Last year, my company made a bold decision: we ended our contract with a crowd-testing platform and stopped relying on external beta testers. Why? After months of monitoring, it became clear that the outcome didn’t justify the effort. Was it the wrong tool? Wrong timing? Mercury in retrograde? Maybe all of the above.
So we decided to shift our focus to something we already had in place but hadn’t really invested in - our own beta program through TestFlight and Google Play. We rebuilt it around real users - people who genuinely care about the product and want to see it get better.
We started by building a user base, opening up two-way communication, setting up a way to share updates with beta users and putting a process in place to make sure their feedback was seen and acted on.
As a result, we began getting real bugs that actually affect users, along with meaningful feedback on new features. We gained a better sense of what users notice and care about, plus plenty of logs and silent crashes.
To my surprise, our beta program evolved from a simple testing tool into something deeper. Giving users early access and a way to contribute helped build trust and created a real connection between people and the product. It also gave us a group of loyal users willing to join UX research and made our release process even more flexible.
Happy to share some practical tricks to help make your own beta program more effective and more collaborative (and maybe even a little fun too!)