What is our primary use case?
It is used for testing. Applause is essentially a service. It is on the bedrock of a SaaS platform, and it doesn't have a version.
How has it helped my organization?
If I'm in India and I want to launch my product in the US, I can ask them to test it in the US. They will be able to do it for me in three days. Hundreds of testers in the US can test my product and give me live feedback on how it is performing on their apps, on their mobile phones, and on their laptops, which is a very strong win for me.
Multiple teams get the benefits of Applause. The development team is obviously able to develop much faster by using Applause because they get the bugs in real-time, and they can work on those bugs. It really works as a very strong Bible or a cheat sheet for them. If they're developing over the week from Monday to Friday, we give the builds to Applause on Friday evening. On Saturday and Sunday, their teams do the testing, and on Monday, when the developers are back, they can see the bugs, and they know which bugs they need to rectify, which is great for us.
What is most valuable?
Applause is uberizing the concept of testing. Companies generally have internal testing teams with, for example, 20 or 30 testers. With Applause, you don't need to hire testers anymore. Applause can do the testing for you. They've got a community of testers across the globe. There are 150,000 testers in India, and 1.5 million across the globe to do the testing for you.
The beauty of this solution is that they can do the in-the-wild testing. They can test at any location with any device and with any category of people, which helps companies understand what their real user experience is.
Applause seamlessly does functional testing for me. It can do exploratory testing for me. It can also do a lot of payment testing and UI/UX testing, which I feel is invaluable because, with the limited bandwidth that I have internally in my team, I can't do a lot. This is where I can use Applause to make sure that I'm testing very stringently before going live.
The kind of people they have in the community are very good. The results are top-notch. The turnaround time is very fast, and there are no issues with respect to the legality. It is very secure and very stable.
What needs improvement?
Pricing is the main thing where I feel Applause can do a lot better. They can improve on their pricing. They can cover more with more startup-friendly packages.
Another thing that they can improve is how they work with teams on the payment side. They can do payment testing, but they can't do trading. If you are a stock exchange app, you can't do trading. Obviously, there are limitations related to GDPR, etc, but that is one thing for which they can find solutions. I'd like to see how effectively they can do trading on the app, which is something they are not covering right now. So, the testers currently can't do trading. If you're buying stock and your app allows you to buy Microsoft and Google shares, that is something that is currently not in the testing purview. So, that is something that I would like them to include.
They can plug in a little bit of automation to help companies automate their testing as well. This is another area where I feel Applause can be better. They can do more on the automation front.
I would also love to see how they can do omnichannel testing. They do some omnichannel testing, but it is not their strongest area. This is an area that needs to be strengthened.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for almost two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is very scalable. In terms of people working with this solution, the development team, the product teams, the growth teams, and the user experience teams are using Applause to ramp up their production and build their side of their business. So, more than 300 to 400 people benefit from Applause.
How are customer service and support?
It's a fully-managed solution. We are always in touch with one person who is the community head. That person is our single point of contact. From a technical point of view, no one is required because the service is not very technical. It's more about getting the right community in place, and the community manager that we have is our single point of contact. This community manager takes care of everything for us.
How was the initial setup?
There is no deployment for Applause. Basically, you share a build with Applause. It's a version of your app that you share with Applause, and they get it tested by hundreds of testers they have in their community. So, there's no deployment.
It's seamless. It's plug-and-play. If you give Applause a build on Friday, they will send it to the community on Saturday, and by Monday, they will finish the whole testing, and you will have all the bugs that they have been able to find during the testing. You can then work on those bugs and make sure that your real customers don't face those bugs.
What was our ROI?
We have absolutely seen an ROI. It helps in taking the Play Store ratings up. It also helps in retaining customers and being able to acquire more customers. With a better app experience, through word of mouth, we are able to acquire more customers.
It has improved our developer productivity. Our developers are no longer stuck with finding out issues themselves because Applause is able to do it for them. Because they already know what the issues are in their development, they're able to resolve them very quickly. So, overall, the productivity has gone massively up, and the ROI is from multiple fronts.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It has a yearly subscription. It is an expensive proposition, and Applause can do a lot better in terms of pricing.
What other advice do I have?
If you're using Applause for the first time, make sure that you first do a PoC for a month. During the PoC, you set an agenda about what are the key things that you want to test and also understand and redefine what success means to you. You should also communicate that to the Applause team.
When you're looking at Applause, look at it as a long-term solution, not as a short-term solution. That's because once you have Applause in your team, you won't require a very large QA team. You can be fairly confident that your releases are stable. Applause is something that helps you in making your release, your product, and your app stable. So, you need to look at it as a long-term partnership, not as a short-term project.
I would rate Applause a nine out of ten because it is very scalable. They are very community-centered, and the community and the project management team are absolutely superior in their skillset. They are very good to work with.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner