Crowdsourcing vs Outsourcing: A Testing Battle

Don’t you hate it when the app you’ve downloaded doesn’t work correctly? It crashes randomly, buttons don’t work, information is not updated when it is supposed to? You don’t want that. Neither do your customers. They want a flawless product that works fast and without errors. But no product just comes out perfect. That’s what QA testing is made for. To ensure you release a bug-free, ready-to-use app.

Although the advantages of software testing are hard to deny, not every company has in-house testers. If you want to test your product but lack the resources to maintain your own testing team, there is an option of hiring a third party to deliver the necessary service. This partner may be a QA testing outsourcing company or a crowdsourced software testing service.

What’s the difference?

Outsourced testing implies that you trust a third-party company to perform testing of your product and receive a fresh, expert look at it. Meantime, you get the opportunity to focus on other aspects and issues regarding the software product: development, sales, or marketing.

Crowdsourced testing is similar: the software is also tested elsewhere by a third party. The difference is that this type of testing is performed by numerous individuals located all over the world. Contrary to outsourcing, there are no quality assurance specialists that work within one company.

Which one is a better fit?

Outsourcing is a traditional approach that was common until crowdsourcing came into the picture. The latter is still a relatively new trend in software testing that is gaining popularity. Let’s look at the main features of outsourced and crowdsourced testing to help establish which one may suit your requirements best.

Which one is a better fit?

So, how do you choose?

It is actually pretty simple and comes down to your product. If you know your app definitely has many bugs that are on the surface, you wouldn’t want to pay for all of them separately when crowdsourcing. So, outsourcing is your best option here. The testers may find up to 5 bugs in an hour, and the cost of one hour will be much lower than the cost of those 5 bugs separately. In case you have a stable, bug-free and already tested product, enjoy the benefits of crowdsourcing, paying for a bug, finding which may take hours.
But no matter which model may be more financially appealing, consider the people too. You want professionals to test your product. Trust a skillful team like the one we have at QAwerk to do the job.