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Bugs in web service app before you release it to public, even for beta

4 points by madeel ↗ HN
If you are doing a web service and you know it is going to take about the next 6 months of your time irregularly to fix some bugs. But you already have reached a point where your service can be useful with bugs to your customers.

What's your opinion on releasing your product. Whether you would release it or not.

5 comments

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NameNickHN
In my experience most customers are pretty tolerant as long as you immediately fix the bugs. If you take your time fixing the bugs they'll start wondering whether you're still working on the software. Not a good situation. Customers want to be sure that you're on top of things.
madeel
For bugs in web services, how much time do you think is feasible (that you can fix bugs in) before customers get disappointed and starts to leave your product if you are unable to fix the bugs.
NameNickHN
I don't know. I almost always fix the bugs immediately (same or next day). If I can't do that in that short time frame, I'll explain it to the customer and ask them to give me a couple of days to fix it.
MattBearman
No software is ever 100% bug free. I say ship it and use customer feedback to help find new bugs and prioritise the fixing of known ones.
kromodor
Considering it doesn't crash or having game-breaking bugs - ship this bi*ch.

As to the time - depends on the situation. The more severe, annoying or disabling the bug, the more rapid solutions one must apply.

I personally, can't give you direct estimate on the collective people's expectation.