Learning the Difference between Alpha Testing & Beta Testing

Bethany Wilson
4 min readFeb 15, 2021

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Summary: Today, customer satisfaction matters for all enterprises. To ensure that the customers get a high-quality product, a lot of tests are conducted on the software such as unit tests, integration tests, system tests, user acceptance tests, etc. Among these different types of tests, the user acceptance test is further divided into two types i.e. alpha test and beta test that aims to test software from end-users perspective to make the product more satisfactory for end-users. Let us now see both of these testing types in more detail.

What are the different levels of software testing?

Usually, software testing is divided into four levels i.e.

1. Unit testing

2. Integration testing

3. System testing

4. User acceptance testing

User acceptance testing is further divided into two types; i.e. alpha testing and beta testing.

What is alpha testing?

Alpha testing is a type of acceptance testing technique that is performed by the internal employees of the organization such as developers and QA teams. But in certain cases, it can even be performed by end-user under the special supervision of core developers or QA teams. After this, the product is sent for the beta test. The main aim of this test is to find bugs or issues in the software before releasing the product to end-users.

What is beta testing?

Beta testing is a functional testing type that aims to validate the product from the end user’s perspective. In this testing method, a nearly completed version of the software is released to end-users to get their feedback and suggestion for product improvement before the actual launch of the product.

What is the difference between alpha and beta testing?

Let us now try to understand the difference between both of these testing methods

Alpha Test

· It is performed by the internal employees of the organization i.e. developers, QA team, etc.

· It is performed at the developer’s site

· It is the first phase in user validation

· It is performed after system testing

· It follows both white box and black box testing technique

· The main aim of this test is to evaluate the quality of the product

· This test is more focused on finding bugs

· The product is 70%-90% completed at this stage

· The test cycle lasts for 1–2 weeks

· The usability of the product is tested at this stage

· Test participants include developers, QA teams

· It is not further divided into different types

· Helps to find defects in the software before end-users

· Bugs identified at this stage can become serious showstopper if left unidentified

Beta Test

· It is performed by the end-users who are not the internal employees of an organization

· Performed at end-users location

· It is the second phase in user validation

· It is performed after alpha testing but before gamma testing

· It is a black box type of testing as end-users have no idea about the source code

· The main aim of this test is to evaluate customer satisfaction

· It is focused on getting end-users suggestion and feedback for product improvement

· The product is 90%-95% completed at this stage

· The test cycle lasts for 4–6 weeks

· Reliability, security, usability every functional aspect is checked at this stage

· Test participants are the end-users

· It is of different types such as — Traditional, technical, focused, private, open, and post-release beta test

· Helps to validate real product from the real user in real environment/production environment

Suggestion/feedback received at this stage helps to improve the quality of the product

Conclusion: A lot of tests are performed on the software until it becomes ready for release. But to make the product more useful and satisfactory for end-users user acceptance types of tests are done such as alpha and beta test. Both of these tests aim to make a product bug-free and reliable. However, some difference exists between these testing methods that are described in this article. Leverage alpha and beta tests from a next-gen QA and software testing services provider to achieve high-quality software that delivers a seamless user experience.

About the author: I am a technical content writer and I write articles on various IT related topics. In this article, I have tried to share my views on the difference between alpha and beta testing.

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Bethany Wilson
Bethany Wilson

Written by Bethany Wilson

Hi, this is Bethany. I’m working as Senior Software QA Tester with TestingXperts.

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