2 posts tagged with "Best Practices"

Every test management vendor is racing to add AI-powered test case generation. And to their credit, most of them aren't charging extra for it — they're bundling it into their existing per-seat pricing. TestRail includes AI in both their Professional ($37/user/month) and Enterprise ($74/user/month) tiers. PractiTest bundles SmartFox AI into their $54/user/month Team plan. BrowserStack includes it in their paid tiers.

So what's the problem?

You're paying for AI whether you use it or not. You don't get to choose the model. You can't see or modify the prompts. You have no control over where your requirements data goes when it's processed. And in some cases — like Qase's credit-based AIDEN system at $0.40 per extra credit — you hit real usage caps when you need it most.

There's a different approach. Plug in your own LLM and API key, choose the model you trust, and keep your data exactly where you want it. Here's why that matters.

If you spend any time in QA forums or Reddit threads, you'll inevitably run into some version of this take: "Test case management tools are outdated. Just use spreadsheets. Or better yet, let your automated tests be your documentation."

And honestly? Those approaches can work. For a while. For small teams.

But they don't scale, and they create problems that only become obvious once you're too deep to easily fix them.