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How We Reduced Bugs by 57% in 3 Months: A Real-World Galera Testing Case Study from 2025

Meta description (for SEO): Galera Testing Case Study: How a Remote QA Team Helped an IT Startup Save $2,230 and Release a Fintech App Without Critical Bugs in 3 Months.
In early 2025, a fintech startup approached us to develop a mobile app for transfers and investments. The product had already undergone internal testing, but before launching to 50,000 users, the client realized there were too many bugs and the release couldn't be delayed.

 

Initial data at the start of collaboration

  • Platforms: iOS + Android + web version

  • Development team: 9 people (internal)

  • Number of bugs found in pre-release: 312 (including 47 critical and high-priority)

  • Time until release: 12 weeks

  • QA budget: limited (the company has just raised a seed round)

 

What we accomplished in 3 months

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Weeks 1–2: Audit and prioritization

  • Conducted a full smoke test of all main scenarios

  • Created a risk-based matrix: identified 4 critical areas (payment gateway, KYC, push notifications, multi-account)

  • Configured Jira + TestRail, synchronized with developers

 

Weeks 3–6: Regression and load testing

  • Implemented daily smoke tests after each deployment

  • Launched 180 automated tests UI tests on Playwright (78% coverage of key user flows)

  • Conducted load testing (k6): identified a bottleneck in the API gateway—a crash at 3,000 concurrent requests.

  • Fixed 142 bugs (45% of the total).

 

Weeks 7–10: Security and UX Testing

  • Conducted penetration testing (OWASP Mobile Top 10 + API)—found 11 vulnerabilities, 4 of which were critical.

  • Conducted 3 iterations of usability testing with real users (20 people)—removed 38 "annoying" bugs.

  • Fixed another 89 bugs.

 

Weeks 11–12: Final Acceptance and Release

  • Conducted a zero-bug release candidate.

  • 48-hour monitoring in production with 5,000 real users.

Critical bugs in production—0. High-priority – 3 (fixed within 4 hours)

 

Final figures

  • Bugs at launch: 312

  • Bugs after our work: 132 (including 129 low/minor)

  • Bug reduction: 57%

  • Client savings: ≈ $2,300 (compared to hiring an in-house QA specialist + possible penalties for missed deadlines)

  • Time to market ahead of competitors: 3 weeks

 

Conclusions we learned (and that will be useful to you)

  • 80% of critical bugs are hidden in the 20% most important scenarios – start with these.

  • Regression automation pays for itself in the second month.

  • Load testing should be done before going into production, not after the first user complaints.

  • A remote QA team can be 30-50% cheaper and faster than an in-house team.

Want the same results for your product? Contact us at galera.testing@gmail.com

The Top 7 Testing Mistakes That Are Causing 68% of Startups to Fail to Release in 2025

​Meta Description (for SEO): The Most Costly QA Mistakes We See in 9 Out of 10 New Clients. Plus a free checklist at the end of the article to ensure your next release goes smoothly.
At Galera Testing, we tested 47 projects in 2025 (mobile apps, web services, fintech, EdTech, and marketplaces). Of these, 68% had at least one of these seven mistakes at the start—and almost always, this led to missed deadlines, budget overruns, or critical bugs in production.
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Mistake #1: Starting Testing Too Late
The most common and costly mistake. Developers write code for 3-6 months, but QA is brought in 2-3 weeks before release. The cost of fixing a bug in production is 30-100 times higher than in development (data from the IBM System Science Institute, still relevant).
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Mistake #2. Lack of clear requirements and acceptance criteria
"The main thing is that it works" is a favorite customer phrase, after which we find 50+ different interpretations of the same scenario. The result: developers and testers test different things.
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Mistake #3. Ignoring load and stress testing
"We don't have many users yet" is a classic. In 2025, we saw 11 cases where the application crashed with 500-1,500 concurrent users, even though no one had tested the load.​
 

Mistake #4. Completely relying on automation without manual testing
Automation is great, but it only finds what you've already foreseen. In 2025, six clients came to us after "100% automated testing coverage," and we found 40+ critical bugs manually in three days (exploratory testing works wonders).
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Mistake #5. Testing only under "ideal" conditions
Tests are run on the new iPhone 16 Pro and MacBook with 1 Gbps Wi-Fi. Real users are running Android 9, with 3G and power saving enabled. The result: 2025 was a record year for the number of "it works for me" bugs.
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Mistake #6. Lack of early security testing
In 2025, 14 of our clients discovered critical vulnerabilities (Insecure Direct Object Reference, Broken Access Control) only after the first penetration test—a week before release. Fixing them took between 2 and 6 weeks.
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Mistake #7. No regression testing after each fix
Fix one bug, break three others. A classic 2025 story: "We'll fix it quickly, we won't test it, and everything's fine." A day later, production is on fire.

Top 5 Test Automation Tools in 2025: What Galera Testing Really Uses Every Day

Meta description (for SEO): A review of the most effective automated testing tools of 2025: Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, Appium, and TestCafe. Plus a comparison table and our internal rankings based on speed, reliability, and support costs.
At Galera Testing, we ran over 2,800,000 automated tests for 50+ clients in 2025. Here are five tools that actually work and make money, not just "trendy" names.​
 

1. Playwright (Microsoft) — our absolute #1 choice for 2025
Why we rank it #1:

  • Native support for Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit simultaneously

  • Automatic element waits (goodbye flaky tests)

  • Execution speed is 2-3 times faster than Cypress

  • Codegen + Trace Viewer — one-click debugging

  • Support for mobile emulation and real devices via BrowserStack/Device Farm

Used in 73% of projects. The cost of running one test is ≈ 11 seconds (the fastest in our ranking).

 

2. Cypress is still the king of frontend startups
Pros for 2025:

  • Built-in test runner with videos and screenshots

  • Excellent documentation and community

  • Cypress Dashboard with parallelization (paid, but worth the investment)

Cons:

  • Only works on Chromium kernels

  • Slower than Playwright in complex scenarios

Used in 18% of projects (mainly React/Vue/Nuxt).
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3. Selenium 4 + Selenium Grid / Selenoid
A timeless classic:

  • Support for absolutely all browsers and versions

  • A huge number of ready-made libraries

  • Easily integrated into older projects

In 2025, we only use it in two cases:

  • A client requires Internet Explorer / older Edge

Tests are needed on Safari 13-14 (Playwright does not yet support it)

Our project share: 6%.
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4. Appium 2.x — the only viable choice for native mobile apps
What's new in 2025:

  • Out-of-the-box support for iOS 18 and Android 15

  • Appium Inspector has become more user-friendly

  • Plugins for parallel execution on 50+ real devices

Cons: Still slow (one test takes approximately 30-50 seconds). We use it in 12% of mobile projects (the rest are covered by Playwright + emulation).
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5. TestCafe (DevExpress) — a dark horse for 2025
Why it's back on top:

  • Doesn't require WebDriver — just install and run

  • Automatic waits + Playwright-level stability

  • Free TestCafe Studio (GUI for non-techies)

In 2025, we migrated three large clients from Selenium to it — speed increased 2.1 times, and support became easier.

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Conclusions and recommendations from Galera Testing

  • If you have a web project for 2024–2026 → start with Playwright

  • React/Vue + need a beautiful dashboard → Cypress

  • Need tests on older browsers → Selenium as a temporary solution

  • Native mobile apps → Appium only

  • Want fast and headache-free → TestCafe

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