uTest has a community of over 35,000 professional testers in 170 countries to help tech companies test out their web and mobile apps. But until now it’s the likes of Microsoft and Intuit who have mainly been able to afford these services rather than startups. But today it’s launching a more affordable version aimed at early stage startups and individual app developers.
uTest Express offers different plans and the ability to create a simple test case which testers will follow. Once the project scope is outlined, uTest then handpicks members of its tester community who best match the testing requirements and have the right mobile devices and operating systems. The customer’s mobile app is tested by these paid professionals on real devices in a real life setting.
Then the startup or developers gets a list of properly documented bugs, app ratings, feedback for interface, usability, app performance and screenshots and videos with steps to reproduce them.
uTest Express is offered for iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Symbian. Pricing starts at $499 per test cycle, with three tiers of testing: Bronze, Silver and Gold.
In addition uTest has hired Ann Brady as CFO; Fumi Matsumoto as CTO; and promoted Matt Johnston to CMO.
uTest has previously had a $13M C-round of funding. Competitors include broad service marketplaces like Elance and oDesk, as well as traditional software testing firms like Wipro, Compuware and AppLabs. And of course, a free beta test. BUt then mobile apps are different beasts to web apps where device fragmentation is a huge issue for apps.
Anyone who leaves a comments below will receive a 50% discount on all Express orders through April 30th via a promo code we’ll publish in the comments soon.