
Wordwatch captures and manages communications data at highly-regulated organizations for compliance, surveillance, and information security.
Wordwatch’s product captures, archives, and manages billions of communications records across multiple storage systems, each with hundreds of data points to validate.
Testing that complexity pushes the limits of automation. Some of their tests run for up to 20 hours, while others have to verify that Wordwatch’s multi-criteria search returns accurate results across billions of records and dozens of data types.
“We have an extremely complex environment with a lot of logic running under the hood—massive datasets, hundreds of variables, and multi-storage integrations. If our search function doesn’t return every required record, it’s a compliance failure. That’s why QA comes in for us really, really hot.”
—Chris Reed, Head of Product & Technology
Before QA Wolf, Wordwatch ran half of their tests manually. Maintaining tests became a full-time burden as every product change required rework. After more than a year, automation stalled at 50% coverage—pushing further would have meant doubling QA labor costs.
“We hit a glass ceiling and we were about to start building major new features. We had to change or drown in testing.”
—Chris Reed, Head of Product & Technology
The challenge was magnified by how the product is deployed. About 80% of installations run on-premise, many in offline environments. When a bug made it into production, engineers couldn’t push a quick fix remotely—they had to travel onsite to install patches.
Quarterly releases carried significant risk, cost, and stress. Regression testing took two weeks or more and often happened only in the final days before launch, leaving little time to react if problems surfaced.
“We can’t tolerate any critical bugs. If we miss something, customers could be waiting three months for a fix, so we have to know with high certainty that what we’re shipping is good.”
—Chris Reed, Head of Product & Technology
Maintaining a fully automated test suite simply wasn’t the team’s core focus or skillset. Wordwatch needed a partner who could own the test infrastructure, handle maintenance, and take the cognitive load off developers.
That’s what led them to QA Wolf.
With QA Wolf, automated regression tests run nightly across all workflows, catching issues early in the cycle instead of during final release prep. When the team runs a full regression suite ahead of release, it now takes a week instead of two or more.
“Running tests every night means we don’t wait until release week to find out what broke. Developers get instant feedback, fix it the next day, and move on. It’s normalized testing for us.”
—Chris Reed, Head of Product & Technology
All of Wordwatch’s complex workflows that were once too time-consuming or risky to automate are now fully covered by QA Wolf.
“All of our complex, high-risk workflows that used to take days to verify manually are now fully automated. QA Wolf owns the coverage, so my team can focus on innovation instead of spending weeks validating what we’ve already built.”
—Chris Reed, Head of Product & Technology
QA Wolf’s consistent coverage and nightly regression runs turned Wordwatch’s on-premise releases from last-minute scrambles into smooth, predictable launches. Emergency patches are less frequent, and every update ships with higher confidence and lower stress.
Reliable automation proved critical during Wordwatch’s most ambitious release to date—a complete rebuild of its database and the addition of new AI-driven compliance features, all delivered in just three months.
“We replaced our database, added AI, rebuilt the whole stack, and still shipped on time. That just wouldn’t have happened before QA Wolf.”
—Chris Reed, Head of Product & Technology
In any previous cycle, that level of change would have introduced major risk. With QA Wolf maintaining test coverage across both legacy and new environments, Wordwatch kept development on track and caught issues early. When the deadline arrived, the release went live on time and fully tested.
“The QA Wolf team worked alongside us the whole way—handling the testing workload and taking the pressure off our QA process so we could focus on building. It felt like real teamwork.”
—Chris Reed, Head of Product & Technology
Partnering with QA Wolf allowed Wordwatch to optimize its QA function, shifting from a five-person team to one in-house lead, saving them roughly $400,000 annually.
“I’d much rather spend money developing new features that add value to our customers than hiring people just to validate that the work we’ve done is correct. QA Wolf gives us that balance.”
—Chris Reed, Head of Product & Technology
Beyond the savings, QA Wolf became a true extension of the Wordwatch team. QA Wolf’s QA engineers handle the full test lifecycle—writing, maintaining, and triaging tests—so Wordwatch’s developers can focus on building new features instead of validating old ones.
“I’d recommend QA Wolf to any team that wants to keep development focused while knowing their quality is in safe hands.”
—Chris Reed, Head of Product & Technology
