Our Story

BugSplat started in 2004 as an informal side project by David Plunkett and a couple of friends.

Dave and the gang had built and maintained crash reporting tools at much larger software companies in their previous roles. This was an experience that led them to three big takeaways:

1. Crash reporting was a nearly magical tool for finding and fixing crash defects.

2. Software is better and more stable with crash reporting—so everyone should use it.

3. Building and supporting a crash reporter was a lot of work.

Back in 2004, if you wanted a crash reporter, you had to build it.

Back in the day, there wasn't a self-service crash reporting tool available on the open market. If you or your team wanted to buy a crash reporter your only option was a tool from Microsoft that - instead of collecting crash data and giving your team access to that valuable knowledge - sent the crash data directly to Microsoft.

To us that kind of missed the point, we need access to crash data in order to fix crashes and improve application stability. What good is a third-party getting that data?

This meant if you wanted access to application crash data you had to build and maintain a crash reporter in-house.

For larger companies, this wasn't an issue. The company that Dave worked for could afford to throw a team of six developers full-time at building and maintaining a crash reporter.

What if you weren't a billion-dollar company? How could you dedicate six or eight people to doing this?

Even if you could afford to build a crash reporter, why spend the time, energy, and resources scaling up a new tool for the first time? Wouldn’t it be better to use a market-tested tool supported by experts?

Sensing market and developer need—the team started building and expanding on the BugSplat project in 2003.

Nights and weekends were dedicated to development as the team fell quickly into the heady experience of building something new, fun, and exciting.

In 2004, BugSplat was launched with our friends at Sketchup being the first customer.

Over the years, BugSplat has grown significantly.

Since we launched our business in 2004 we have seen the industry grow and change.

Many companies have entered the market in that time - some were free options from tech giants, and others were VC-backed startups raising millions to try and do the same things as BugSplat.

Through it all we’ve maintained a laser focus on providing our users with the best possible data on application crashes, keeping our application easy to use, building the features important to our users, and providing excellent customer support.

Despite the industry changes we’re still 100% self-funded and have never accepted outside investment. That means we only answer to you, our customer. We're lean, profitable, growing, and supporting ourselves and our families through this business.

Today BugSplat helps developers track and millions of crashes on computers, tablets, consoles, and phones every year.

We know that we have an amazing gig with BugSplat. It’s a lot of work, sure, but we work every day on interesting problems with great partners. We’re a fully remote company that emphasizes flexibility, self-responsibility, and personal and professional exploration.

All of this is to say...

If you're a BugSplat user, thank you for making this happen. If you're not a user yet, please consider signing up.  

Cheers,