Crittercism, the crash report service for mobile apps, has a pulled in a $12 million Series B funding round led by Google Ventures, with participation from Shasta Ventures and Opus Capital. All three are existing investors in the company, and the round furthers its association with Google.
The company was incubated at AngelPad — the incubation program run by a bevvy of ex-Googlers — and its links to the search giant will be tightened as Google Venture’s Wesley Chan will take a seat on the board. The startup rivals now Twitter-owned Crashlytics and the Android, iOS and HTML5 apps that use it serve a cumulative 450 million smartphone owners. The new round means it has raised $18.7 million in investor money to date.
The Crittercism service helps developers monitor and manage their apps against the threat of crashes and bugs and, alongside news of the round, the San Francisco-based company is introducing a new option to keep track of issues outside of a developer’s immediate control. Now it will monitor the performance of wireless networks and third-party cloud services which apps rely on.
So, if a operator’s network is sluggish, or a payments or location service is under-performing, developers whose apps will be affected can get a heads-up and intelligence report.
Added to its existing app analytics, Crittercism says the new service will cover the “entire app experience” for developers. The basic service is free for developers (good news), while the enhanced, premium service comes in at $24 per month per 100,000 active users. A top-end enterprise version is available on an individually priced basis.
Given the growth of apps today — Apple’s App Store has seen 40 billion downloads and more than 1 million approved apps, while Google Play is closing in on 1 million apps live in its store — CEO and co-founder Andrew Levy believes that services like Crittercism play “a crucial role” ensuring that they function correctly.
Of the growth of apps, he said: “For many of the biggest brands in the world, mobile apps have become their most important channel for communicating with customers to increase engagement and drive brand loyalty.”
Crittercism previously raised $5.5 million in June 2012, following a $1.2 million seed round in 2011.
Headline image via Dedyukhin Dmitry / Shutterstock
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