Crowdsourced Testing

A testing approach in which a product is made available to a distributed group of external testers, typically via a third-party platform, who test it on their own real devices across a range of environments, locations, and configurations. It is particularly useful when an internal team lacks the device coverage, time, or diversity of perspective needed to validate a product thoroughly. Third-party providers manage the tester community and deliver a consolidated report of findings. 

For example: a startup without a device lab using a crowdtesting platform to validate a mobile app across dozens of Android and iOS versions before launch; or a company hiring a crowd of real users to explore a new feature for edge cases their own team would never think to try.

Definition: Crowd testing is using a large, distributed group of external testers to test software on their own devices and in their own environments. It's often used for beta testing mobile apps, where device and network variety matters.

So what? No team can own every device, operating system version and network condition its users have. Crowd testing gives wider coverage of real-world conditions than an in-house device lab alone.

Examples: Running a beta test through a crowd testing service to cover many phone models. Using crowd testers in different countries to check an app on local networks.