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Ask HN: Tool for handling a beta tester group?

I have a small group of beta testers (50-100) that I currently communicate with by sending BCC messages. Can anyone recommend a better tool for this? I wouldn't mind beta testers being able to communicate with the list, instead of me just blasting announcements and releases out.

I thought about Google Groups, but you can't send attachments to a Google Group as far as I can tell. So, I would have to link the beta download from one of my servers - this wouldn't be that bad, but it would be another step for each email.

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I haven't tested it out personally, but Prefinery might fit the bill: http://www.prefinery.com/

I think their free plan accommodates 50 testers.

You could also set up a private forum which would allow you to post new versions and allow beta testers to leave and discuss feedback.

I created my forums on wikidot http://www.geetasks.com/forum/c-91340/discussions and that's were Beta testers discuss stuff.

I also plan to use Mailchimp to send out announcement about the next Beta being released, because many Beta testers are not reading the forums all the time. I have negative experience with BCC - it seems that many spam filters just kill those messages.

I wish someone had created an integrated Beta management service and I would gladly pay for it. Something that allows people to sign up (with instructions on how to submit device ID for ad-hoc builds), unsubscribe, get notified by email or RSS or twitter or whatever, a forum where people could discuss things, list of new features, list of released features, list of planned features, that kind of thing.

When I was running xp-dev.com's beta, I used a collection of hand rolled scripts and mailman http://www.list.org/.

Personally, that did sorta work for me. I had about 1000 beta users, and did not care too much about conversion ratios (downloads, CTR, new user signups, etc). I just wanted to get the word out when something changed.

But, had I wanted to be more scientific, something like Mailchimp should do the trick.

If you're ever going to grow your beta testing ops, then CenterCode is definitely a good option: http://www.centercode.com/ TiVo uses it for betas...actually, I'm not sure if I can tell you that under NDA :P

For smaller stuff, I'll also recommend Mailchimp for basic mailings. They're here in Atlanta and those guys rock. A killer product from a killer company.

I have simply setup a closed forum using phpBB and it works pretty well in my case. I can see who logged in, who contributed and forums are something that people are pretty familiar with.

I also like the idea of building a real beta-test community for my products because I found out that there are some people who are really, really good at finding bugs and problems.

Are you sure about the no-attachments thing?

http://groups.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...

You could also use the group's "Files" section to upload files for group users.

What's wrong with setting up a mailing list?

user voice seems to be a popular choice - http://uservoice.com/

One big problem with UserVoice is that it requires creating an account before a user can comment.

This is really, really dumb. A few large sites on the internet have problem of too many comments and too much spam, but most startups have a problem of too few comments and users barely being able to bring themselves to post anything, much less create an account. Solving your spam problem by shooing away your users is not a winning strategy in user engagement.

"UserVoice requires creating an account." Are you sure this isn't an admin setting?

Status:declined

http://feedback.uservoice.com/pages/1-general/suggestions/28...

"It seems strange that the system will allow anonymous voting, but not anonymous comments. Allowing the admin to enable anonymous commenting would be very helpful." Yep. Maybe uservoice should listen to its own users..

We're working on that. I just updated the status on it.

anonymous users can still leave comments and such.

Not according to their own system they can't and it's not up for debate either:

http://feedback.uservoice.com/pages/1-general/suggestions/28...

We allow anonymous voting but not anonymous commenting.

We'll be moving to a more blog style commenting system (name+email) in the near future that won't require an actual login.

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