Vendor Analysis
published on May 23, 2019
Report Overview:
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 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 fine-tuning its business model in terms of go-to-market and service portfolio.
Today, Applause remains the largest crowdtesting vendor globally: the company has a community of 400k crowdtesters, providing access to 2.4m devices across ~200 geographies.
Applause has positioned its service portfolio around continuous testing/agile development and testing, in two ways: first, through providing test case-based manual testing at the end of sprints, and second, through bundling both manual and automated functional testing. Functional testing remains the largest part of Applause activity.
Alongside functional testing, Applause has one other main offering: usability testing, mostly through exploratory testing and business process/customer journey testing, and omnichannel testing.
Alongside this portfolio shift to two main offerings, Applause has also changed its go-to-market, and focuses more on large enterprises, with the intent of bringing more recurring revenues from large clients. To do so, Applause increasingly relies on subscription contract providing clients with unlimited access to its core two offerings.
The priority of Applause is to develop AI use cases, targeting initially two main use cases: duplicate defect identification, and for project ramp-ups, identifying the right crowdtesters profiles for a given project.
Who is this Report for:
NelsonHall’s Crowdtesting Assessment for Applause is a comprehensive assessment of Applause’s crowdtesting service offerings and capabilities designed for:
- Sourcing managers monitoring the capabilities of existing suppliers of IT services and identifying vendor suitability for crowdtesting and software testing services
- Vendor marketing, sales and business managers looking to benchmark themselves against their peers
- Financial analysts and investors specializing in the software testing and crowdtesting sectors.
Scope of this Report:
The report provides a comprehensive and objective analysis of Applause’s crowdtesting offerings, capabilities, and market and financial strength, including:
- Analysis of the company’s offerings and key service components
- Revenue estimates
- Identification of the company’s strategy, emphasis and new developments
- 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 strengths, weaknesses and outlook.
Key Findings & Highlights:
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 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 fine-tuning its business model in terms of go-to-market and service portfolio.
Today, Applause remains the largest crowdtesting vendor globally: the company has a community of 400k crowdtesters, providing access to 2.4m devices across ~200 geographies.
Applause has positioned its service portfolio around continuous testing/agile development and testing, in two ways: first, through providing test case-based manual testing at the end of sprints, and second, through bundling both manual and automated functional testing. Functional testing remains the largest part of Applause activity.
Alongside functional testing, Applause has one other main offering: usability testing, mostly through exploratory testing and business process/customer journey testing, and omnichannel testing.
Alongside this portfolio shift to two main offerings, Applause has also changed its go-to-market, and focuses more on large enterprises, with the intent of bringing more recurring revenues from large clients. To do so, Applause increasingly relies on subscription contract providing clients with unlimited access to its core two offerings.
The priority of Applause is to develop AI use cases, targeting initially two main use cases: duplicate defect identification, and for project ramp-ups, identifying the right crowdtesters profiles for a given project.