What tool do you use to manage beta testers for a web application?

Question

Forgive me if this is in the wrong place, but I figured a few coders might have some thoughts on beta testing their code.

I have written a web application that I am going to beta test with a small audience (10-20), and will eventually develop an application for the iOS platform.

What I am looking for is a tool that will help me manage the entire beta testing process and users. The features I am looking for are:

• Free
• Web interface - to give easy access to beta testers
• Easily configurable - dont want to have to create logins/credentials for each beta tester to use tool
• Must be able to submit issues/bugs so that I may fix them and update bug (essentially a simple ticketing system)
• Public comments/threads on issues they have come across
• Email alerts would be nice

Does anyone know of a tool that will accomplish this?

If you have any prior experience managing a set of beta testers for a web application I'd greatly appreciate any tips or comments.

Cheers,

Answer 1

Well, I don't have a specific tool recommendation for this, but in my experience I've found it easiest to just implement this stuff myself.

• Easy enough to throw a feedback form into your app hidden somewhere and just link to it during the beta.
• For logins and such I just use a simple signup code system (with a simple admin UI for adding more signup codes)
• Bug tracking... depending on your audience they probably wont be entering bugs themselves, so use the feedback form for this. If your audience is developers then you can simply point them at your bugtracker or just have them email you and you can enter them -- 10-20 people isn't a lot of bug reports
• This approach is 'free' in the monetary sense :)

Just my approach, sometimes it's worth it to just bang out this stuff really rough in an evening rather than setting up/managing a separate tool which you'll only be using during the beta. When your beta is over, this way, you just delete the related code (or better, re-purpose it to facilitate free accounts for bloggers or people you meet at conferences and stuff).

Answer 2

After some more research I have found that I like Beta Easy so far. I'd still like to hear suggestions if you have them.

It still requires each user to have an extra login, which is kind of annoying, but it gives me all of the other features I'm looking for in a clean interface.

There's also a list of Customer Feedback Management tools I came across on Wikipedia here.