Manual vs Automated Testing: Which One Does Your Startup Need?

Reading Time: 6 minutes

The present business environment is more than challenging for startups. Let’s look at some numbers. The deal value has been declining since Q1 2022, and Q3 2023 was the second-lowest since then. The drop in funding is down 44-54% across all stages.

With a recession in progress, startup teams are forced to operate with lower investments and seek solutions for expense optimization. The result is rising competition between new products across all niches. Now, founders need to invest more effort in product development at all levels – from formulating business tasks to quality assurance and interaction with users.

The way the software looks, works, and feels affects the decisions of investors and future users. When a product passes the MVP stage, and its functionality starts expanding, quality becomes more critical, while mistakes get more probable and expensive. Quality assurance with its automated testing services and software manual testing services becomes critical.

So, how to arrange QA at this stage to make quality work for you? It is necessary to determine the testing needs of the product at its current stage. Among other things, you need to decide what to test manually, what to cover with autotests, and whether to start implementing automation right away.

Manual and Automated Testing in a Nutshell

In manual testing, a QA engineer estimates software manually and visually by interacting with it directly. They check everything using their hands, eyes, and minds. In automated testing, QA engineers set up frameworks and write scripts to automate user actions. The testing runs automatically after it is set up.

Both have the same goal: detect bugs, errors, issues, anomalies, etc. – any deviations from what the team considers “normal” or what has been stated as “normal” in the requirements. From a technical viewpoint, the difference between manual and automated testing lies in using specific tools. In practice, you need to know the cases and conditions for applying each.

Manual testing comes first and sets the background for automation. It works best for checking new features, test cases that aren’t precisely algorithm-based, and tasks that require cognitive abilities.

Automated testing is perfect for repetitive, complicated, and time-consuming tasks as it comes with higher accuracy and faster test execution. Yet, it is inefficient for new functionalities. If something changes in code, QA engineers need to alter the test scripts covering it. And it’s just extra work.

	Manual Testing	Automated Testing
Expediency	New products and features, small functionalities, one-time tasks	Stable functionalities, repetitive tasks, time-consuming tasks
Human intervention	Entirely executed by QA engineers	QA engineers write scripts and set up the framework; a computer runs the tests
Accuracy	Lower accuracy because of the human factor	Higher accuracy as it relies on computer-based processes and algorithms
Reusability	Documentation is reusable, there is no need to change it every time. Still, it is a manual repetition of the same cases over and over again	Can be rerun without intervention multiple times
Speed	Takes more time to complete as it is entirely carried out by human software testers	Is faster as tests can run in parallel in different environments, on different devices and browsers, run unintended during off-work hours
Coverage	Suitable for all cases and functionalities	Suitable only for stable functionalities and cases where it is possible to formulate a clear pass/fail result
Maintenance	Easier to maintain, though QA engineers need to review and update checklists and/or test cases	More difficult to maintain as automation requires constant script updates based on test scope changes and tool updates
Expertise	Requires knowledge of testing theory and, preferably, domain knowledge of the industry	Requires knowledge of software testing theory, domain knowledge of the industry (preferably), and programming languages
Setup	Easier to start, suitable for all stages of the development	Requires manual test cases as the basis for scripts; initial setup is more time-consuming
Cost	Cheaper to set up but potentially gets more expensive – if the scope of work grows and functionality becomes larger and more complex	More expensive to set up but more cost-efficient in the long run

When Does a Startup Need Manual Testing?

A startup always needs manual testing at the early stages of quality assurance. The coverage is defined based on available time and budget. It can be business-critical functionality, everything a QA engineer can think of, or something in-between – if, for example, compatibility (testing on a large variety of devices), accessibility (testing the suitability for people with disabilities), or some other aspect is crucial for a company.

Here is a short list of cases when manual testing is necessary:

At the initial stage of product development, when there are many code changes.
Every time software developers add new features to the product.
After small changes and quick fixes, when testing the selected functionalities is enough.
During one-time checks that often fall under exploratory and ad hoc testing.
When human intervention is necessary: to check visual consistency, basic usability, logic, only selected features or requirements, etc.

Manual testing is a better option for small projects with narrow functionality, a finite scope of features, and only occasional updates.

When Does a Startup Need Automated Testing

The scope of work and number of bugs increase along with the number of code lines. At some point, you will need to hire more manual QA engineers or automate a part of the processes.

With automated testing, the team adopts broader test coverage, effective hotfixes, shorter release cycles, simpler report generation, and more time for manual-only activities. However, there are specific scenarios that justify automation in a startup:

You plan to add new features in the future and scale. In this case, automating smoke and regression testing will save time and shorten a sprint cycle.
Human error can be critical for business results. Let’s suppose there are numerous similar inputs with different outputs. Testing such a product can become tedious. When checked manually, the tiniest mistake affects software accuracy and business performance.
Testing certain features manually is time-consuming. For example, booking systems, medical software, etc., may need to deal with long codes consisting of numbers and letters. Entering this input data manually usually takes a lot of time and tends to slow down the process significantly.

Adopting automated testing is also cost-efficient in the long run. When relevant, it guarantees higher accuracy, human factor elimination, and faster turnaround.

Manual or Automated – How to Decide?

The initial checkup cannot be automated per se. The first encounter lets a QA specialist understand the functionality. Without going through the features manually, a QA engineer won’t be able to define the scope for automation. Besides, even the best product is unstable in the early stages.

Also, some tasks and types of testing can be performed only manually. For example, exploratory and ad-hoc testing that doesn’t rely on pre-written test cases belongs here. Visual UI testing and usability testing also require the human eye and experience.

Finally, manual testing works best for small projects, products with dynamic functionality and frequently changing requirements, and checking small changes on the go.

So, what’s left to automate? It’s repeated checks for critical features or large parts of functionality. Simply put, when the team feels that there’s too much work, and some test suits are applied every other sprint, it’s time to discuss automation.

How to Benefit from Both: The QA Madness Team’s Experience

The key is determining what the software needs at its current stage and adjusting the strategy accordingly as the product evolves. Several options may be suitable:

Implementing test automation starting from the second sprint, after one iteration of manual testing.
Hiring an AQA engineer only to set up the automation and run the scripts independently later.
Waiting until the team develops a big chunk of the functionality so that the automation is more cost-efficient to set up.

Regardless of your decision, it’s best to discuss the viability of automated testing at the specific stage with an expert.

From our experience, the two most frequent scenarios are:

Hiring a single person to run manual and automated testing.
Long-term cooperation with organic scaling of the QA process.

Hiring an Expert in Manual & Automated Testing

We’ve been practicing this solution for a few years now. It works best for:

Small projects with a clearly defined scope of tasks.
Combination of repeated tasks and under-development functionality.

For example, NADUVI – a multi-brand online platform for interior design products – was interested in having one QA engineer for manual and automated tasks. Assigning one to work on the project helped uncover the bottlenecks in the QA process and adjust it to the project’s needs.

You can learn more about it in the case study.

Ongoing cooperation

The cooperation with some of our biggest clients started shortly after they launched their products. The QA team supported the scaling and suggested adjustments when they were necessary.

In this case, if automated testing sounds attractive at the early stages of product development, there’s a QA expert around who can help you decide whether it is already time to implement automation.

To Sum Up

Whether to focus on manual or automated testing depends on the state of your product at the moment you are reading this. As you already know, manual testing always comes first. It is the basis of quality assurance for any software. Test automation is a good way to facilitate and optimize the work, leaving fewer tasks for manual inspection.

So, the challenge is finding QA specialists to help you balance manual and automated testing and adjust the QA process as your product evolves. It can be a freelancer, an in-house team member, an outsourced expert, or a combination of different models.

In QA Madness, we don’t believe in automation for the sake of automation. The team takes a personal approach to each client and each product to determine and set up what would work best for them. We’ll be glad to learn more about your product and help you refine its quality.

Inna Feshchuk