Artem Golubev is the founder and CEO of testRigor, a company revolutionizing software test automation through AI-powered plain English testing. With a mission to eliminate the massive maintenance overhead that plagues traditional testing tools while simultaneously improving test coverage, testRigor has enabled hundreds of companies, including Netflix, Splunk, Business Wire, and Koch Industries, to build test automation 15X faster and spend 200X less time maintaining it. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Artem to discuss testRigor’s innovative approach to solving one of the software industry’s most persistent challenges.
Tell us about your company.
For almost a decade, I’ve been on a mission to reduce the number of human efforts spent on testing AND improve test coverage at the same time. We built testRigor to solve problems that prevent people from being able to achieve 100% test automation.
The fundamental issue is that many QAs make the mistake of using tools like Selenium simply because they’re free and open-source. However, Selenium introduces a gigantic maintenance overhead that is so huge that it prevents companies from being able to build more automation because they’re drowning in test maintenance. The problem is that with Selenium, people test how engineers built things yesterday rather than how the application works from an end-user’s perspective.
testRigor was born to empower ANYONE to use free-flowing, plain English to build test automation. You don’t need to know how to code. Moreover, there is almost no maintenance since the specifications are in plain English, purely from the end-user’s perspective. Testing can be as easy as writing: “find and select a Kindle” and “add it to the cart.” Our AI-driven platform translates these high-level instructions into specific test steps automatically.
We strongly believe in our mission that technology can do MUCH more for testing compared to what is available on the market today. Our goal is to allow our customers to have as valuable a test suite as possible with as little effort as possible.
What problems are you solving?
The software testing industry faces three critical problems that we’re addressing head-on.
First is the maintenance nightmare. Traditional script-based automation tools require constant updates whenever there are changes to the application’s HTML structure, IDs, or XPath selectors. Companies spend 90-99% of their automation time on maintenance rather than creating new tests. This is simply unsustainable. With testRigor, because tests are written in plain English from the end-user’s perspective, they withstand changes in implementation details. When you write “click on the Submit button,” it doesn’t matter if developers change the button’s ID or CSS class; the test continues to work.
Second, there’s a massive skills gap. Traditional automation requires specialized programming knowledge, which means companies either need to hire expensive automation engineers or watch their manual QA teams sit on the sidelines. This creates a bottleneck where only a small percentage of test cases ever get automated. testRigor democratizes test automation by allowing product managers, manual testers, and business analysts to create and understand automated tests using plain English.
Third is the coverage problem. Most companies struggle to get beyond 30-40% test automation coverage because the maintenance burden becomes overwhelming. We’ve seen Fortune 1000 companies go from 34% automation coverage to 91% in under 9 months using testRigor with only their manual QA team. That’s the kind of transformation we enable.
What application areas are your strongest in?
testRigor excels in several key areas that make us the only end-to-end test automation tool companies need.
Our strongest area is cross-system end-to-end testing. We can build tests spanning web, mobile (both native and hybrid for iOS and Android), desktop applications, APIs, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, and any other third-party systems, all in one simple test. This is unique in the market. For instance, you can create a test that starts on a web application, sends an email, verifies the email content, clicks a link in that email, continues the flow on a mobile app, and validates API responses all in plain English within a single test case.
We’re particularly strong with form-based UIs and functionality that has predictable input/output. We excel at test cases that require multiple users to interact with the same flow, whether via email, SMS, or instant messages. Our platform is ideal for applications with constantly changing code and HTML IDs, where traditional automation fails spectacularly.
What keeps your customers up at night?
Our customers lose sleep over several critical concerns, and we’ve designed testRigor to address each one.
The biggest worry is production bugs reaching customers. Companies know they should have comprehensive test coverage, but with traditional tools, building and maintaining that coverage requires resources they don’t have. They’re caught in a terrible dilemma: invest heavily in test automation that will consume endless maintenance time, or ship with inadequate testing and risk customer-impacting bugs. With testRigor, they can finally achieve comprehensive coverage without the maintenance penalty.
Release velocity is another major concern. In today’s competitive market, companies need to ship features fast, but they’re terrified of breaking existing functionality. Traditional regression testing is a bottleneck; either you wait days for manual testing, or you skip tests and cross your fingers. Our customers use testRigor to run comprehensive regression suites in parallel, getting results in minutes instead of hours or days. This enables true continuous deployment.
Technical debt in testing is a silent killer. Many companies have invested years in Selenium-based automation, only to find themselves with brittle test suites that break with every release. They’re spending more time fixing tests than finding bugs. Migration seems daunting, but companies like Enumerate saved $180,000 by switching to testRigor, avoiding the Selenium setup costs and not needing to hire specialized automation engineers.
What new features/technology are you working on?
We’re continuously pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with AI-powered test automation, and we have several exciting developments in the pipeline.
Our generative AI capabilities are evolving rapidly. We recently launched features that allow users to generate entire test cases by simply providing an app description. The AI analyzes the application and creates comprehensive test scenarios automatically. We’re enhancing this to handle increasingly complex applications and edge cases. Users can also generate tests from their existing manual test documentation, just paste in their test steps, and testRigor converts them into executable automation.
We’re expanding our AI-powered testing capabilities specifically for LLM-based applications. As more companies build chatbots, virtual assistants, and other AI-driven features, they need ways to validate these systems. We’re developing advanced natural language validation that can assess whether AI responses are appropriate, detect bias or sensitive information leakage, and validate sentiment across diverse inputs.
Self-healing test capabilities are being enhanced. Our AI already automatically adapts tests when UI elements move or change, but we’re making this even more intelligent. The system will soon provide predictive insights about which tests might be affected by upcoming code changes, allowing teams to proactively review and adjust tests before running them.
How do customers normally engage with your company?
We’ve designed multiple pathways for customers to experience testRigor’s value, because we understand that different organizations have different needs and evaluation processes.
Many customers start with our forever-free public account. This allows a single user to explore testRigor with unlimited test cases, though tests are publicly visible. It’s perfect for individuals who want to experiment with the technology and see the plain English approach in action. The free tier includes a limited feature set and community support, but it’s enough to understand testRigor’s core value proposition.
For teams ready to get serious, we offer private tier plans starting at $99/month for a single user with 1,000 test cases. This provides access to our extended feature set and customer support. Our mid-tier plans, starting at $900 per month, offer unlimited users and test cases – ideal for growing teams that need to scale their automation efforts. Enterprise plans provide custom pricing with additional features like SSO, SLA guarantees, and on-premise deployment options.
The typical engagement starts with a personalized demo. A testRigor specialist walks prospects through the platform, often using the customer’s own application to demonstrate real value. We can usually show meaningful results within the first session – writing actual tests in plain English that immediately work against their system. This hands-on approach resonates with teams who are tired of lengthy evaluation processes with traditional tools.
Contact testRigor.
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