HRO Insight blog
Please visit NelsonHall's HRO Insight blog for further updates from our analysts daily
Applause - Crowdtesting
Vendor Analysis
published on Dec 14, 2020
Access to this report is restricted to logged in clients with access. Login to get full access
Report Overview:
This NelsonHall assessment analyzes Applause's offerings and capabilities in Crowdtesting
Who is this Report for:
NelsonHall's crowdtesting profile on Applause is a comprehensive assessment of Applause’s offerings and capabilities, designed for:
- Sourcing managers monitoring the capabilities of existing suppliers of application services, quality assurance/testing services and crowdtesting and identifying vendor suitability for RFPs
- Vendor marketing, sales, and business managers looking to benchmark themselves against their peers
- Financial analysts and investors specializing in the IT services sector.
Scope of this Report:
The report provides a comprehensive and objective analysis of Applause’s crowdtesting service offerings and capabilities, and market and financial strengths, including:
- Identification of the company’s strategy, emphasis, and new developments
- Analysis of the company’s strengths, weaknesses, and outlook
- Revenue estimates
- Analysis of the profile of the company’s customer base including the company’s targeting strategy and examples of current contracts
- Analysis of the company’s offerings and key service components
- Analysis of the company’s delivery organization including the location of delivery locations.
Key Findings & Highlights:
This NelsonHall vendor assessment analyzes Applause’ offerings and capabilities in crowdtesting.
Applause, formerly known as uTest, was founded in 2007. The Framingham, MA (U.S.) headquartered company is a pioneer in crowdtesting.
Applause started its crowdtesting activities by providing (manual) functional testing, initially targeting start-ups. Through the 2009-10 economic downturn, Applause gained contracts with well-known clients such as Microsoft and Google by offering a lower-cost alternative to traditional testing. These client references helped it to expand its client base to large enterprises.
In September 2017, Vista Equity Partners, via its Fund VI, acquired Applause. With its acquisition by Vista, NelsonHall expected Applause to make acquisitions. This M&A activity has not happened, and instead, Applause has invested in accelerating its go-to-market, developing its service portfolio, and investing in automation.
Today, Applause remains the largest crowdtesting vendor globally: it has a community of ~600k crowdtesters across ~200 geographies.
The company now has a broad portfolio, which spreads from manual to test automation, usability, accessibility, security, and omnichannel/customer journey testing. The company is also active in newer areas such as connected devices, virtual assistants training, testing and AI, and mobile payments.