When you’re developing an app for commercial use, the quality standards shoot up. You want your app to be used by tens of thousands and, if you’re lucky, millions of users. You cannot afford for your app to be glitchy or filled with bugs that your app reviews suffer and users never return.
Frankly, there will always be some issues to resolve. But small issues are fine, instead of big complicated ones that can cause the app to crash.
That’s why developers spend numerous hours and days on app testing.
Earlier, app testing was a cumbersome affair. You had to do everything manually and the quality of testing solely depended upon the keen observation of a user.
With time, there are a myriad of app testing tools that have flooded the market. Using these tools, you can distribute beta versions and invite users to give you feedback and report problems. You can easily collect crash reports and start working on resolving them quickly.
As app usage continues to grow, the need for reliable app testing is growing too. These tools not only help you release reliable apps but also shortens the development and release cycle.
We bring you 8 amazing app testing tools that every mobile app developer should start using today.
1. Appium
Nothing delights an app developer more than an open-source code, software, or project. Appium fits into this category.
An open source mobile test automation framework, Appium is designed to help you in the functional testing of user interface.
You can easily write tests using any WebDriver-compatible language. For instance, Java, Objective-C, or JavaScript. That also means it can be used with web apps, native apps, and hybrid apps too.
Appium provides a stability and compatibility layer on top of platform-specific automation technologies. The core of Appium is written in Node.js, though code for drivers might be partially in Java (Android) or some other language
2. Google Play Native App Beta Testing
If app testing is important to Google, they definitely have a tool for it! And there certainly is.
Chances are, if you’re an Android developer, that you have accessed the Google Developer Console.
Google offers a lot of flexibility in the beta testing process. There are three different ways that you can setup your testing group.
Open Beta
This testing group is really important if you want your app to be tested by a large testing community. Anyone who carries the link to your app can be a beta tester. The only problem is that the reviewers cannot leave a review for your app.
Closed Beta with email
A more restricted option is to only make your beta group available to people who are invited via email. You can add emails manually, or upload them using a CSV file.
Closed Beta with Google+ Communities
Probably this is the best use Google+ can be put to. Interact with a Google+ testing community and give your testing a head start.
All you have to do is access the developer console and link your Google+ testing community in your account. Once you are done, you can send the link for the group to your testers.
3. Bitbar Testdroid
Bitbar Testdroid comes from a company which positions the testing tool as “devops for mobile testing and monitoring”.
Available as public, private, and even onsite testing service, Bitbar Public Cloud (Testdroid Cloud) provides thousands of Android and iOS devices automated and manual mobile app testing.
It is used by enterprises as well as small companies to automate functional, regression, performance, stability, and stress testing. The onsite solution provides even more support to the testing cycle of the app, when the testing happens all around the clock.
4. Calabash for Android and iOS
Calabash offers robust testing features for mobile apps. Maintained and developed by Xamarin, it is open source like Appium and is available for free.
Using Calabash, you can write automated acceptance tests for your mobile apps and execute them within the tool.
Its two open source libraries, one for iOS and another for Android, automate testing for native and hybrid mobile apps. Used with Cucumber, test cases are written in natural language then translated to test scripts that run within the framework. It works well with Ruby, Java, .NET, Flex and many other programming languages.
5. HockeyApp
You can get serious about HockeyApp because it is now owned by Microsoft. You might have some hesitations, of course, especially if you’re an open source fan.
The tool allows you to distribute beta versions of all three major app platforms: Android, iOS, and Windows.
Some of its coolest features include analytics of users, hardware and OSes, consolidated distribution across all platforms for handling updates, crash reports and analysis that can be integrated with version control, unlimited storage, and team and user management.
Unfortunately, it does not offer a free plan. But you can try the app for free for one-month. The plan starts at $10 USD/month for up to five applications.
6. Bugsee
What Bugsee puts on its website almost summarizes everything: With Bugsee, all the crucial data is always there.
It monitors and records your app details and you can see network and logs of the bugs and crashes in live apps. By embedding Bugsee SDK, you can easily debug Android and iOS apps. It also supports apps developed with React Native and Cordova.
The best part of Bugsee is its video. It captures video of users when they are interacting with apps. This gives the app developer insights into tracking bugs.
7. Frank for iOS
Unfortunately, Frank is available only for iOS. Fortunately, it is best at what it does!
The iOS-only test framework allows you to write structured text test/acceptance tests/requirements (using Cucumber and JSON) and have them execute against your iOS application.
Frank is really good at what it does because earlier it was used as emulator for web-based apps, giving it a long legacy before it jumped into iOS.
8. Sencha
“60% of the Fortune 100 rely on Sencha”. This is all you need to know about Sencha’s credibility.
Although costly, which makes sense because it was made for enterprises, Sencha provides state-of-the-art functional testing capabilities. It works for mobile as well as desktop web apps.
You have to write one test script and then can run on mobile and desktop. The tests in Sencha are written in JavaScript using Jasmine testing framework.
