowdsourcing companies started emerging, connecting software developers with testers worldwide. 

Developers could now leverage the crowd’s wisdom for insights into various real-world testing scenarios.  

Present era

The evolution of crowdtesting continued alongside advances in computing technologies. 

As mobile applications and the Internet of Things (IoT) became prevalent, crowdsourced testing adapted to enable software developers to test their products across various devices, operating systems, and user contexts. 

This ensured their applications delivered high-quality, reliable, and consistent user experiences, paving the way for expansion into new industries.

Who Uses Crowdsourced Testing?

Crowdsourced testing is utilized by businesses across every industry, from startups to Fortune 500 companies.

Here are some software industries utilizing crowdsource testing practices:

  • Mobile Apps: App developers rely on crowdsourced testing services to validate their applications across different devices, operating systems, and network conditions.

    Global companies employ crowdsourced testing to maintain high-quality user satisfaction for their mobile apps.

  • Websites: Crowdsourced testing helps companies ensure their websites are functional, user-friendly, and compatible across various browsers and devices. 

    Airbnb uses crowdtesting to validate the usability and performance of its website.

  • Consumer Software: Companies developing consumer software, such as Adobe with Photoshop and Illustrator, utilize crowdtesting to validate functionality and performance.
  • Gaming: Crowdsourced testing ensures smooth gameplay, performance, and user experience of video games.

    Electronic Arts and Ubisoft employ crowdtesting to identify and resolve issues before release.

  • E-commerce: Ecommerce platforms leverage crowdtesting to ensure seamless shopping experiences.

    Amazon utilizes crowdtesting to validate their platform’s functionality and user-friendliness.

  • E-learning: Crowdsourced testing helps validate the functionality, performance, and accessibility of e-learning platforms.

    Coursera and Udemy employ crowdtesting to enhance the user experience. 

  • Logistics: Crowdsourced testing ensures logistics software functions efficiently.

    FedEx and DHL use crowdtesting to validate their logistics software for reliable shipping experiences.

Who Are Crowdsourced Testers? 

Crowdsourced testers are individual freelance testers based in different locations across the globe. 

They work on-demand and can leverage global time zones for faster testing. These testers bring their own devices, experience, and domain expertise to a project.

Not everything is perfect. Some crowdsourced testing vendors provide unreliable testers. 

Due to the scale of work, there are incentives to let low-skill freelancers into the “crowd” and leverage different testers from run to run. 

Crowdsourced testers should fit the cracks in your existing QA team but meet the high standards of full-time employees.  

The best crowdsourced testing vendors address these problem areas in the vetting process. 

Tester vetting processes vary widely among software testing vendors, but here are key features you should see in your crowdsourced tester pool: 

  • Intense Vetting Process: Testers should be vetted for skills, experience, response time, etc.
  • Device O/S Diversity: Testers should mirror end-users in device variability. 
  • Location Variability: Aim for testers in each critical geolocation.
  • Domain Expertise: Testers versed in different industry domains leads to intentional, informed testing practices.
  • Fair Compensation: Vendors who pay per bug or higher than industry averages are more likely to snag and retain the best testers.
  • Low Turnover Rates: Having consistent testers across runs increases applied experience with the nuances of the app being tested.

Benefits of Crowdsourced Testing

Crowdsourced testing provides access to a vast talent pool of professionals with extensive experience in software testing without the need for long and expensive recruitment efforts. 

Through crowdsourcing, you can engage with skilled testers from around the world, leveraging their diverse backgrounds and perspectives to uncover a wide range of potential issues.

A scalable, on-demand team of testers can augment internal QA resources without the costs and logistical challenges associated with hiring additional full-time staff.

Decorative photo of people with a globe connecting them

Let’s take a look at some more benefits of crowdsourced testing: 

  • Access to global testers: Crowdsourced testing uses skilled global testers with expertise and experience. This brings varied insights into the testing process.
  • Faster bug detection: Crowdsourced testers can identify bugs and issues in parallel. This speeds up the bug discovery process and enables quicker resolution.
  • Real-time feedback: Teams receive immediate feedback from testers, allowing them to address real-time issues and make rapid product adjustments.
  • Customizable tester selection: Companies can choose testers based on specific criteria such as user demographics, technical skills, and device preferences with crowdtesting. This ensures relevant and focused testing.
  • Enhanced user experience insights: Crowdtesters replicate real-world usage, providing valuable input on the user experience, usability, and design testing.
  • Reduced risk of launch issues: By catching issues before launch, crowdsourced testing minimizes the risk of critical bugs impacting the product when released to a broader audience.
  • Faster test execution: With a large number of testers, the execution of test cases happens faster. This quickens the validation of features across multiple devices and environments.
  • Continuous availability: Crowdsourced testers are available around the clock, allowing for continuous testing during different time zones. This enables weekend and evening testing for global teams working with tight deadlines.

How Does Crowdsourced Testing Compare to Outsourced Testing and In-House Teams?

Crowdsourced testing, outsourced testing, and in-house teams have their own advantages and disadvantages. Understanding these differences helps teams choose the best strategy for their testing needs.

The right choice depends on the project’s scope, timeline, and the level of expertise needed for testing.

Let’s look at how crowdsourced testing compares to outsourced and in-house testing.

1. Location flexibility

  • Crowdsourced testing: Global testers give you access to diverse geographies, languages, and environments. This allows testing in real-world conditions.
  • Outsourced testing: The external team typically works from a single location or region, limiting the diversity and global perspective of crowdsourced testing.
  • In-house testing: The team is location-bound, usually working from a fixed office.

2. Scalability

  • Crowdsourced testing: Crowdsourced testing allows teams to scale up or down based on project needs and test at any time.
  • Outsourced testing: It is less scalable compared to crowdsourcing. While you can hire more testers, the team size and flexibility are typically more rigid.
  • In-house testing: Scalability is limited by hiring and onboarding processes, which can be slow and costly during crunch periods.

3. Device and platform coverage

  • Crowdsourced testing: Access to thousands of real devices across various operating systems ensures comprehensive coverage across a wide range of configurations.
  • Outsourced testing: It often has access to a fixed set of devices and limited testing coverage.
  • In-house testing: The team is typically restricted to the devices and environments available in-house, which does not cover all real-world scenarios.

4. Expertise and experience

  • Crowdsourced testing: Provide expertise from global testers but may lack domain knowledge expertise.
  • Outsourced testing: Provides skilled expertise in a specific area, but may lack the diversity of perspectives that crowdsourced testing can offer.
  • In-house testing: In-house teams are familiar with the product and its history. They give great insights into the domain but might lack fresh perspectives.

5. Cost and overhead

  • Crowdsourced testing: Generally more cost-effective. You only pay for the testing you need, eliminating the overhead costs of full-time staff.
  • Outsourced testing: Costs can be higher due to the need to contract external teams and manage relationships.
  • In-house testing: High overhead costs for salaries, training, equipment, and maintenance of a dedicated team.

6. Test Visibility and Control

  • Crowdsourced testing: Provides limited visibility into the testing process but offers flexibility and rapid feedback. Platforms like Testlio allow you to track test creation, execution, and bug reports.
  • Outsourced testing: Typically offers more visibility and control, as the external team works under direct contract terms and reporting mechanisms.
  • In-house testing: Full visibility and control over the process, ensuring alignment with internal development timelines, but may lack the ability to scale quickly.

Pros & Cons of Crowdsourced Tests

Like every other test strategy, crowdsourced testing has its benefits and challenges. On one hand, it provides faster test cycles, saves costs, and enables scalability. On the other hand, it questions confidentiality, reliability, and consistency. 

Before committing to adding crowdtesting to your process, weighing all the pros and cons is important.

Let’s go through the pros and cons of crowdsourced testing:

Pros

Crowdsourced testing ensures comprehensive test coverage across various devices, locations, and user contexts. 

Let’s look at some benefits that it provides:

  • Faster test cycles: Crowdsourced testing accelerates the test cycles using testers from different time zones. This allows 24/7 testing and faster product delivery.
  • Handling crunch time: Crowd teams help some clients manage peak workloads during time-varying bursts. 

    This peak-demand testing strategy leads to the most efficient utilization of testing resources by only having on-demand qa resources.

  • Cost-effective: Crowdtesting allows you to conduct testing without adding a permanent employee. This reduces the salary, pension, and other costly benefits incurred.

    Costs are dramatically reduced by applying the time-varying resource provisioning of managed crowdtesting.

  • Localized insights: Crowdsourced testing is great for testing localization projects as it provides access to testers from different backgrounds and languages. 
  • Usability testing capability: With crowdtesting and testing on real devices, companies quickly determine where their application needs to be revised, updated, or fixed to avoid losing out on potential users.

Cons

While the pros of speed and flexibility of crowdtesting are remarkable, some issues can arise if you haven’t created a concrete test plan or rely on unsupervised testers from a marketplace.  

  • Corporate assimilation: An in-house QA team assimilates seamlessly into the company culture, allowing it to maintain a constant and clear dialogue. While crowdsourcing can lead to more ambiguity in testing tasks. 
  • Confidentiality: With crowdsourcing testing teams, you are opening up a version of your product in beta or production to anonymous, third-party testers.
  • Beyond beta testing: While finding enough qualified users to carry out small tests is easy, as tasks become more complex, the available talent pool becomes more challenging. 
  • One-sided conversations: If you use the wrong crowdsourced vendor, you lose the ability to communicate directly. This requires more upfront work to give them enough instruction. 
  • Limited context awareness: Crowdsourced testers lack an understanding of the product’s business logic or development history. This leads to misaligned testing priorities or the overlooking of domain-specific issues.
  • Dependence on vendor quality: The success of crowdsourced testing depends on the platform or vendor managing the testers. Poor vendor management can result in unreliable testers, delayed results, or subpar reporting.

Crowdsourced Beta Testing

Before rolling out your product to the entire customer base, crowdsourced beta testing allows you to put it in the hands of testers who mimic real end-users. These testers evaluate core user flows, assess the user experience, and diligently search for bugs. 

Beta testing ensures user behavior and potential issues by involving testers who represent your intended audience.

Beta testing allows incremental feedback cycles and bug identification, ensuring a smooth user experience before releasing the product to a wider audience.

Let’s look at some key features of the crowdsourced beta testing process:

  • Improved confidence in production: By acting on the insights gathered from crowdsourced beta testing, development teams can release a polished, high-quality product to their entire customer base.
  • User-centric testing: Crowdsourced beta testers mirror your target audience and offer insights into user behavior and potential challenges.
  • Comprehensive bug identification: Diverse testers in crowdsourced beta testing help uncover critical bugs, usability issues, and edge cases that might go unnoticed by in-house teams.
  • Incremental feedback cycles: Continuous feedback is the key to beta testing. It allows for iterative improvements and ensures every update refines the product further.
  • Enhanced user experience: Feedback from beta testers ensures smooth user interaction by addressing pain points early in the development cycle.

What is the Crowdsourced Testing Process?

From finding the right testers to integrating feedback into development, crowdsourced testing follows a series of steps to ensure comprehensive testing coverage.

Let’s go through these steps one by one:

Step 1: Tester engagement

Crowdtesting platforms maintain a large, global community of testers with different skills and experience levels. 

Testers are matched to projects based on the project’s requirements and the tester’s expertise.

Step 2: Execution of test scenarios

Crowdsourced testers execute predefined test scenarios that examine various aspects of the application, from basic features to complex user actions. 

They also simulate a real user environment using their own devices, settings, and networks, which helps them uncover issues that controlled test settings may not uncover. 

Crowdsourced testing also includes exploratory testing to identify issues not anticipated in the planning stage.

Step 3: Bug tracking and reporting

Testers use bug-tracking tools like Jira to report any bugs or issues they find during crowdtesting. 

Reports can include screenshots, steps to replicate the issue, log files, possible fixes, and other important details.

Step 4: Feedback and integration

In this phase, developers analyze the feedback provided by crowdtesting. Bugs are prioritized and fixed according to severity and priority. A regression testing cycle is run to ensure issues have been resolved. 

Is Crowdsourced Testing the Right Software Testing Staffing Model For You?

Crowdsourced testing is a flexible solution that fills the gaps in traditional QA approaches. 

It’s ideal for projects that require diverse real-world testing environments and faster feedback cycles.

Here are some factors to evaluate while integrating crowdtesting into your process:

  • Project requirements: Assess your project’s complexity, timelines, and testing needs. Crowdsourced testing is ideal for diverse device coverage and real-world scenarios but may not suit projects requiring constant, in-depth QA involvement.
  • Budget and resources: Compare the cost of crowdsourced testing with in-house or outsourced options. Ensure your team can allocate resources to manage and review feedback efficiently.
  • Security needs: If your project involves sensitive data, ensure the testing platform provides robust security measures, such as tester vetting and secure environments.
  • Integration with workflow: Choose a platform that integrates seamlessly with your development tools, such as Jiral, to streamline bug tracking and reporting.
  • Feedback utilization: Ensure your team is prepared to process and act on the feedback from testers, turning insights into actionable improvements.

How to Leverage Testlio for Crowdsourced Testing

Freelancers with Testlio are vetted, validated, and rated. Only 3% of applicants to the Testlio Network are accepted to client projects. This makes it a great platform for high-quality crowdtesting. With Testlio, you can:

  • Ensure integration with your existing tools, resources, and workflows.
  • Access a global network of 10,000 expert testers.
  • Define your testing scope and test coverage.
  • Provide feedback through detailed bug reports.
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Accelerate your testing efforts with Testlio’s crowdtesting services. Contact our sales team to learn more!