Easing QA and bug-testing for app developers and testers: The journey of BugClipper
While building a startup one gets exposed to various challenges, and surpassing those challenges differentiates the winners from the rest. Everyday entrepreneurs grapple with new hiccups and fix them, though some see enough opportunity while dealing with particular problem. Puneet Sharma, co-founded BugClipper, an add-on for apps that makes it easy to record, annotate and report bugs on the fly, thereby saving 70% of the bug reporting time. “While working on BearShop, we hired few freelance developers located remotely. QA testing was done at our end, and reporting bugs was becoming frustrating day by day. We tried different tools but things didn’t work out. So finally, we decided to solve our own problem, and started BugClipper as a weekend project and within a month’s time we had a working prototype,” says Sharma.
Evolution and features
“When we started building this, we never thought it’ll shape up this way. We took an unsexy problem and started working on it only on weekends," reminisces Sharma. After completing the prototype Sharma demoed it to the client, and much to his surprise, clients were extremely happy with the results. This triggered BugClipper’s team thought process and Sharma and gang saw an opportunity here. Encouraged by the response, the weekend project became a full-time product and the team called it BugClipper. “We started pitching it to various companies and realized that the problem was even bigger for the mobile apps. We moved quick, partnered with winjit technologies and launched the mobile SDK for iOS,” adds Sharma.
The best thing about BugClipper is that it easily integrates with your own app and powers it with the right tools to report bugs. Importantly, you don’t need new apps or change your existing bug reporting systems, it just fits right in. On top of it, BugClipper lets you to record screencast with your voice, by just one tap. Additionally it creates a high resolution video capturing for all your app activity and highlights all the screen taps. Sending screenshot of your working screen or multiple screenshots becomes easy as a bundle from your app - it automatically attaches the files and includes the application details in your email.
Traction so far and differentiators
BugClipper is getting pretty good response; QA testers have been the most satisfied of them all, because it’s making their life a lot easier. “We recently demoed BugClipper at Mobility Conference and people loved us. Currently we are one of the companies incubated at the TiE IQ Bootcamp,” says Sharma. Coming out of private beta in June this year BugClipper has developed over 50 different apps. It is serving 15 customers and working closely with them to get their feedback to optimize it.
BugClipper seems to be a vast improvement over the traditional bug reporting process where, in the past, a tester would need to collect screenshots or shoot videos to show the exact issue and sync all that to PC, ZIP it and send it to the developer.
Future roadmap
BugClipper is working closely with app developers, and helping them test their apps and offering them extended trial licences. “Getting feedback from them helps us decide on what features are to be added and plan our roadmap accordingly,” says Sharma. The company has been receiving many requests for BugClipper’s Android version, and the startup is already working on it, and plans to release it in a couple of months. “We’ve also planned to roll out a windows version of BugClipper, concludes Sharma. On the competition front, BugClipper, to some extent, competes with the recently-launched Egyptian startup Instabug.
