Playwright: Testing That Moves at Startup Speed

At some point, every founder or CTO has probably said something along the lines of: “We’ll test it later; right now, we need to ship.” It sounds practical; even smart. Speed matters, after all, especially when you're trying to validate ideas, attract users, and stay ahead of competitors. But testing later often means testing never, or at best, testing too late.

Pushing testing down the road is a debt that compounds silently. Every shortcut, every bug swept under the rug, and every “quick fix” added to your backlog accumulates until it eventually becomes a problem too big to ignore.

That's why Playwright has become essential for us: it allows our team to test early and often without slowing down development. We’ve seen what happens without this kind of proactive testing many times. A simple bug that could’ve been caught in five minutes during development ends up costing hours (or even days) in the middle of a critical product launch. It derails focus, drains resources, and slows momentum. And when that bug finally surfaces in production (because it always does), it's not just your developers who pay the price; your customers feel it too.

The cost increases exponentially as you go further along the development lifecycle. A defect found in the requirements phase might cost almost nothing, while spotting it during development could be just a minor inconvenience. Catching it in QA? An annoyance, sure, but a bug that reaches production? Now you're dealing with rollbacks, hotfixes, unhappy users, and sometimes even damaged trust, none of which startups can afford.

Blog Summary:

Testing is one of those things everyone agrees is important until it starts delaying deployment. Today, we’re showing how testing can help you move faster. We’ll break down:

The cost of pushing testing to “later”
How tools like Playwright let us test without breaking our speed
What testing culture looks like when it’s built into the process
The warning signs of poor testing
Why startups that skip testing don’t stay fast for long
What it means to build a product that’s ready to grow

Usability test — Hand holding a sticky note that says “Run a usability test,” in front of a wall with other UX research tasks written on post-its

Introducing Playwright

Sometimes, when we talk about automated testing, there’s some hesitation present. And that makes sense. Many testing tools promise automation but deliver extra work, creating a whole new set of headaches instead of solving existing ones. But from our experience, Playwright is different.

Playwright is an automated testing tool that specializes in reliably simulating real user interactions across all major browsers. It runs tests faster and with less setup hassle than traditional tools. Simply put, Playwright gets out of your way and lets your developers get back to building.

Testing needs to match the speed of your development cycle, not slow it down. Playwright achieves this with two essential advantages:

Parallel Testing: You can run multiple tests simultaneously across several browsers without sacrificing performance. Meaning faster feedback loops and quicker detection of cross-browser inconsistencies.
Easy Integration & Low Overhead: Adding Playwright to your existing workflows is straightforward. Its intuitive API allows developers to quickly script real-world user scenarios. And thanks to its robust out-of-the-box setup, your team won’t waste valuable hours managing complicated test configurations.

Choosing Playwright was a deliberate decision aligned with our vision for software development: move fast, build confidently, and ship reliably. We didn’t want a tool that introduced friction or distraction. We needed something that just worked quickly and consistently.

Automate Early

We think of testing as a part of the foundation we build on, not just another step in the development process. The earlier we automate our tests, the earlier we can catch and fix problems. Long before they become expensive or frustrating.

In practical terms, this means creating automated tests as soon as we start working on a new feature. The moment a user interaction can be defined clearly, it gets scripted and included in our suite. That way, our team isn't just guessing if the new code works; we know exactly which flows are stable and which need more attention.

This proactive approach has a ripple effect throughout the entire product lifecycle. We learned early on that automation is about peace of mind. Knowing our codebase is continuously checked and our core features are always validated, frees us to focus on what matters most: delivering real value to our partners.

Seamless Integration with CI/CD

Automated tests are only useful if they actually run. That might sound obvious, but anyone who’s tried integrating tests into a continuous delivery workflow knows how quickly complexity creeps in. When tests become complicated to configure or start to require manual intervention, teams naturally start skipping or delaying them. We knew that if testing wasn’t seamless, eventually it wouldn’t happen at all.

That’s why integrating Playwright into our existing CI/CD pipeline was so important. Our goal was clear: tests had to run automatically every time new code was pushed, with zero extra friction for developers.

What’s powerful about this setup is the visibility. Developers can see clear results directly in GitHub, immediately identifying which tests passed and which failed, along with actionable details for troubleshooting. And because Playwright’s parallel execution keeps test times short, these checks fit neatly into our developers’ existing workflows instead of interrupting them.

Cross-browser Testing

Ensuring consistency across browsers is one of those problems most teams know they should solve, but often put off. It’s understandable: manually verifying every feature on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge takes considerable time, and typically reveals more issues than anyone planned for.

Given our previous projects’ experience, we knew that skipping cross-browser testing wasn’t an option at all. Our products serve diverse users, often on different devices and browsers. Even small visual glitches or functional inconsistencies create friction, making products feel less polished and reliable. But manual verification was not really sustainable.

Playwright simplified this for us significantly. By scripting interactions just once, we automatically test across multiple browsers simultaneously. Instead of developers manually switching browsers and repeating tests, Playwright flags differences immediately, allowing us to quickly pinpoint and fix inconsistencies.

Basic yet critical issues like a signup form that works perfectly in Chrome but fails quietly in Edge due to browser-specific JavaScript handling are now much simpler to detect. Because Playwright alerts us immediately, we can fix it before any real user ever encounters it.

Testing as a Culture

If you’ve ever worked with a team where testing feels like a chore, you know the difference. It’s that feeling where tests are tacked on at the end, rushed right before a release, or skipped entirely when the deadline starts breathing down someone’s neck.

Well, that’s not how we work. For us, testing is baked into the way we write features, review code, and even talk about product decisions. The goal isn’t to reach 100% test coverage or win some kind of QA award. The goal is to know that what we ship works, holds up under pressure, and won’t break quietly two weeks later.

The secret is not separating testing from development. Every resource of the app life cycle is present from the start of the project. The same people writing the code are thinking about how it might fail and writing the test to make sure it doesn’t. That mindset changes how things get built. It makes developers think twice before adding complexity. It surfaces edge cases earlier. It keeps technical debt from creeping in through the side door.

It also means we don’t rely on a “hero” QA engineer to catch everything at the last minute. We design systems to be resilient. We test as we go, adjust quickly, and stay in motion. That’s what lets us move fast without breaking everything in the process.

What Bad Testing Looks Like

Just to be fair, most companies don’t skip testing because they’re reckless. They skip it because they’re under pressure. Timelines shrink, features pile up, and testing starts to feel like a luxury that can wait. Until it can’t. We are not trying to justify them either, just trying to give you a fuller picture.

We’ve seen what that looks like up close with releases that drag on because bugs keep popping up, QA cycles that take days instead of hours, and entire teams stuck debugging production issues they thought were already solved. It’s frustrating. And expensive.

Bad testing also creates invisible debt. You don’t notice it at first. But slowly, confidence fades. Developers hesitate before shipping. Product leads stop trusting timelines. Founders start micromanaging launches. That’s what happens when you can’t trust what’s in production.

The worst part is if (or when) users notice. Maybe not immediately. But they feel it. In the signup flow that breaks. In the button that doesn’t work on mobile. In the “small bug” that ruins a first impression. That’s why we don’t treat testing as optional.

Focus on Growth

Most of the early conversations we have when considering a potential partner revolve around growth. Getting a product live, proving value, acquiring users, and iterating fast. And they’re right to focus there, except when their tech keeps pulling them backwards.

When testing is treated like a luxury, what ends up happening is that teams spend more time recovering than growing. Recovery from bugs that made it to production. From delays caused by last-minute QA sprints. From missed opportunities because a key feature wasn’t stable enough to promote.

Testing, when done right thanks to tools like Playwright, gives you that time back. It lets you focus on roadmaps instead of regressions. On customer feedback instead of bug reports. On shipping, learning, and moving forward.

If that’s the kind of momentum you want to build with your product, we can help.

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