Show HN: Unlimited Web-App Testing Service starts $99/month. First test is free

At a glance, it appears there’s a limitation where the service runs only one test at a time. As your product and thus your testing requirements grow, this becomes infeasible. Additionally, the FAQ states that you may not get results back for 2 hours to as long as 12 hours. Both of those limitations can apparently be overcome by giving them more money for parallel tests and/or faster results.

The reason you’re running tests is to view the results and then quickly fix any bugs, re-running any failed tests to verify. Given the serial nature of testing and the turnaround time, you’re losing far more in productivity than $99/month. And if they get a sufficient number of signups at that price point, their ability to service tests is going to be severely impacted to the point where it becomes unusable.

They should really change this model and offer a limited offering for the $99/month. Keep the one-at-a-time model, but also limit the number of tests per day to something reasonable. Then introduce a $999/month plan which is unlimited. This is still way cheaper than even a part time QA tester, but as soon as you start firing sufficient load at the service you run into capacity limitations. Of course, at that point it makes sense to start offering dedicated resources for those who hit those capacity limitations, which results in a few additional offerings of $X,999 per month for various values of X. Assuming they can offer 24/7 coverage, screenshots, recordings, variables, API, etc. they’ll perhaps become a viable competitor for Rainforest QA [which I used at a previous job].

Biot you made some excellent points. The pricing at the moment is definitely exploratory. Our goal is to limit the number of people we sign up at this level and learn from the process.

I think your idea of limiting the amount of tests is great and something we will definitely explore. When we were running the service for clients manually we did something similar. As for services such as 24/7 support along with neat features like variables and interacting with API's they are on the roadmap. We are bootstrapping this at the moment and looking for our first 10 - 20 customers to work with us as we refine the service. They get a very affordable QA service and we refine our process.

Biot if you have used rainforestqa before would be great if I could ask you a couple of questions over email if possible. I can be reached at analyn (at) testrise (dot) com. Your help would be greatly appreciated

Why would someone choose your service over a service such as Applause? https://www.applause.com

Arielm those are all good points.

1. I completely understand, being a software tester for over 10 years. We are going to build in functions in the software that will make it easier for users.

2. The unlimited plan is limited in the launch phase to certain number of companies already. We are going to shutting down sign ups after hitting that level to avoid disappointment as you have mentioned.

3. TestRise isn’t a replacement for Selenium. While automated tests have their place, using real users with real devices brings up a lot more edge cases.

Would be great to hear your thoughts in detail and swap notes about your experience with prior similar services. I can be reached at analyn (at) testrise (dot) com

Recommend reading this re pricing: https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/saas pricing, I know you are experimenting but a single, unlimited plan is rarely a good idea.