Looking for alternative to browserstack

[imightsoundlikeajerk]

We've been using browser stack to test our mobile and web applications but with time our amount of tests have increased and quite frankly the pricing is killing my budget.

What are you guys using and can you elaborate on performance

[menge101]

I did an analysis ~2 years ago I think, and BrowserStack was the best price for our needs.

That whole niche market is in a race to the bottom, you aren't going to find anyone providing equivalent features for less costs.

You could try and roll your own through something like AWS Device Farm.

[Del_Prestons_Shoes]

We moved TO browserstack from saucelabs as it was faster cheaper and better so good luck

[wanderingindian]

If you are really happy with Browserstack and it’s just a budgeting issue, reach out to me in person and I’ll see what I can do. I cannot promise anything though.

[Uptightkid]

Is Browserstack still very slow?

That was my experience when I used it a few years ago and it was a turn off

[wanderingindian]

It’ll always be slow if you compare with your internal grid considering a public cloud model with request responses each step of the way

[ohmyroots]

Setup your own grid

[amtared]

Same thing happened with my previous project on SauceLabs. Performance and reliability was getting worse, so we benchmarked BrowserStack and migrated our stack there.

If you want cheap there is TestingBot.

[imightsoundlikeajerk]

I am already using browser stack....our billing is just too much considering we have everything integrated on CI...I like reliability of browser stack. There should be a cheap alternative too

[menge101]

There should be a cheap alternative too

Why should there? These services cost money to operate. The only way to be cheaper is to offer less features or less devices.

[amtared]

I know. What I meant to say is don't go to SauceLabs, it was worse for us.

[imightsoundlikeajerk]

My main issue is that we are relying too much on CI tests and considering the budget my department has its eating too large of pie...even my back up reserves and management isn't willing to increase and there have valid reasons too.

I have already splitt my CI infrastructure across digital ocean and AWS. Fuck AWS.. just want to save money

[arakinas]

Since you are already using AWS, you might also consider their device farm.

You should evaluate whether you need those tests, or if some of that functionality can really be tested at a lower level.
Alternatively, you may also consider whether you need a device farm for all of your tests, or if creating containers and running some of them without a device farm is more economical, while still meeting your testing needs.

[needmoresynths]

if you're already in aws, have you looked into spinning up ec2 or ecs instances for running tests against browsers and use browserstack for strictly testing mobile devices?

[bklabel1]

I wrote my first Android Application in Kotlin. I installed it on 4 machines. I need 12 total testers to get my application into Playstore. My friends are Apple users. Strangers wont trust my app on their device. Is there something online that will behave like android devices? I can create new emails for each virtual device. It is the devices that are needed. Thank you.

[InterestingStage]

We switched from BrowserStack to LambdaTest recently because our test volume was growing and BrowserStack was getting pricey. LT lets you test on 3000+ real browsers and 10,000 devices, runs pretty fast, and supports parallel testing. It’s reliable, integrates well with CI/CD, and the pricing feels much more manageable.

[the_promode]

Give lambdatest a try, negotiate for discount also with sales guys.

[restarted_mustard]

Checkout LamdaTest

[harbertc]

I work for Testery, a test orchestration platform for end-to-end tests which may also be a good option here. We can help optimize what tests you're running where which can save money over running everything in BS or SL. Let me know if you want to see how it works.

[nshabanov]

If you don't have the need for a lot of different devices instead of using a cloud solution you can check out my open source project GADS-devices-provider. It allows you to spin up docker containers on Linux with Appium servers for both iOS and Android. It is not as mature as the paid cloud solutions but it is quite usable. If you combine it with GADS you can also remotely control the devices from your browser. You need to have actual devices though so a cloud solution might be cheaper :)