How to find beta users for your SaaS?
How to Find Beta Users for Your Product
Congrats. After weeks (or months) of hard work, your product is finally ready to be shown to the world. Now comes the next crucial step: user testing.
The goal is simple. You want feedback on everything that matters: the problem you’re solving, your value proposition, UX, UI, pricing, business model, and more. You improve your product based on these insights. Then you iterate. Again and again. Until your product is finally ready for a real launch.
But a much harder question quickly appears:
How do you actually get those feedbacks?
Where do you find beta users?
Free Ways to Find Beta Users
Reddit
Reddit is the largest forum in the world, with hundreds of millions of users and subreddits on almost every topic imaginable. At first glance, it looks like the perfect place to find your first beta testers.
And sometimes, it is. But in most cases, it’s not that simple.
Every single day, hundreds of SaaS founders and indie developers post on Reddit asking for feedback. On the other side, only a small fraction of users are actually willing to test products for free.
The result is predictable.
Dozens of projects are posted every day… and most of them get zero feedback.
On top of that, there are other issues:
- Many posts containing links are considered self-promotion
- Posts can be removed very quickly
- The lifespan of a post is extremely short (sometimes just minutes or hours)
Finding beta users on Reddit is possible, but it’s difficult, time-consuming, and often frustrating.
Discord & Creator Communities
There are countless Discord communities today: no-code, SaaS, indie hackers, startups, solopreneurs, and more. In theory, these are great places to find your first testers.
In reality, the same problem appears:
A lot of people ask for feedback. Very few are willing to give it.
You can get some results with direct messages, but it usually requires:
- A lot of time
- A lot of outbound messages
- A low conversion rate
It works, but it doesn’t scale well.
Friends & Family
This is usually the very first thing founders try: showing the product to friends and family.
It can be useful, but it’s extremely limited.
- They are rarely your real target users
- They often hesitate to be truly critical
- The feedback is usually kind, but not very actionable
- The number of feedbacks you can collect this way is very limited
It’s a good first step, but it’s not enough to properly validate a product.
Product Hunt, Indie Hackers & Launch Platforms
These platforms can be powerful, but only under certain conditions.
They work best if you already have:
- An existing audience
- Or a community ready to support your launch
Without this initial traction, your project can easily go unnoticed. You may get a few visitors, but rarely deep, structured, and actionable feedback.
Where Is Your Real Target Audience?
This is something many founders forget: the best place to find beta users is often not a generic platform, but the place where your actual target users already spend time.
A few examples:
- A product for dentists → dental forums, private Facebook groups, professional associations
- A tool for developers → GitHub, tech Discords, Stack Overflow, developer subreddits
Pros:
- You’re talking directly to your real audience
- Feedback is usually much higher quality
- You can sometimes get paying users right from the start
Cons:
- Access can be restricted
- Self-promotion is often poorly received
- You need to bring value before asking anything
The real challenge here is not finding these communities. It’s interacting with them without being perceived as spam.
The Real Problem Behind All of This
No matter the platform, the core problem is always the same:
Everyone wants feedback. Very few people want to give it.
Giving good feedback takes time, attention, and effort. Without a strong incentive, most people simply won’t do it.
Paid User Testing Solutions
Traditional User Testing Platforms
There are many professional user testing platforms today, such as:
- UserTesting
- Maze
- TryMyUI
- PlaybookUX
The model is simple. You pay, and the platform provides testers who follow a predefined testing scenario.
Pros:
- Fast
- Structured feedback
- Ability to target specific profiles
Cons:
- Very expensive (often several hundred dollars per month)
- Not accessible for early-stage founders
- Feedback can feel impersonal
- Not always well-suited for very early products
These tools are excellent, but clearly not designed for bootstrapped creators.
Freelancers & Paid Testers
Another option is to directly hire testers on platforms like:
- Fiverr
- Upwork
- Malt
Pros:
- Human feedback
- You can choose the profile
- More in-depth tests
Cons:
- Again, the cost
- Highly variable quality
- Not always representative of real users
A Different Approach: Feedback Exchange
TestYourApp
TestYourApp is a recent platform that proposes a different approach to getting feedback, based on exchange rather than money.
The concept is simple:
- You test someone else’s application
- You earn one credit
- You use that credit to receive a test on your own product
All features are free. Only the number of feedbacks you can receive per week is limited on free accounts.
Feedback quality is ensured through:
- Structured testing forms
- A tester rating system
- Penalties for low-quality feedback
Even though the platform is still young, this approach directly addresses the main issue found on Reddit and creator communities:
Everyone wants feedback, but very few people want to give it.
You can check it out here:
Conclusion
Finding beta users is one of the hardest steps when launching a product. Platforms exist, but they are often saturated with requests and poor in truly actionable feedback.
Whether you use Reddit, Discord, your personal network, or dedicated platforms, one rule always applies:
You need to create a real incentive for people to give feedback.
Without that, collecting meaningful feedback will always be slow, random, and frustrating.
Exchange-based systems are probably one of the most interesting ways to make user testing accessible to everyone.
