Free alternative to BrowserCam

BrowserCam has long been the best tool for testing websites in a multitude of situations; however, it isn’t free, so its usefulness is limited for people who just want to test a new design quickly: enter BrowserShots.

This free website has most of the features developers will need to test their sites; however, unlike BrowserCam, there seem to be waits of up to 20 minutes for some OS/Browser combinations, so it is better for casual testing to ensure compatibility rather than live tweaking—it does have a detail page to show how long your wait will be. It has a few useful features: all screenshots are of the entire screen instead of a small part and requests are based on the website, so multiple people can view the results without sharing log-ons.

However, the most interesting part is that the software that runs it is freely distributed and you can, optionally, help the project by volunteering to run a screenshot “factory” from your computer that operates in the background while you go about your normal computing business; thus, combining the best things in life: free stuff and being nice to others. You can just feel the good karma coming.

Besides…it beats signing up for multiple 24-hour previews…

6 thoughts on “Free alternative to BrowserCam

  1. I heard about BrowserCam but for me the cost (or effort, in the case of 24 hour previews) never seemed worth it. I’ll definitely check this out – thanks for bringing it to my attention.

  2. Hi there!
    My name is Kenn Min Chong, and I am the Product Manager for the BrowserCam service here at Gomez, Inc. It has come to our attention recently that Fundable is now closed and as such the option to form group purchases is now impossible because of this.
    As you know, the Fundable option allowed you to literally subscribe to a Premium – all access account to BrowserCam for as little as $40 a year (or just $3.33 a month!) per person. As such, we would like to work with you guys on getting a more reliable alternative to Fundable. Before we go down this path though, we would like to know the level of interest from the public on this. Please reply to this tread to indicate your interest. Thanks again!

    Kenn Min Chong
    Product Manager
    BrowserCam, A Gomez Service

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