What Is User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and How to Do It Well

TL;DR: User acceptance testing (UAT) is the final testing phase before software release where real end-users validate that the product meets their needs and works in real-world scenarios, helping catch bugs and ensure product-market fit. The process involves planning test goals, recruiting representative testers, conducting tests (often through beta releases), reviewing feedback, fixing issues, and getting stakeholder approval before launch.

Building new software — be it a web or mobile app — means experimenting your way to product-market fit.

Luckily, there are proven methods of user testing that can speed up that process. Depending on where you are in development and what you need to learn, there's a user testing approach designed for it.

User acceptance testing is one of those approaches, and it's critical for product adoption, product-market fit, and successful launches. We'll cover who performs it, when to do it, and how to do it well.

What is user acceptance testing?

User acceptance testing is typically the last stage of testing in the software development lifecycle before official release. Its goals are to make sure:

• The product meets user needs and performs as intended
• The software is ready for real-world tasks, traffic, and usage
• No bugs were missed in previous testing or QA processes

Ideally, end-users perform UAT in real-world scenarios. This can look like launching a new product to select users for beta testing, using paid test subjects, or introducing the software as a free trial with in-app feedback.

When testing is complete, you make any needed last-minute changes before official release.

Types of UAT

Although user acceptance testing may seem straightforward, it’s actually a broader category that encompasses several types of testing:

• Beta testing: A widely-used type of UAT where software is released to beta testers (end-users) who provide in-app feedback to developers for improvements or bug fixes before public release.
• Contract acceptance testing (CAT): Used mostly for software custom-built for a client. CAT ensures the software meets all contract specifications before project completion.
• Operational acceptance testing (OAT): Focuses on operational readiness and stability. Software is tested to ensure it can handle real-world scenarios, such as reliability and uptime.
• Regulation acceptance testing (RAT): Focuses on making sure that the software complies with all regulations, legal requirements, and security laws. This is more critical in certain industries such as finance and healthcare and doesn't necessarily need to be performed by end-users. A major goal is often making sure that end-user data will be stored and processed securely in compliance with standards like HIPAA and GDPR.
• Business acceptance testing (BAT): Focuses on making sure the software meets internal business needs. These could be goals around customer or user experience, marketing, and sales, quality, or costs.

You may have used software in beta or invite-only mode, where access requires an invite from a founder, a waitlist, or a current member. Feedback is typically provided or solicited from in-app popups, feedback forms, or even invite-only Slack channels or forums.

This is a common and effective UAT method often used alongside other types of acceptance testing.

QA vs. UAT

Quality Assurance (QA) is often confused with UAT, but they happen at different stages of the testing lifecycle and are done by different people.

Quality Assurance (QA) happens earlier in the testing process and is done internally, not by end-users. The goal of QA is to make sure the product functions as expected and to fix major technical issues. As the name suggests, QA tests the overall quality of the product.

By contrast, UAT happens after the QA process is complete. Once the internal QA team ensures product quality, end-users look for usability issues and verify the software meets expectations for the target audience.

SAT vs. UAT

Site acceptance testing (SAT) is a functional test that makes sure the software is properly installed, operational, and accepted at the user's physical site or office. As such, this is mostly used for major software products that are installed locally for major clients.

While user acceptance testing focuses on whether the product meets end-user expectations, SAT focuses on proper installation and configuration.

SAT can be considered a type of UAT, but it's much more specialized. Not every software product needs to run SAT. User acceptance testing, like beta testing or OAT, is important for all types of software.

Usability testing vs. UAT

Usability testing and UAT are often confused since their names are so similar, but they have different testing goals.

Usability testing focuses on the user's experience of navigating the product, ensuring the product is easy-to-use and intuitive. The goal is to make sure that new users can easily navigate and achieve their goals with the app.

Usability testing happens early in the testing process. The results of your usability tests can greatly affect the design, interface, and workflows of the app or product. UAT typically happens after all other types of testing have been completed.

Who performs user acceptance testing?

While the name implies only users are involved, a successful UAT process involves a few key roles working together:

• End-users: This is the most critical group—the real-world audience for your application. They provide the most valuable feedback on usability and functionality.
• Business stakeholders or product owners: These individuals represent the business side and are responsible for defining the initial requirements and acceptance criteria. They often participate in the final review of UAT results to confirm that the software meets business objectives before giving the final sign-off for launch.
• Project or product managers: They typically manage and oversee the entire UAT process. Their responsibilities include planning the tests, recruiting testers, coordinating between users and developers, and ensuring that feedback is properly documented and addressed.
• QA team and developers: Although they don't perform the tests, the internal technical team provides crucial support. They set up the testing environment, provide technical assistance to testers, and are responsible for fixing any bugs or issues that are identified during UAT.

The purpose of UAT

User acceptance testing is often the final stage of testing, which can make it seem optional — but it definitely shouldn’t be. UAT provides a number of significant benefits for your development team:

Verifies your application meets user expectations

Most importantly, conducting user acceptance testing validates that your product meets user expectations before release. This gives you a chance to make final adjustments to strengthen your product-market fit.

Testing user expectations can look like:

• Asking users to test specific tasks or workflows to ensure they function as expected.
• Having users use the product as they would ordinarily and providing feedback on missing or unexpected workflows or functionality.

Verify your app meets internal business requirements

Another benefit of UAT is making sure your product meets business objectives and requirements.

Internal business requirements for UAT include:

• Meeting minimum software load speeds and capacity.
• Ensuring the software uses the minimum amount of resources.
• Making sure the software delivers the correct outputs in every workflow.

Business goals and acceptance criteria are usually set by internal stakeholders. They often include technical requirements about functionality, size, appearance, and usability. The big goal is to ensure your app can handle real-world usage and secure stakeholder approval before launch.

Improve product quality and product-market fit

A tangential — but important — benefit of UAT is improving product quality and product-market fit.

When you do UAT well, you ensure the product meets user expectations and functions effectively in real-world scenarios.

Validating your product and functionality in real-world scenarios ensures that your product-market fit is strong before you launch. If it's not, Bubble's AI Agent and visual editor let you incorporate feedback and make changes faster than traditional development—giving you time to improve product-market fit and speed up the product development process.

All of this helps you keep user experience and expectations at the forefront of your product development process, improving quality and product-market fit.

Reduce post-launch issues

Finally, running UAT can reduce post-launch issues significantly, which speeds up product development long-term. With Bubble's visual workflows, you can see exactly what needs fixing and make changes quickly — unlike AI coding tools that leave you stuck with code you can't read. When you identify and address bugs, functionality issues, or missing functionality before you launch, it's easier (and typically less costly) to fix them.

What's more, because these issues are encountered by fewer users, it strengthens your product quality and users' confidence in your brand.

The UAT testing process

So, how exactly do you run a user acceptance testing process effectively? As with all things related to software development, there isn't just one surefire solution.

Here's our framework that you can adjust for your own testing needs:

Step 1: Plan and design your test

Start by defining the goals for your user acceptance tests and what will be tested. For example:

• We are going to test our new native app mobile builder (the what) to make sure that users can successfully launch native mobile apps without a wrapper (the goal).
• We are going to test our signup workflow (the what) to ensure that users can sign up from any source within three steps (the goal).
• We are going to test our software MVP (the what) to ensure that users can accomplish searching for videos, uploading videos, and watching videos without issues (the goal).

You'll also want to determine the success criteria. These can be based on time (i.e., user can accomplish the task within a certain amount of time or steps), pass/fail completion, functionality or technical specs, or even ease reported by the user.

Then, you'll want to design the test itself. User acceptance tests can range from being very controlled (e.g., "We'll ask users to accomplish this task, in this setting, and see how long it takes,") to very open (e.g., "We'll ask users to use the app as they would in a real-world setting and provide open-ended feedback and bug reports").

Finally, set a timeline for the test and determine completion criteria.

Step 2: Recruit UAT testers

The ideal UAT testers are:

• End-users who are genuinely excited about your product or software.
• Representative of (or included in) your target market.

That is, you want a diverse group that represents different user segments: both power users and new users, across a variety of demographics, with different goals for your product.

You can find UAT testers from your existing user base (if possible), start a waitlist or interest list in your product on a website, or recruit testers that match your target audience through a testing platform.

Step 3: Conduct UAT

For example, if you're doing an open beta test, you'll need to release the beta software to testers (or invite them to the staging environment) and give them instructions on how and where to provide feedback.

Additionally, you may want to solicit feedback directly at regular intervals throughout the testing time frame.

However, if you're running a controlled test within a testing environment, you'll need to provide much more direction, such as:

• Inviting all testers to the UAT test environment
• Providing directions on test scenarios and guiding users through procedures, if the test is moderated
• Showing how to use the testing tool and where to provide feedback (if applicable)

At this stage, you'll also want to ensure you have a system in place to collect and organize test results. A UAT testing tool can help make this a lot easier (we'll walk you through some common UAT testing tools later).

Step 4: Review results

Once you're collecting test data, you need to organize, review, and action the results.

You might sort it into minor feedback (straightforward bugs, inconsistencies, broken links) and major feedback (things requiring team discussion).

Alternatively, sort feedback by category based on what it addresses: workflows, signup process, search function, etc.

Once feedback is organized, developers can start addressing straightforward bugs and errors. Set up regular times during testing to review larger feedback as a team and decide how to take action.

Step 5: Address issues and re-test

Once your test is complete—or at regular intervals while you're gathering feedback—you want to fix any issues that come up.

If you need to make large-scale changes, make sure to re-run your UAT testing after those changes are made. Continue this rinse-and-repeat process until your UAT testing gets the desired results based on your criteria for success.

Step 6: Get approval

So once you've reviewed and addressed feedback, all you need to do is demonstrate the results and reliability of your software to stakeholders and get set to launch.

This is why setting up clear tests and documenting your results is so important: If you've aligned on testing goals and success criteria with clear documentation, stakeholder approval should move smoothly.

Three core types of UAT tools

The type of UAT testing you're running will determine which tools you need. Here are the three main UAT tool categories to consider:

Overall UAT testing management

UAT test management tools help you run, manage, and collect feedback on UAT tests. They act as an all-in-one platform for streamlined testing. Note that some enterprise-level test management platforms can be cost-prohibitive for small teams and startups, though several options offer affordable entry-level pricing. Additionally, these comprehensive tools may include more features than small teams need.

These tools should offer:

• Test execution: Manage and execute tests on a dedicated platform, with testing tools for getting feedback and results.
• Feedback and results management: Collect and organize feedback, track results, get reports, and so on.
• Integrations: Integrate with other testing, project management, or development tools to make it easy to action feedback.
• Test management: Allows you to set up, manage, and track multiple types of tests and keep results organized.

If you're looking for an all-in-one tool like this, check out Zephyr, TestMonitor, or Rainforest QA. Pricing varies significantly: TestMonitor starts at $39/month, Zephyr has multiple products with different pricing models (some starting at $10/month for Jira integration), while Rainforest QA requires contacting sales for custom pricing.

User behavior analytics

A user behavior analytics tool provides you with heatmaps, screen recordings, screenshots, or other analysis of actual user behavior in your app. These can be especially helpful for unmoderated beta testing when you want to understand how users navigate the app and where they're running into issues.

These tools typically offer:

• Heatmaps: Showing you exactly where users click, look, and navigate most on your site or app.
• Screen recordings or screenshots: Recording (anonymized) user sessions with video or screenshots so you can see exactly how users attempt to navigate your app and where they get stuck.
• Live recordings: Some tools may offer the option to have the user provide live feedback in the recording as well as recording their screen, so you can get more context on the users' thoughts and experiences.

Since you can use these apps continuously in the background, they're great for ongoing testing, feedback, and improvement. Our favorite tools in this category are Hotjar (now part of Contentsquare, with a free tier available), FullStory, and UserTesting. Note that both FullStory and UserTesting require contacting sales for custom pricing and are typically positioned for enterprise customers, with FullStory's annual costs starting around $10,000.

Feedback and survey platforms

These tools allow users to report bugs, provide feedback, send screenshots of issues, and other asynchronous feedback as they use your product. Since these tools integrate directly with your product or staging environment, users can leave feedback as they use the tool—perfect for moderated or unmoderated beta testing.

These tools usually offer:

• Screenshots and annotations: Allowing users to screenshot an error or bug and note the problem.
• Feedback and survey popups: Prompt users to leave specific feedback on various pages, workflows, or screens with simple survey popups.
• Bug reporting: Users can flag and report bugs on-page, which are filed directly into dev reports or project management tools like Jira.
• Feedback management and collaboration tools: Dedicated dashboard for collecting, organizing, and actioning feedback.

Regardless of how you're running your UAT testing, an integrated feedback tool is essential for launching and improving your app. Our favorites in this category include Usersnap (starting at $98-99/month), Feedbucket (starting at $39/month), and Marker.io (starting around $49-59/month).

Get started with Bubble

Another underrated way to make UAT testing easier? Building your app on Bubble, the only fully visual AI app builder that makes getting and iterating on feedback easy.

AI coding tools generate code you can't read or maintain, leaving you stuck when you need to make changes. Traditional development requires time-consuming code adjustments and separate testing environments. Both approaches make it easy to lose track of details or take shortcuts during UAT.

With Bubble, you get AI-powered speed and visual control with integrated testing. Invite beta testers to your app and integrate testing tools directly into Bubble. Then collect and action feedback all in one place—the Bubble AI Agent can help you troubleshoot issues and implement changes faster. Bubble's visual editor combined with the AI Agent makes iteration fast—chat with AI when you want speed, edit directly when you want control—allowing you to move faster when developing product-market fit and launching your product.

Build, test, iterate, and launch — vibe code without the code to ship real apps, not just prototypes.

Frequently asked questions about user acceptance testing

Is UAT testing difficult to implement?

UAT can seem complex, but it's manageable with a clear plan. The main challenges are typically logistical — like recruiting testers and managing feedback — rather than technical.

How long should UAT typically take?

UAT duration varies depending on the application's complexity and number of test cases, though many teams allocate one to four weeks for this phase.

What happens if UAT reveals major issues?

The product doesn't launch until issues are fixed. After fixes are deployed, another UAT round often focuses on the affected areas.

Can UAT be automated or does it require manual testing?

UAT is primarily manual because it validates subjective user experience that's difficult to automate. The core relies on human interaction and feedback.

What's the difference between UAT and beta testing?

Beta testing is one specific method within the broader UAT phase. UAT is the entire testing stage, while beta testing gives pre-release software to external users for feedback.