Do you often work with web services and SaaS applications? If so, you are well aware of the need for regular performance testing of your digital product. It helps you understand how fast and reliable your web application is. This practice is also necessary to predict the performance of the service during periods of heavy load with high traffic. Obviously, you would want the application to work perfectly under all conditions.
What are some popular solutions? Many people often compare the JMeter vs LoadRunner pair in recent years, but you should not limit yourself to these options. The modern technology market offers dozens of tools to help you test any digital product, including sites, or web applications. However, the wide variety of tools makes the final choice difficult for users, especially beginners. We are here to tell you what factors you need to analyze to choose the best load testing service.
1. Identify Key Requirements
Actually, software testing is one of the key stages in the work of any contemporary developer. This stage allows you to be sure that the service meets all your requirements and the goals of the target audience. The situation is similar with performance testing to understand how the product works even under high load conditions. If you want to choose the best service for load testing, you should answer yourself what your goals and requirements are.
- Application environment. Is your digital product mobile or web-based? Some services are used to work in one environment or the other.
- Data. Define your data sources and determine your data volume. The testing tool should be usable within your infrastructure architecture.
- Backend systems. Identify the systems that need to be tested out of the backend. For example, it can be a database or an API. Ensure that the tool can effectively test these components.
After analyzing all the above characteristics, it will be easier for you to choose a performance testing tool. The selected service should clearly match all your goals.
2. Take Scalability into Account
What are the current loads your digital product is receiving? Do you plan a process for scaling web applications in the near future? In fact, these are key questions that can influence your ultimate choice of testing tool. With your web application, you simply need to understand what traffic expectations your application should be prepared for, from very low user activity to very high user activity. It should be able to handle a very large range of traffic load to ensure that it is close to the real world.
A scalable tool helps smaller tests during development and allows you to simulate peak loads as your application grows. Solutions like PFLB are great at handling any load during testing. One important thing about the tool is that the tool should grow with you. It must run all the tests required for performance validation at every stage of development and deployment.
3. Prefer Simple Tools
When considering what tool to use for performance testing, simplicity comes first. A tool’s intuitive user interface will help facilitate the test process and lessen new users’ learning curve. When starting with performance testing, complex tools can slow down productivity.
Particularly for beginners it is important that the software is easy to use. Make a choice of a tool requiring little expertise to use it well. It will save your team time spent figuring out how to use the tool, as you can allow them to focus on testing instead. For example, JMeter and LoadRunner comparison requires you to learn the simplicity of these services. We recommend prioritizing an option that is easy for your employees to use. Furthermore, the tool must have abundant learning resources. In any learning process, tutorials, guides, and forums can really help.
4. Examine Pricing Policy
Before investing into a tool for performance testing, it is important to check the pricing structure. Depending on different tools, we may see certain pricing models, from one-time purchase to subscription-based. Think about your budget and future profiling requirements. If you consider your company to be large and ambitious, perhaps you should look into creating custom software for performance testing. However, such a solution can cost you tens of thousands of dollars.
It’s important to also take into account that some tools might have hidden costs like the additional fee for scaling or premium features. Also, consider if the price matches the value the tool offers. A free trial or tiered pricing plans lets you test drive the capabilities of the tool before committing to it full time. We recommend choosing services that operate on a pay-per-month subscription model.
5. Check out Other Features
While performance testing tools are being reviewed, also consider the other features offered with them. Some tools, in addition to basic testing, come with advanced capabilities. We mean detailed reporting, analytics, and AI-powered insights. These can be used for deeper performance analysis and help pinpoint the issue faster.
Additionally, integrating the system with your development environment will help cut down on workflow times. The tool you choose should nicely integrate with what already exists: CI/CD pipelines, project management tools, etc. This integration is to enhance collaboration and also allows smooth continuous testing.
Final Thoughts
It’s no secret that there are dozens of different options for web application performance testing on the market these days. However, are all of them worth your attention and investment? No, that’s why you should know how to choose the perfect tool for your requirements and goals.
We recommend finding a few relevant services (no more than three) that cover your main goals exactly. For example, when choosing between JMeter and LoadRunner, you should check ease of use, scalability, and payment model. Each case is unique because a lot depends on the specifics of your web application. Experts also highlight other reliable tools such as PFLB. Using our tips from this article, you can quickly and easily choose the best service for performance testing.
