Appurify raises $4.5M to help developers speed up mobile app testing

In an effort to save developers from mobile app testing hell, Appurify has developed a service that automates testing across actual mobile devices.

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The company announced today that it has raised $4.5 million in a first round of funding led by Google Ventures. While its platform is still in private beta (with a few unnamed enterprise companies as customers), it’s gearing up for a public beta launch later in 2013.

“Mobile application testing and debugging is broken today,” said Appurify cofounder Manish Lachwani in a blog post from earlier this month. “Many debugging and test automation tools available for the web or PC apps simply don’t exist for mobile. Compounding this lack of tools is the complexity of the mobile environment.”

Appurify’s platform supports iOS and Android apps, and it enables for both automation and continuous integration testing (which developers can use to quickly test new code). Like its competitor, Perfecto Mobile, the company has actual mobile devices hooked up to its servers for testing — no virtualized environments here. Appurify says it can also replicate real-world conditions, so you could see if your app performs any differently on AT&T’s 3G compared to Verizon’s 4G.

“Manual testing (which is offered by Perfecto Mobile as well as Device Anywhere) is simply not a scalable answer for today’s pace of mobile release,” said Appurify CEO and cofounder Jay Srinivasan in an e-mail to VentureBeat. “The capability to both automate and continuously test on real devices under real user conditions makes us a more pertinent tool for mobile shops – and this message has immediately resonated with every mobile developer we speak to.”

Srinivasan describe’s Appurify’s approach to testing as “tech first.” The company has filed 10 patents so far, and it’s modeling itself after Amazon Web Services. “Testing and debugging is just the first step – an API accessible farm lends itself to the full gamut of mobile application lifecycle management,” he said.

Together with its seed funding, Appurify has now raised a total of $6.25 million. Its other investors include Foundation Capital, Radar Partners, Felicis Ventures, and others.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat