What This Is
Automated testing is the engineering discipline of writing tests that run themselves — on every commit, before every merge, and as part of every deploy — so that regressions are caught by machines instead of by users. It is the work of building a test suite, the CI infrastructure to run it, and the team practices that keep it green over time.
This is the umbrella service that the rest of the testing pages sit under. We design the strategy (what to test and at which layer), build the suites (unit, integration, end-to-end), and configure the pipeline that runs them automatically. The goal is a system where merging a change is safe by default, because the suite either confirms the change works or blocks the merge.
We run automated testing on our own platform across four parallel checks on every push: PHPUnit, Pint, PHPStan, and a frontend build. None of them are optional. Master deploys only proceed when all four pass. The same discipline — automated, blocking, continuous — is what we set up for clients.
When You Need This
Automated testing becomes essential when manual checks stop scaling. The triggers are usually one of:
- Your team is shipping more frequently and human regression checks are no longer keeping up
- You have had regressions reach production that should have been caught — and you want to make sure the same class of bug cannot recur
- You are onboarding new developers and need a safety net so they can change unfamiliar code with confidence
- You have an MVP that worked when you launched it and now needs to evolve without breaking what already works
- Your team is afraid to refactor because the consequences of breaking something are unclear — automated tests remove the fear by making the consequences visible immediately
This is not the right service if you want a one-time test sprint with no ongoing engagement. A test suite that nobody runs or maintains is worse than no tests at all — it gives false confidence and decays into noise. We build suites we expect the team to keep running.
How We Work
Automated testing engagements start with a strategy conversation, not a code sprint. The first question is not “how many tests do we write” but “what is the highest-risk path through this system that no test currently covers.” We map the application, identify the critical flows, and work down from there.
We test at the right layer. A test suite weighted entirely toward unit tests will be fast but miss real-world bugs. A suite that is all end-to-end tests will be slow, flaky, and ignored. We design a suite that is mostly unit tests at the bottom, integration tests in the middle, and a small number of end-to-end tests at the top that prove the critical user flows actually work.
We wire up the CI pipeline as part of the engagement. Tests that only run locally are not really protecting anything — they protect the developer who remembers to run them. We set up the pipeline (GitHub Actions, Bitbucket Pipelines, GitLab CI — whichever your team uses) so that tests run on every push, results are visible in pull requests, and broken tests block merges.
We hand over the discipline, not just the code. The deliverable is not just a passing suite — it is documentation on how to add tests, how to debug failures, and how to keep the suite trustworthy as the application grows.
What You Get
- Test strategy document describing what is tested at each layer and why
- Initial test suite covering the highest-risk paths, written to your stack’s idioms (PHPUnit, Vitest, Playwright, etc.)
- CI pipeline configuration that runs tests on every push and blocks merges on failure
- Coverage reporting so the team can see what is and is not protected
- Quarantine and retry strategy for handling flaky tests without disabling them entirely
- Developer documentation on how to add new tests and debug failures
- Optional ongoing retainer for keeping the suite healthy as the system evolves
Technologies We Use
- PHPUnit for PHP backend testing — unit and feature suites with database transactions for isolation
- Vitest or Jest for JavaScript and TypeScript testing
- Playwright for cross-browser end-to-end testing
- Pest when teams prefer its syntax over PHPUnit
- Bitbucket Pipelines, GitHub Actions, or GitLab CI for CI orchestration
- Codecov or equivalent for coverage tracking
We pick tooling that matches your existing stack rather than imposing our preferences.
Related Systems
Automated testing protects every system we build. A client portal with role-based access cannot be safely refactored without integration tests proving the access rules still hold. A reporting dashboard with complex queries needs unit and integration tests to prevent silent data regressions. The more critical the system, the more it needs the safety net automated testing provides.
Talk to Us About Your Test Strategy
If your team is shipping into production with no automated safety net — or with a suite that nobody trusts — get in touch and we will scope a path from where you are to a suite that actually works.
