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Ask HN: How much would you pay per test case?

4 points by EddieJLSH ↗ HN
I am moving countries this summer and decided I'd try a startup project I've been thinking about for some time - a QA-as-a-Service company that helps startups build up E2E automated coverage & manage CI etc from video demos of their product.

I'm currently thinking about pricing and I like the idea of an initial cost per test & monthly maintenance fee. This includes all test planning, development of those tests, CI costs, reviewing bugs, reporting to the client, etc...

I have not really got an idea of how to price this though. Has anyone done something similar before with a good idea on pricing structures?

These are end-to-end tests of a single feature - I know it's hard to generertalize but I don't think this works with bespoke pricing, ideally it can be transparent and upfront. Maybe some sort of categories with different pricing could help, "easy, medium, hard" etc, but that seems too arbitrary.

6 comments

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carlossouza
I think a reasonable approach to sell would be try to convince the buyers that your QA-as-a-Service would replace QA employees for a fraction of their cost. Thus, pricing would be a fraction of the cost of these employees. I think it's a good idea. Btw, you can pretty much validate it entirely before getting started: just approach companies with mid-large QA teams and try to convince them of the value prop (high-quality QA at a fraction of the cost).
EddieJLSH
Thanks!

Yeah I think I can undercut the cost of a dedicated team because the number of tests that are similar between companies are quite high - I've contracted across multiple startups as a test engineer and seen this time and time again. If I can template these smart enough I can quickly boilerplate the tests & then add the more specific domain logic they might have.

Plus there are teams out there still using no-code automation tools which are flakey, so writing these in a non-flakey way (and validating it is a true bug before reporting so clients only get valid bugs) should help prove it's a better service too.

efortis
rainforestqa.com/pricing

  $25/hr for manual testing
  $ 5/hr for automated
EddieJLSH
This is a no-code platform - teams still have to write the tests (which is no-code so... god knows how that is with regards to flakey tests or refactors). So $5 * hours of work effort per month. $25 for manual testing is still far cheaper than I assumed tbh, but I guess this is outsourced to very low cost of living places. Interesting data point though.
bjourne
The complexity of test cases can vary massively. A test case for a bug in an idempotent function is much easier to write than a test case for an obscure rendering bug in a 3d engine. Personally, I don't think it can work for this reason and because testing and (good) QA is an integral part of development. A company that outsources testing might as well outsource the whole development process.