Name: Applause
Rating: 9.5 (18 reviews)
Author: Applause

Customer Success

Help Desk

Web and Video Conferencing

Customer Support

Agile Development

Image Recognition

Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST)

Kubernetes Monitoring

Service Mesh

Development

Alumni Management

Education

AI Document Creation

Business Intelligence (BI)

Collaboration

Enterprise

Accounting

Finance and Accounting

Applicant Tracking

Benefits Administration

Corporate Learning Management

Employee Scheduling

HR Management

HR Service Delivery

Pay Equity

Payroll

Talent Intelligence

Talent Management

Vendor Management Systems (VMS)

Workforce Analytics

Workforce Management

Human Resources

Cloud Brokers

Cloud Storage

Code Review

Data Center Backup

Data Integration

Data Masking

Database Load Balancing

Edge Computing

Email Encryption

Ethernet Switches

Fraud Detection

Governance, Risk & Compliance

Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)

License Management

Low-Code Development

Managed Hosting

Mobile Application Performance Monitoring  (APM)

Network Performance Monitoring

Object Storage

SQL Server Performance Monitoring

Unified Endpoint Management (UEM)

Web Content Filtering

Information Technology

A/B Testing

AI Writing Assistant Software

Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

Ad Serving & Retargeting

Affiliate

All-in-One Marketing

App Store Optimization (ASO)

Content Management

Customer Journey Analytics

Digital Asset Management

Digital Content Creation

Email Marketing

Marketing Automation

Social Media Management

Survey & Forms Building

Tag Management

Usability Testing

Web Analytics

Marketing

Project Management

Professional Services

Customer Communication Management

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Sales Consulting

Sales

Animation

Dealer Management

PCB Design

Travel Agency

Vertical-Specific

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Users have made the following recommendations based on their experience with Applause:

- Plan testing in detail before using Applause. Thorough planning helps ensure comprehensive coverage of the application and efficient testing.

- Trial the service and develop a strategy before fully implementing Applause. This allows organizations to assess its suitability and determine how to integrate it effectively.

- Treat Applause as an extension of the in-house test team. Working closely with project managers and test team leaders enhances collaboration and maximizes the benefits of using Applause.

These recommendations emphasize the importance of detailed planning, strategic implementation, and strong collaboration when utilizing Applause for application testing purposes.

Expensive Pricing: Some users have mentioned that the service is quite expensive, indicating that it may not provide a good value for the price.

Time-Consuming First Year: Several reviewers have expressed that the first year of using the service can be time-consuming and challenging to find the right balance between utilizing all features and managing other tasks. This aspect may require additional effort from users as they navigate through this initial period, potentially affecting their overall efficiency.

Shallow Testing Focus: According to customer feedback, testers may not go deep enough during testing as they are paid based on bugs found rather than ensuring comprehensive coverage. This results in a focus on low-hanging fruit and potential gaps in identifying more complex issues or edge cases within the system.

Wide range of devices and OS versions covered: Many users have found that the in-the-wild testing provided by Applause is essential as it allows for a wide range of devices and operating system versions to be covered. This type of testing provides better coverage of the product, as different minds approach workflows differently.

Helpful test lead support: Users appreciate the care provided by the test lead at Applause, as they are helpful in bug triage and transferring bugs to internal systems. This support saves time and improves efficiency.

Excellent platform, device, and OS coverage: The excellent platform, device, and operating system coverage provided by Applause eliminate the need for purchasing a large number of devices for in-house testing. This not only saves money but also provides a better return on investment.

Applause is a versatile platform that is used by companies for functional in-the-wild testing and localization testing. Test leads can handle everything within the Applause platform, from managing testers to bug triage, making it a comprehensive solution. One of the key use cases of Applause is its ability to facilitate testing on multiple mobile apps. With the challenge of testing on various platforms, devices, and OS permutations, Applause provides a solution by offering access to a large resource of global testers who can simulate real-world scenarios. This allows companies to ensure their apps are robust and ready for launch. Additionally, Applause is utilized by engineering and product teams for testing new products and new versions of existing products. It serves as a supplement to internal QA teams by providing access to thousands of professional testers, reducing the overall cost of development while ensuring high-quality applications.

Another significant use case of Applause is its Mobile Beta Management tools, which aid in pre-launch app development and user feedback. By integrating these tools into the development process, companies can gather valuable insights from beta users and make necessary improvements before launching their apps to the market. Additionally, Applause is also used for functional testing and high-level review of web applications, complementing internal testing efforts. It helps companies identify bugs in both mobile and web portal apps, allowing them to create comprehensive test plans to ensure app quality.

Furthermore, Information Technology departments rely on Applause to ensure the usability of mobile applications. With its capabilities to test apps on multiple devices, Applause reduces both the time and cost associated with manual testing. Lastly, small companies benefit from Applause as it helps them ramp up QA resources in a cost-efficient manner. By leveraging established QA experts available through the platform, these companies can ensure that their apps are thoroughly tested without having to invest heavily in building an internal QA team.

Overall, Applause offers a range of use cases that cater to different needs across industries. Its comprehensive testing capabilities, access to a global network of testers, and cost-efficiency make it a valuable tool for companies looking to enhance the quality of their mobile and web applications.

Applause headquartered in Framingham in Massachusetts offers application testing services.

Centercode Connect is a hosted software platform that provides all of the tools needed to run a beta program: recruiting, NDA management, product distribution, surveys, bug reports, forums, reporting, and more.

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Startup & E-commerce Package

AutomationHQ

Applause

Some companies offer testing services, a kind of outsourcing that supplies access to testing communities, for the purpose of gathering information about applications under testing that will become more accurate and useful only with increased sample size. Similar to bug bounty programs, testing services of this kind leverage participating users of a service (their responses or sometimes merely reports of their activity) as part of the beta testing process.

Testing Services

Likelihood to Recommend

Likelihood to Renew

Usability

Support Rating

Implementation Rating

TrustRadius is a technology and business research firm based in Austin, Texas. The company is known as a review platform for verified B2B technology and software reviews through a proprietary algorithm and human verification.

TrustRadius

Integration with jira

Time consuming

Depth analysis

Isn't clear

Complex to set

Test cases

Response times

Set up

Spent a lot

Not open

Project manager

Android app

Real world

Third party

Allows the user

Defect tracking

Operating systems

Intuitive interface

Excellent customer

Team members

Home

Launching a mobile app in today's landscape presents a challenging problem: There are so many platforms, devices, and OS permutations that running these comprehensively in-house is an exhaustive and expensive approach. Applause solves this testing problem with their In-The-Wild service; by having a large managed resource of global testers that can effectively simulate real-world testing. It's as close to the real-world happy path as you can get.

Applause helps us launch our mobile apps quickly and frequently by augmenting classic testing approaches with real-world testing. Risk of a failed launch is greatly reduced because we have the happy path coverage locked down on each and every release.

Provides excellent platform, device, and OS coverage across the board. We don't have to worry about purchasing a barrage of devices for in-house testing. It's expensive and doesn't provide a good return for the money.
Your Project Manager actively manages your project. They are available almost 100% of the time during business hours to ensure your test needs and concerns are being handled.
Applause's test management software is rapidly advancing. It's fairly feature packed and provides good visibility into what's going on with your testing.

Though Applause effectively manages their testers, there can be a gap at times between lining up the testers and getting the results you want. It's a fine balance between fresh eyes gleaning new or glossed over bugs but running the risk of being product ignorant vs. returning testers generating more in-depth issues and risking test exhaustion and jaded perspectives.
Applause's Test Management software really needs backward integration with Jira. Currently they support forward integration, but if you're managing your issues internally, all that information (state, comments, etc.) cannot be conveyed back to Applause.

Improved app quality - Applause is a cost-effective means of directed exploratory testing.
Reduced risk of product update launches - Quickly have your release candidates sanitized by the real world before they actually go live.

Project Manager

We use Applause in the quality engineering department for functional in-the-wild testing and localization testing. We started utilizing the service back in 2011 and the relationship evolved during time. Currently we have couple of test leads handling everything within the Applause platform, the testers and bug triage that come from the crowd source testing. The test leads also transfer valid tickets to our internal bug tracking system, which makes the collaboration between our companies seamless. Applause is utilized for multiple, mostly mobile, apps testing.

In-the-wild testing - it cannot be done internally. It's impossible to cover the wide matrix of devices and OS versions.
Exploratory testing - more eyes see more. Every mind is unique and thinks of a workflow differently - provides better coverage of the product.
Care provided by test lead is essential - they help a lot with initial bug triage and bug transfer to our internal systems.
Retest of found tickets once they are fixed - saves time!
Applause people make a good effort to create a relationship, it's not just business.

The service is quite expensive.
The first year of using the service is about finding the right balance. It can initially be more time consuming then the previous model without Applause service.
The model motivates the testers to not go very deep during testing - they are paid by bugs found. Means there are cases when they go for only the low hanging fruit.

Saves time spent on regression - internal resources can focus on more important tasks.
Saves money on device / OS coverage.
Price for a bug fixed is lower than price for a bug hot fixed.

App release regression
New feature exploratory testing
Bug hunt

Bug hunt - when we are not able to find a bug reported from the field internally
New OS testing (for OS which were not released yet)
Using Applause's webinars and ebooks for internal trainings

Test automation
Security testing
Performance testing

Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor

It's still about spending money and getting the best value out of each dollar spent. By the time we were purchasing the service, there was no real competition to Applause (uTest at that time), therefore it was sort of a no brainer. If we would reconsider the whole contract, we would take on more competition.

Integration of the plugin that makes the transfer between applause and internal bug tracking system happening. it took time to make it seamlessly running.

Yep, it's when I wanted to change some default values for our integration plugin between the Applause platform and our internal bug tracking system. I didn't have to go through creating a ticket or reporting through Support at all. I just let our test lead know and he made the changes happen. Amazingly fast!

In the bug chat with the tester
Discussions
Browsing between bugs
Bug export

Bug search across projects
Switching products
Test cycle setup

SW Test Engineer Senior

Applause is used by the engineering and product teams to aid us in testing new products and new versions of existing products. They are a great supplement to our own internal QA team, which would not be able to conduct all the testing required just on our own.

Fast ramp-up - minutes after activating a test cycle I will see testers jumping in, starting discussions in chat, and logging defects found.
Able to test on every device we've ever asked for.
Expertise in areas like scripting and test automation, accessibility, and more.
Good integration with our JIRA defect tracking system.
A great test team lead assigned to a test cycle to vet and approve bugs entered by test team members.
Videos attached to defect reports when screenshots don't cut it.

Defect reports can at times be confusing or not quite up to the standards we have internally but video attachments almost always clear up any confusion.
At times I'll find a limitation with the platform but so far I've always found a workaround, and they are making continual improvements to the platform.

By using Applause we could forgo hiring full time specialists, which could be costly not to mention the interview process would take considerable time.

Sr. Development & QA Manager

Applause provides an efficient model of testing that will allow a startup access to thousands of professional testers. A company can directly use a team of testers from Applause as opposed to hiring a whole QA team of full-time employees. This can significantly reduce the overall cost of development by using already established QA experts from Applause.

Applause was able to accomplish what our internal test team could not. We had an international issue that was occurring with customers in Colombia that we could not reproduce or simulate through a VPN. Calling in Applause, they were able to quickly find testers in that country with the specific cell phone carrier that we needed. The testers there quickly replicated the problem and from there we were soon able to create a fix.
Finding testers through the Applause ecosystem in International areas and throughout a variety of demographics allows for us to more effectively simulate real world usage as we load test against our applications.
Applause was able to find many more authentic localization issues that a third party localization company missed. Having real-world testers from Applause that really understand the language from a native speaker perspective, helped us to find many additional issues after our initial localization builds were handed off.

Some testers are not well versed in the platform. This is the exception.

Improved test coverage on multiple devices and in international areas where our software applications are released.

Project Manager in Test

Applause is used by our company to submit our product and have it tested by the professional testers at Applause. It is used by our QA Department and will address all the bugs in our product before it releases. After feedback is received from the testers our company goes through and carefully inspects the issues before proceeding.

They are always quick to answer your questions and are helpful whenever you need something.
They have great testers that follow the guidelines and make it easier for clients to manage their issues.
They will always keep in contact and ask for your feedback to make their services even better!

One feature that I can see so far that needs to be improved is the way that the video submissions are handled. Because every time you try to open up a video on a bug submission you either need to download a big file or sometimes it does not open up.

It keeps making our product better and better by receiving feedback from the testers.

Applause

Overview

What is Applause?