Your team already runs a public device farm. That is how you reach the long tail of Android and iOS combinations without buying every phone your customers own. It works — until the day you need to test a build that cannot leave your network, a device that no public catalog stocks, or a release that has to pass a compliance review before it ever sees a vendor's data center.
That is the moment most device-farm strategies split. Public clouds give you breadth. Your own devices give you depth. Today, those two halves usually live in two consoles, two budgets, and two sets of security reviews. AstroFarm from 42Gears collapses that gap. It extends your public device farm with a private, behind-your-firewall layer — and rolls both into one unified mobile testing lab that QA, developers, support, and sales engineering can all share.
Why "Extend" Is the Right Word
Public device farms earn their keep on three things: breadth, zero ops, and pay-as-you-go convenience. A click, and you are testing on the latest Samsung Galaxy release, the oldest supported iPhone, or a niche carrier SKU you would never buy yourself. None of that goes away when you add a private layer.
What changes is what your private layer adds. Public clouds will never sell you the device that only your customer owns. They will never host a build that your legal team has classified as confidential. They will never let you avoid per-minute concurrency charges on a 14-hour regression run. And they will never give your support team on-demand access to a rugged scanner for a live customer call.
Extending, not replacing, is how you keep the public farm's strengths while filling the gaps only your own devices can fill. The global mobile application testing services market is on track to grow from $7.70 billion in 2025 to $9.02 billion in 2026, at a 17.09% CAGR — and the teams pulling ahead are the ones treating device coverage as a layered strategy, not a single subscription.
The One Lab for Every Team
This is where AstroFarm gets distinctive. Most private device-farm tools are built for one buyer (QA) and one workflow (run automated tests). AstroFarm is built for the entire release org, so the same console serves:
- QA engineers — devices, automation integrations (Appium, Selenium, Espresso, XCUITest), and remote source-level debugging for the regression suites that keep releases honest.
- Mobile developers — pull a build onto a real device in seconds, reproduce a customer-reported bug, and verify a fix without leaving the desk.
- QA managers — utilization, queue times, and crash logs across both public and private devices in a single dashboard.
- DevOps and mobile DevOps — drop AstroFarm into the same CI/CD pipeline you already run, with no parallel automation stack.
- Sales engineering and customer support — read-only or temporary access to specific devices for live demos and customer-issue reproduction.
- CTOs and engineering leaders — one inventory, one billing model for owned devices, and one audit trail instead of four tool subscriptions and three spreadsheets.
The result: a single unified mobile testing lab that the whole organization plugs into. No more "QA's farm vs. developers' devices vs. the support team's pile of old phones."
How AstroFarm Extends Your Public Device Farm in Practice
There are four practical ways teams use AstroFarm alongside the public device farm they already pay for.
1. Cover the Devices the Public Cloud Cannot Get
Most public device farms offer a curated catalog. Anything off the beaten path — rugged handhelds, custom Android skins, kiosks, in-vehicle infotainment, regional carrier variants, pre-release hardware — sits outside that catalog. With AstroFarm, you enroll the devices you already own and they appear in the same console, ready for manual or automated mobile app testing on day one. Your team tests on the same devices your customers carry, including the ones that are not for sale.
2. Test the Apps the Public Cloud Should Not Touch
Any app that ships with sensitive data, regulated workloads, or unreleased IP belongs behind your firewall. With AstroFarm, builds, test data, and device traffic stay inside your network. There is no shared multi-tenant environment, no uploads to a third-party data center, and no per-tenant queue to compete with. You still test on the OS versions and form factors your users have — you just keep the bytes in-house.
3. Cut the Per-Minute Bill on Heavy Automation
Automated regression suites that run for hours across many devices can quietly dominate a public farm's invoice. Move long-running suites to your AstroFarm pool and reserve public device farms for the long-tail combinations you only need occasionally. The math typically flips within a quarter, and your device farm cost becomes a fixed line item you can forecast.
4. Give Support and Sales Engineering Real Devices, Securely
When a customer reports a bug on a specific model, support needs to reproduce it — not guess. When a prospect wants to see how the app behaves on a rugged Android device, sales engineering needs that device on call. AstroFarm's role-based access and temporary session sharing make both possible without a single device leaving the lab, and without a compliance form for every demo.
What Mobile App Testing Looks Like on a Unified Lab
Putting it together, a typical week on an AstroFarm-extended public device farm looks like this:
- The 6 a.m. smoke suite runs on AstroFarm-owned devices — fast, free of per-minute charges, and fully logged.
- Mid-morning exploratory testing on a new OS version runs on the public device farm — one-off and bursty, where the pay-as-you-go model shines.
- A pre-release build goes through security and compliance testing on AstroFarm — behind the firewall, with the right certificates and audit trail.
- A support ticket arrives for an obscure Samsung SKU — the device is already enrolled in AstroFarm, so the engineer reproduces the bug in five minutes.
- A sales-engineering demo for a regulated-industry prospect uses a temporary AstroFarm session on a rugged device — no shipping hardware, no compliance paperwork.
That is the payoff. The public device farm keeps doing what it does best, and the things it cannot do get handled by your own lab — all under one roof.
Where to Start
You do not need to rebuild anything. Most teams start with three steps:
- Audit your existing test devices. Every phone, tablet, and rugged device sitting in a drawer or a lab is an AstroFarm candidate.
- Pick the workflows you will move first. Typically long-running automation or behind-the-firewall app testing.
- Connect AstroFarm to your CI/CD. Appium, Selenium, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps — all plug in without rewriting suites.
From there, the public device farm becomes your breadth channel and AstroFarm becomes your depth, control, and compliance channel. Same team, same releases, one unified mobile testing lab.
To learn what a private device farm looks like under the hood, read the AstroFarm 101 guide to private mobile device farms. For the broader case on private vs. public, see Is a Private Device Farm Better Than a Public One for Mobile App Testing?. And to see how real-device testing actually changes test outcomes, take a look at how device farms revolutionize mobile app testing.
FAQ
Do I have to give up my public device farm?
No. AstroFarm extends it. Most teams keep both running in parallel — the public farm for breadth, AstroFarm for depth and control.
What kinds of devices can AstroFarm enroll?
Android smartphones and tablets, iPhones and iPads, rugged handhelds, Wear OS, Android TV, and even custom or pre-release hardware. Any device that can connect over USB or Wi-Fi works.
Will my existing automation break?
No. AstroFarm is compatible with Appium, Selenium, Espresso, XCUITest, and most CI/CD systems. Tests written for a public device farm run unchanged on AstroFarm.
How long does setup take?
Most teams enroll their first 10 to 20 devices and run a parallel automation suite within a day. Larger fleets and enterprise SSO integrations typically take a week.
What about compliance?
AstroFarm runs in your infrastructure or a private cloud you control. It supports SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR, Cyber Essentials, and HIPAA-aligned workflows. Devices, builds, and data never leave your perimeter unless you choose to send them to a public device farm.
Ready to extend your public device farm with a private lab your whole team can share? Start a free AstroFarm trial, enroll your first devices in minutes, and turn your public cloud and your own fleet into one unified mobile testing lab.
