How to choose the best Performance Testing Tool for You?
How to choose the best Performance Testing Tool for You?
Performance testing tools are not for the faint of heart. They can make your job easier by providing you with information on how your site performs in terms of speed and resource utilization. There are numerous options for performance testing tools. Depending on your requirements, you can select from a wide range of features and functionalities. Let’s dive into this blog to explore how to choose the best Performance Testing Tool for you.
What is Performance Testing?
Performance testing is a type of software testing that measures the performance of a system or application. It is mainly used to determine how well the system or application responds to various workloads. Performance can include page response times, throughput measures, error rates and concurrent users.
Performance testing tools are used to test the performance of an application and its related components. Types of tests that can be executed include load and stress tests, scalability, endurance tests, fail over tests and many more.
What are the Top 5 Reasons to Performance Test Your Site?
Performance testing is a vital process for all organizations. The following are some of the top reasons to performance test your website or mobile application:
- To ensure that your website or application is running at an optimum level and not impacting the user experience of visitors on your site.
- To ensure that any changes you make to your site or application, such as, changing code, adding new pages or content and hardware and configuration changes will not adversely affect the site’s performance.
- To benchmark performance of your application and website at various user and throughput levels
- To identify where there are issues with load time, rendering, hardware configuration, hardware sizing, network, load balancing or firewall.
- To identify any potential CDN, third-party software or script problems affecting your website’s performance.
Why Do You Need a Performance Testing Tool?
Performance testing is an integral part of software development. It’s a process that determines how well a system performs under different loads and conditions. The above reasons educate the significance of using a performance testing tool.
Many performance testing tools are available in the market but can’t be used for all purposes. There are specific tools for specific needs. So, knowing which tool to use and when to use it is essential. In the end the best tool is the one that meets your needs and budget.
Major Performance Testing Tools
These days, there are many different performance testing solutions available. From no cost opensource to feature rich proprietary plaforms. Several tools like LoadRunner, Blazemeter, Octoperf, K6, Jmeter, Neoload, CloudTest are available.
Major Performance Testing Tools
Numerous performance testing tools are available, but not all are created equal. Some include features for large teams and some are set up for an individual. Some support proprietary protocols like Citrix, SAP or Oracle Forms. Some are SaaS based while others are more traditional thick clients. Some tools are straightforward and easy to use, while others include more complicated functionality.
When choosing a tool, you need to consider the following:
- Think about your budget
- Not just from a tool perspective but also from a personnel and time to use perspective.
- Check if the tool offers all the features that you require.
- A matrix of required vs nice-to-have features is helpful to ensure you get the features you absolutely need
- Make sure your platform is compatible
- This includes native, hybrid or mobile web applications
- Evaluate the environments you want to test on
- Always conduct a POC to ensure the performance platform can successfully work with you applications
- Figure out what type of load you want to simulate
- Do you need to simulate load inside your network or outside? From cloud resources? How many virtual users do you need?
Some of the best Performance Testing Tools
Here, we have compiled a list of some of the best performance testing tools for you.
1) Neoload: NeoLoad is a real-time performance testing platform that enables enterprises to test everything from APIs to applications. It provides automated test design and maintenance, realistic user behavior simulation, quick root cause analysis, and built-in integrations with the entire software development lifecycle toolchain to testers and developers. They are now owned by Tricentis and they now integrate with Tosca (functional automation), qTest (test management) and a host of other products in the data integrity and testing ecosystem. Additionally they support SAP, Citrix and Oracle Forms
2) LoadRunner: LoadRunner is a load-testing tool used to measure and analyze the performance of a web application under various scenarios. It offers a simple and intuitive user interface. It also provides additional tools for complete testing, such as scripting, data collection, reporting, and analysis. LoadRunner has been the largest player in this market for nearly 30 years. It is feature rich, including SAP, Citrix and Oracle Forms support, and there are many performance engineers with experience using the platform. It can be cost prohibitive.
3) Octoperf: Powerful load testing Saas Platform that is Jmeter compatible. Simplified test creation, workload model and virtual user distribution in the cloud and a sleek and intuitive UI make this a great option for many organisations. However, if you need support for Citrix, SAP or Oracle Forms this platform will not support them.
4) JMeter: JMeter is an open-source load testing tool for web applications. It contains various features, including scripting, GUI, and so on, and may be used for functional and non-functional testing. JMeter is easily the most widely used performance testing tool in existence. It does not have many of the features you get with a proprietary performance platform, but you are not paying for it. Generally scripts take longer to create as the UI and ease of scripting are not built into the platform.
5) CloudTest: CloudTest is a solution for load and performance testing. CloudTest is a cloud-based performance testing tool that can evaluate the performance of your web and mobile applications, APIs, and web services at scale. CloudTest was one of the first to leverage cloud resources and the vast majority of users use the cloud based version. Installing on-premise is very difficult if not impossible. They are owned by Akamai now. Only web protocols supported.
Choosing the Best Option
The above tools are only a few of the many options available. At their core, the tools are similar. You can think of selecting a tool like selecting a car. At their core, all cars do the same thing. They are designed to provide transportation. But which car is the right one for you? Do you need to transport a lot of people? Do you need to tow a boat or RV? Do you need 4-wheel drive for the winter? Do you prefer something fast? Would you like an expensive car but your budget will only stretch to an economy car? In the end the best car for you is the one that will meet your needs within the confines of your budget.
Selecting a tool takes a bit of time and forethought to ensure you are meeting your necessary requirements and the performance testing platform will give you the data you need to make critical business and technology decisions. A proof of concept is critical to ensure that the selected platform will work in your environment and with your applications. It is often useful to bring in an outside organization like Total Performance Consulting who have helped countless organizations select or transition to a new performance testing platform. There is no ‘best’ performance testing platform. The best platform is the one that meets YOUR needs, supports YOUR applications and meets YOUR budget.
Wrapping Up…
Any performance testing strategy relies on the use of performance testing tools. They create realistic user experiences and provide data for evaluating a website’s performance. A good performance testing tool improves performance testing while cutting the build/test cycle time, makes it possible for Dev, QA, DevOps, and Business to work together. Your performance testing tool must be compatible with your requirements and objectives. This includes the ability to create scripts easily, as well as the ability to handle a significant number of users at the same time. These characteristics in a tool can help ensure that your site can handle high traffic without problems. Performance testing tools are essential for verifying that your website or application is up to date and working properly. As a result, you must figure out your exact requirements whilst selecting the best performance testing tool for you.
Are you figuring out which performance testing tool to opt for? Are you looking forward to migrating from Cloudtest to NeoLoad? Reach out to us now!
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