They say that no plan survives contact with the enemy; by the same token, no web application survives its first contact with users, no matter how thoroughly it’s been tested. However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try to to its limits.
Most developers do performance testing, but one type of testing that is easy to overlook is load testing. Performance versus load testingAlthough often used interchangeably, performance testing and load testing are not exactly the same.
Performance testing is the more general practice of testing an application’s responsiveness and stability under real-life scenarios.Load testing is a specific subset of performance testing that is meant to determine the application’s quality of service when being used by a specific number of users simultaneously. Load testing software simulates numerous simultaneous uses throughout the application, allowing you to identify bottlenecks caused by throughfare or by massive concurrency.For example, I noticed that users of a blogging application were experiencing slowdowns while trying to edit their own content, an issue I had never noticed during conventional testing. By using load testing software called Apache JMeter, I found that a Ruby gem was causing a 20% slowdown for this particular functionality. I never would have identified the source of that bottleneck on my own.Load testing may seem like an obvious practice but it can be overlooked. When you test your own application each day, it is easy to forget that what you see and what your users see may be very different. Any client-server application needs load testing in order to determine its limits and improve user experience.Of course, your own personal development environment is a far cry from what your application will see during professional use. While there is some merit to load testing in your production environment, it’s more realistic and safer to either replicate your own, or reproduce a client’s environment.
No matter what you do, make sure that your testing environment is not using third-party plugins like PayPal. There are plenty of modules that can simulate those aspects of your application, but the only thing interacting with the test should be virtual users. Staging environmentsTesting in a staging environment is key to performance testing of all stripes. Having one gives you a buffer between your development environment and the client’s production environment. This allows you to catch errors and slowdowns before you push to production, thus keeping your clients happy.
There are many online tools that can help your team set up a staging environment for your site, including. Use these software suites to create a staging environment that closely resembles real-use cases.
The most popular load testing software is, but there are many viable alternatives out there. Below, we’ve evaluated the pros and cons of several of these load testing software suites so you can evaluate what best fits your needs. Load testing software suites Free SolutionsApache JMeter, like most Apache software, is open source.
This makes it ideal for independent developers, but it’s not as effective for applications that anticipate thousands of users per day.Pros:. Free to use. Easy to set up and run from any environment.
Scripting is easy to use and replicate. Highly customizable by adding extensionsCons:. Data visualization is not user friendly. Distributed testing is not available; you cannot test two different use cases at the same time. Not as scalable as premium testing suitesLocustis a Python-based load testing software.
List and Comparison of the Best Test Automation Tools in 2019:Here is a comprehensive list of the Best Test Automation tools for your convenience. You can research and finalize the best fit for your project.Automation testing means running the software programs that carry out the execution of test cases automatically and produce the test results without any human intervention.It is one step ahead of the manual testing. It saves the human effort and time up to a great extent and it also leaves no or very less scope for errors in testing. Once ready, automated tests can be run any number of times to test the same application thus minimizing redundant manual work. Katalon Studio is a comprehensive test automation tool that covers from API, Web, to mobile testing. It has an A-to-Z set of features: recording actions, creating test cases, generating test scripts, executing tests, reporting results, and integrating with many other tools throughout the software development lifecycle.Katalon Studio is versatile as it runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It also supports testing of iOS and Android apps, Web applications on all modern browsers, and API services. Katalon Studio can be integrated with a variety of other tools such as JIRA, qTest, Kobiton, Git, Slack, and more.
Katalon Studio is available for free and has paid support services for businesses and enterprises.=#7) TestsigmaTestsigma is among the best Automation Testing tools available today and has marked the beginning of a new era of smart automation that is best suited for today's Agile and DevOps market.Testsigma is an AI-driven test automation tool that uses simple English to automate even complex tests and well meets the continuous delivery needs. Testsigma provides a test automation ecosystem with all the elements required for continuous testing and lets you automate Web, mobile applications and API services and supports thousands of device/OS/browser combos on the cloud as well as on your local machines.See how Testsigma is unique and how this AI-driven automation software meets your automation requirements in a demo.
You can.=#8) LambdaTestLambdaTest is one of the leading Cross-Browser Test Automation tools that help you run Selenium automation tests on a scalable, secure, and reliable cloud-based Selenium grid. Click for Micro Focus UFT 60-day free trial. You can also purchase an enterprise based customized solution from Micro Focus as per your testing requirements.Want to learn Micro Focus Quick Test Professional (QTP)? We have a detailed.#16) Test StudioTelerik Test Studio is a comprehensive test automation solution. It is well suited for GUI, performance, load and API testing.It allows you to test desktop, mobile and web applications.Its main features include Point-and-click test recorder, support for real coding languages like C# and VB.NET, central object repository and continuous integration with source control.Visit the Test Studio Website#17) IBM Rational Functional TesterThis tool is primarily intended for automated functional testing & regression testing. It also allows you to perform data-driven and GUI testing.
The automated testing in RFT is based upon script assure technology which highly improves the efficiency of testing and provides easy script maintenance.supports a variety of web-based and terminal emulator based applications.Visit the IBM Rational Functional Tester Website from#18) RobotiumRobotium is an open-source test automation framework primarily meant for Android UI testing. It supports both native and hybrid applications.Using Robotium, you can write time-saving, readable and easy to use automated gray box UI tests intended for android apps. You can also perform system testing, functional testing, and user acceptance testing over Android-based apps with the help of Robotium.Visit Robotium Website.#19) EggplantEggplant’s Digital Automation Intelligence is a licensed tool suite, which is primarily aimed at application testing and GUI testing.For testers, Eggplant offers AI-driven test automation for functional, usability and performance testing. It also provides analytics into user- and business-focused metrics that gauge release quality and its impact on the end-user.Rather than the object-based approach employed by most test automation tools, Eggplant works on an image-based approach.
Using a single script, you can, therefore, perform testing on multiple platforms like Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, and much more.#20) Silk TestSilk Test is a licensed product of aims at automated functional and regression testing. It has cross-browser support and provides unified test automation for a variety of applications including desktop apps, mobile apps, web apps, rich-client applications, and enterprise applications.It enables efficient, speedy and high-quality automation testing.Visit Silk Test website#21) WatirWatir (pronounced as water) is an abbreviation for Web Application Testing in Ruby. It is a very light-weight open-source tool for automating web application testing. The best part of the tool is that it supports your web application regardless of considering which technology your app is designed.With water, you can come up with simple, flexible, readable and easily maintainable automated tests. There are many big companies that use Watir including SAP, Oracle, Facebook, etc.Visit the Watir website.#22) Sauce LabsIt is a selenium cloud-based solution that offers automated testing over cross-browsers and multiple platforms. It has support for both mobile and desktop apps.
It is known for significantly accelerating test cycles.Various well-known companies including Yahoo, Zillow, and OpenDNS have testified that they have reduced their testing time by a huge extent with the help of SauceLabs.This tool is licensed. However, it also provides free testing for open source projects.Visit the Sauce Labs website from#23) Sahi ProIt is a tester centric web automation tool. This cross-browser/cross-platform tool comes with a lot of fantastic features like Smart accessory identification, record and playback on any browser, no ajax timeout issues, end to end reporting, powerful scripting and inbuilt Excel framework.It offers a flexible license. Additionally, you can try it out before the purchase.Click to download the free trial of the tool.#24) SikuliSikuli is based on image recognition and has the capability of automating anything that we see on the screen. Currently, it supports desktop apps only which run on Windows, Mac or Unix/Linux. This tool is good at reproducing bugs quickly and its users have reported it to be very useful as compared to other tools when you are going to automate an application which is not web-based.This tool is good at reproducing bugs quickly and its users have reported it to be very useful as compared to other tools when you are going to automate an application which is not web-based.Sikuli is an open-source testing tool.Click to download Sikuli.#25) IBM Rational Performance TesterThis tool is designed for doing automated performance testing over web and server based apps. It has RCA capabilities to remove performance bottleneck.
It provides real-time reporting and test data customizations. It also offers load and scalability testing.It is a licensed tool. However, IBM provides its free trial.Visit Performance Tester Website.#26) Apache JMeterApache JMeter is an open-source Java desktop application designed for load testing. It mainly focuses on web applications. This tool can also be employed for unit testing and limited functional testing.Its architecture is centered around plugins with the help of which JMeter provides a lot of out of box features. It supports many types of applications, servers and protocols like Web, SOAP, FTP, TCP, LDAP, SOAP, MOM, Mail Protocols, shell scripts, Java objects, database.
Other features include powerful Test IDE, dynamic reporting, command line mode, portability, multithreading, caching of test results and highly extensible core.It supports many types of applications, servers and protocols like Web, SOAP, FTP, TCP, LDAP, SOAP, MOM, Mail Protocols, shell scripts, Java objects, database. Other features include powerful Test IDE, dynamic reporting, command line mode, portability, multithreading, caching of test results and highly extensible core.Other features include powerful Test IDE, dynamic reporting, command line mode, portability, multithreading, caching of test results and highly extensible core.Visit JMeter Website.#27) BlazeMeterWith BlazeMeter, you can easily create load and performance tests. It is truly compatible with JMeter tool described above. Any JMeter test works well on BlazeMeter as well.Having BlazeMeter, you can easily setup API tests, do user interactive website testing, perform scalable load testing using virtual user traffic and do a lot more. This tool supports both native and mobile web apps.It is a licensed tool. But its free testing trial is also available which allows 50 concurrent users, 10 tests, and 1 shared load generator.
So, you can actually try doing load and performance testing for free by using this tool.Visit BlazeMeter Website.#28) Micro Focus LoadRunnerThis is again an automated load and performance testing tool provided by Micro Focus. It supports testing in various environments and over different types of applications.Though it’s a licensed tool it is quite affordable. It supports mobile and cloud testing as well. Micro Focus LoadRunner gives a clear picture of the system performance, allows you to do the RCA and fix the bugs before the application is released to the live environment.Visit the Micro Focus LoadRunner Website.#29) Testim.ioTestim.io leverages machine learning for the authoring, execution, and maintenance of automated test cases. We use dynamic locators and learn with every execution. The outcome is super fast authoring and stable tests that learn, thus eliminating the need to continually maintain tests with every code change.
Netapp, Verizon Wireless, Wix.com and others run over 300,000 tests using Testim.io every month.Testim, a Heavybit portfolio company, has dual offices in San Francisco and Israel (R&D) and is backed by Spider Capital (Appurify, PagerDuty), Foundation Capital and other U.S. Based investors.#30) CucumberIt is an open-source tool that is designed over the concept of BDD (Behavior-driven development). It is used to perform the automated acceptance testing by running the examples that best describe the behavior of the application. It gets you a single up-to-date living document that is having both specification and test documentation.Cucumber is scripted in Ruby. However, it now supports a few other languages as well such as Java. It also has cross-platform OS support.Visit Cucumber Website.Additional ToolsFew other tools which are worth mentioning here:#31) WAPT by SoftLogicaWAPT is an affordable load and stress testing tool for website testing.
It is based on AJAX and RIA technology.Visit the WAPT website.#32) NeoloadNeoload is also very popular and automated performance testing tool. It replicates the real user activities and brings out the system bottlenecks. It supports both mobile and web apps. It comes at flexibly priced license but its free version is also available to perform small level tests.It supports both mobile and web apps. It comes at flexibly priced license but its free version is also available to perform small level tests.Visit NeoLoad Website.#33) Perfect MobilePerfecto test automation solution supports automated application testing over cross browsers and mobile devices. It can be integrated with various test automation framework.
It is a licensed tool. Like other tools, it also offers a free trial.Visit Perfecto Website.#34) WebLOADThe WebLoad tool provided by Radview Software is a load, performance, and stress testing tool for mobile and web applications. It integrates well with other testing tools like Selenium, Perfecto mobile, etc.
It provides analytics dashboards to perform RCAs of the issue.It provides analytics dashboards to perform RCAs of the issue. It is a licensed tool but its free trial is available.Visit WebLoad Website.#35) Test AnywhereIt is a tool for automated and simplified frontend testing. It has an inbuilt test builder tool that replicates the real user actions and we do not need to write any code.Visit Test Anywhere Website.#36) Visual Studio Test ProfessionalThis tool provides exploratory browser-based testing. It is a helpful licensed tool for streamlining quality and continuous delivery. It has a free trial available as well.Visit the Visual Studio Test Professional Website.#37) FitNesseFitNesse is an automation acceptance testing framework.
It’s an open-source tool.Visit FitNesse Website.#38) TestingWhizTestingWhiz is a licensed tool which offers automation solutions for regression testing, web testing, mobile testing, cross-browser testing, web services testing and database testing. It has codeless architecture and supports continuous integration very well.Visit TestingWhiz Website.#39) Tosca TestsuiteTosca Testsuite by Tricentis is an automated functional testing tool for performing functional testing and regression testing. Business dynamic steering is one of its coolest features.It is a licensed tool but offers a free trial as well.Visit Tosca Testsuite website.#40) WatiNIt is an abbreviation for Web Application Testing in.NET. It is an open-source test automation framework for IE & FF browsers. It’s a good tool for UI & functional testing of Web apps.Visit WatiN website.#41) SoapUISoapUI by Smartbear is an open-source functional testing tool. It provides an end to end API Test Automation Framework for SOAP and REST.Visit the SoapUI website. ConclusionWe have a number of Automation Testing Tools available which aim at different types of testing.
Some of these tools are open-source while some are licensed. Yes, the choice of the tool will always depend upon your requirements but we hope that the above list of test automation tools will surely help you while making the selection.If we have missed out any tool here that you think aids in automation testing, your suggestions and experiences are most welcomed!