Have you ever released a feature only to discover a critical bug in production? Software testing services help teams identify issues early, safeguard user experience, and maintain release stability.
A single issue in production can damage brand trust overnight, resulting in support tickets, lost revenue, and eroded user loyalty. Internal QA teams face significant challenges in keeping up with rapid development. Ensuring coverage across devices, regions, and real-world network conditions adds to the complexity
That’s where software testing services come in, helping teams ship confidently, reduce rework, and quickly and reliably implement quality practices. At Global App Testing, we work with leading tech companies to test across real devices under realistic conditions.
This guide explores the key types of software testing, how they fit into your QA strategy, and where testing services can help you go further, faster.
Testing validates functionality, strengthens performance and security, and confirms software performs under real-world conditions.
But modern testing goes beyond just catching bugs. It also:
Software testing services not only focus on quality checks but also provide reliable, secure, and user-expectation-meeting software. This approach delivers measurable impact: During our QA engagement with Acasa, Global App Testing's real-device exploratory and regression testing helped reduce crash rates and improve Net Promoter Score NPS.
Testing services provide extra support, domain expertise, and faster execution to enable a confident release.
Teams use testing services to:
For example, Global App Testing supports testing across 190+ countries and thousands of device/OS/network combinations. We help teams achieve wide-scale coverage across devices, regions, and network conditions.
A strong testing service provides:
Effective testing requires understanding each test type and when to run it in the development lifecycle. Let’s go through the key types of testing one by one.
Testing serves different purposes: some validate new features, others ensure long-term stability. Align these tests with your workflow to catch risks early and maintain release quality.
To understand how this works in practice, let’s break down the key testing categories.
Key types of software testing in the development lifecycle.
This type acts as the first line of defense, used to verify whether each feature performs as expected:
Real-device functional testing at Global App Testing helps teams uncover friction points, improve key workflows, and maintain stable releases, supported by performance tuning and regression testing.
This approach evaluates how well the product performs beyond its core functionality, including performance, security, and usability.
Testing on real devices and networks guides regression cycles, allowing teams to resolve issues early. Coverage across more than 190+ countries and thousands of devices ensures consistent performance.
After functional and non-functional checks, regression testing ensures system reliability. By protecting system behaviour after every release, it ensures new changes don’t break established workflows.
With GAT’s regression testing support, leveraging fast turnaround, global device coverage, and crowd-based execution, teams can move to a weekly release cadence while preserving feature stability and quality.
Both manual and automated testing support high-quality, stable releases. The choice depends on workflow complexity and the need for human evaluation versus efficiency in ensuring reliable, high-quality releases.
GAT uses both manual and automated testing to cover edge cases and large-scale workflows. Manual checks find usability, visual, or localisation issues, while automated tests run repetitive scenarios efficiently, ensuring consistent results across real devices and regions.
Manual vs Automated Testing Comparison
It focuses on assessing features manually to uncover bugs and usability issues beyond automated coverage.
Real-device manual testing across regions helps teams detect UI, compatibility, and workflow issues early.
Testing runs pre-written scripts to quickly validate workflows and ensure system stability, complementing manual testing for broader coverage.
Using both scripted and exploratory tests increases coverage and helps prevent edge-case issues from reaching users.
Even with planned tests, some issues go unseen. Exploratory testing identifies these gaps, ensuring consistent quality across devices and regions.
We often run exploratory sessions to:
By testing across devices, regions, and scenarios, our team provides insights that help catch rare issues and maintain release stability.
QA strengthens collaboration among engineering, product, and design teams while reducing risks throughout the development cycle.
In the past, teams used a waterfall methodology where QA stepped in only at the end of the process, often discovering issues too late to address them efficiently. But now, with agile development, QA is involved from the start, helping teams identify issues before they escalate, resulting in faster, more reliable releases.
When QA is involved early, teams can:
For instance, GAT’s global crowd-testing teams tested new features across devices and locales for Canva during market expansion. As the testing team was involved in the beginning of the software development life cycle, the GAT team identified issues in edge cases in design workflows and device compatibility.
A reliable QA team is the backbone of delivering high-quality software. The best teams combine technical expertise, practical experience, and collaborative processes to provide consistent quality across complex environments.
1. Skills & Mindset
2. Tools & Infrastructure
3. Process & Culture
Teams integrating these elements deliver dependable results, address issues before they impact users, and keep releases on schedule. Our services strengthen in-house QA through additional tools, infrastructure, and domain expertise.
Not all vendors are equal. When evaluating a software testing company, ask:
When working with Carry1st, GAT’s global crowdtesting helped validate features across devices and regions, improving checkout reliability and user experience. The right QA partner should fit into your workflows and scale with your releases.
Scalable software testing enables growth in users, features, and platforms without compromising quality or reliability.
Scalable Software Testing Coverage
We enable it by providing:
Maintaining quality at scale requires thoughtful test planning:
These steps help teams maintain quality while keeping up with fast, global releases. Clients like Canva and Booking.com use GAT’s global crowd-testing platform for market expansion with Booking.com specifically reporting improved reliability across devices after using it to uncover critical bugs in key markets.
Reliable software comes from thorough, fast, real-device testing. Embed QA with Global App Testing to ensure every release meets high standards across devices, networks, and regions.