Cost of Third Party Software Quality Assurance vs. an In-House Staff

If you are something of a “mom-and-pop shop” with just a handful of staff members, you are likely not in a position to hire someone with the specific task of testing your software products. For those people, hiring a third-party company like Beta Breakers is an easy decision to make.

If, however, you are a larger company, you may decide you have a choice:

• Interview and hire people to build a quality assurance department
• Or hire Beta Breakers

On the surface, you may think that hiring people is the less expensive option. You certainly can find people willing to work for an hourly equivalent of less than $70 (Beta Breakers standard hourly rate).

However, that comparison is shortsighted, because there are additional costs associated with hiring in-house workers. The list includes:

• Statutory taxes – your company must pay employer taxes over and above their rate of compensation.
• Insurance – liability, workers’ compensation, health and dental insurance are commonplace costs.
• Management – These people must be managed by someone.
• Work Space – software quality assurance staff must be segregated from designers and developers so that they can remain as objective as possible.
• Recruitment/Replacement Costs – When someone moves on, they must be replaced. That effort will cost you time and money.
• Infrastructure and Equipment – Your quality assurance staff must have the equipment they require to do their job. The list includes computers, operating systems, browsers, third-party plugins, and mobile devices – both Android and iOS. Maintaining all of this equipment does not come cheaply, nor does it come without a great deal of effort.

If you take the time to add up all of these additional expenses, you will find that Beta Breakers is only modestly more expensive or in many cases, less expensive than hiring and maintaining in-house quality assurance staff.

Lastly, what happens when you are between releases and there is nothing for your quality assurance people to do? In that case, Beta Breakers becomes infinitely less expensive given the fact that if you hire, you still must pay your employees. However, if you hire Beta Breakers, you are free to “turn us off” until the next release is ready to test.

Simply put, Beta Breakers is the “headache-free” and cost-effective solution to your software quality assurance requirements.