What Is Testfairy About? Get Paid To Try New Apps. 

Testfairy, through its testers, can help a company release a better app to the market. Find out what is Testfairy about and if you can earn a significant amount of money by testing apps through it.

What Is Testfairy About

Testfairy hails from Tel Aviv, Israel.

Gil Megidish and Yair Bar-On founded the company in 2013. Some of Testfairy’s clients are IBM, Siemens and Johnson & Johnson.

Sharing Your Information

When you register on platforms for usability testing, you need to provide your personal details.

You must provide your name, email address, age, birth date, country of residence and more in most of these platforms.

At Testfairy, the same also applies. It keeps some of your personal info like your email address, which might require authentication or verification.

It also keeps your password, IP address and other distinctive device identifiers or information that relates to your apps and phone usage.

The app you will test will also collect other information like your geolocation, phone number, photos, etc. The collection of these details is not within the functionality of the Testfairy system.

This is the responsibility of the app’s developer. Thus, before you accept the opportunity to test an app, be sure that the developer provided you with complete notification about the collection of your device’s information.

This is according to the TOS for testers.

Upon the request of the app developer, Testfairy may also keep hold of your (some) non-personal data.

These data apply to your use of apps like screenshots, screen touches, call duration, other running applications, screen resolution, version of operating system, installed software in your device and others.

Testfairy uses services of third party entities like Intercom, Zendesk, Google and Amazon to manage its operations, including handling of your personal information.

There are also Testfairy employees who could access your data, but under strict confidentiality. However, the app developer will have unlimited access to your information.

Testers Dashboard

Here, you can see all the apps that you have been invited to test. The app view will show all app designated to you. You can see here the app name, App application ID, App version name and update date.

To download an app for testing, there is a green button you need to click.

If you click the plus (+) sign above this green button, you will see the release notes of the app along with links to the previous versions if you need to download them too.

It is important that you register a device for testing.

Testfairy Difference

As you navigate through the Testfairy website, you will eventually realize just how different this differs from other UX testing platforms we have reviewed so far.

In User Testing, Userfeel, Analysia, TryMyUI, Userlytics, Validately and Whatusersdo, for example, you can easily see how you will get through the process to become a tester (although some platforms might offer a limited amount of information).

Here at Testfairy, your initial impression is that this is a website geared towards developers because it lacks the usual readily available information for testers.

There is no button or link specifically for testers except for the “Tester TOS” link at the bottom, at least as of writing this post.

If you read from the Developer TOS, you would have an idea about what makes Testfairy different from other similar platforms on app testing.

Developers will have a set of demographic requirements that will determine which testers will take on the evaluation task. Other platforms also allow developers to have their own testers.

Managing Testers

At Testfairy, developers have a platform to use for inviting its testers.

Instead of Testfairy being the one to invite the testers, it is the developers who will invite them, and Testfairy will provide the means that developers can use to do this.

This is apparent from the section of Developer TOS about inviting testers. You can read that Testfairy provides developers the apparatus to invite testers for their app either through email or direct download link.

In the upper portion of the developer dashboard, there is a tester button for managing testers.

Here, there is a blue  “add testers” button. When a developer clicks this button, he will see a box where he can add the email addresses of testers he wants to invite for testing his app.

Developers may create a group name for these testers. Developers also have the options to import and export testers.

People whose email addresses have received the email invitation will need to register their devices. If you receive such an email, you will find a registration link.

If you click the link while using an iOS device, the developer will receive your device’s UDID and the testers page will then store your device details.

Device Registration

To be a tester at Testfairy, you first need to receive an invitation from the app developer.

When you receive the invitation through email or through a landing page, they might request you to register your device prior to downloading the app.

Some apps or developers do not require device registration so you may immediately proceed to downloading the app by following the instructions.

Only after getting an email invitation from the developer could you create a Testfairy account. With this account, you can view your invitations; download applications, open bugs, etc.

Further Reading

You will only be able to gather Testfairy information relevant for testers if you navigate more through its website.

As you explore the site, you'll learn that when you test an app, there is also video recording that takes place, which is similar to other platforms like Respondent, Userbrain, Intellizoom and uTest.

How To Apply

I tried to register at Testfairy to see if I could access more information for potential testers. The sign-up page is at https://www.testfairy.com/signup.

I believe that this is the sign-up page for developers. I first tried using a yahoo email, but the system apparently does not accept yahoo.com emails.

I successfully signed up using a Gmail account. You may also create an account via LinkedIn. Verify your registration through the confirmation link sent to the email address you used.

In the confirmation email, the message stated that Testfairy sent me a sample app to download and install in my device.

After I signed up, I often got a pop-up message to verify my account via SMS, but I did not get any message from Testfairy for the 2 different numbers I entered.

I tried logging in again after a couple of days and this time, I received the SMS code.

Completing the sign-up steps allowed me to have access to the dashboard. The developer’s view of the dashboard is definitely for developers because of its technical contents.

This account that I created appears to be a trial version because there is a message on top about the remaining days of trial.

Potential Income

I did not find any relevant information regarding potential income from the Testfairy website.

In other blogs, you could read that the payment rate varies per test. You will know how much you will get from the test in the email invitation.

Work Schedule

Web and app testers follow a flexible work schedule. You will only wait for the email invitation for potential opportunities to participate in paid tests.

Yet, since testers’ selection follows the set demographic requirements of developers, there is no guarantee if you will ever have work to do. 

Conclusion

PROS

If I were a developer looking for a facility to test my apps, I might consider Testfairy. However, I will skip this if I were making a list of companies to join to make money.

The website, its layout, its content and everything else appear all too technical for me.

Perhaps, if you are familiar with app development, you will have no problem navigating through the website with its technical theme.

I do not think it is a worthwhile platform to join or even check out since it is the developers' call who will get an invitation for an app test via Testfairy.