Software performance is the ultimate end goal of any SaaS company. All the efforts and brainstorming finally channel into one product – your software. This is why it’s imperative for your software to perform efficiently in order to expand and grow in your field.
You prioritize performance when you prioritize user experience. To achieve perfection is not a destination. It’s a journey filled with constantly testing your products on various parameters and continuous improvement until it reaches the peak of perfection.
This is where Performance Testing comes in. Let’s dig into the details of performance testing and how it is helpful for your software.
What is Performance Testing?
As the name suggests, Performance testing is the process of testing your product for performance under the workload. It is not about bugs or glitches, but Performance testing aims to eliminate any bottlenecks for performance. The ultimate goal is to improve the quality of the software.
There are multiple attributes to measure the quality of your software. They are:
Speed:
If your software or website loads slowly, you lose over 40% of your customers. In a world of speedy work and testing, being the fastest is synonymous with being the best. This makes speed one of the critical quality attributes of your software.
Scalability:
The ultimate goal for any SaaS company is to increase the user base. But can your product handle a high volume of traffic? Scalability is an important factor as it is a hygiene factor to maintain when many people use your product.
Stability:
Not just scalability. It’s essential to maintain consistency and stability under all circumstances. If your product gives out varied performances under varied loads, it’s a red flag. This is why it also needs to be tested for stability under various loads.
Why is Performance Testing Important?
User Acquisition:
User acquisition is a significant step for your product. It defines how successful your product is. But how do we gain the trust of the stakeholders? Performance testing allows you to pitch your product to the users by talking about the quality attributes such as speed, scalability, and stability under rigorous circumstances.
Improvement:
Performance testing offers you all the opportunities available for the perfection of your product before it is launched into the market. Fixing these and making necessary amends is important because performance is a significant evaluation criterion for initial users.
Achieving perfection in this phase is essential for generating more and more users in the phases ahead.
Maintenance:
Once your product is free of errors and tested for all the quality attributes, you can focus on research and development to make it a unique offering.
If you constantly spend time on maintenance and rectifying quality attributes, your product will stagnate and fail the market competition.
5 Best Performance Testing Tools:
Here’s the part you’ve been waiting for. We have carefully analyzed and curated a list of 5 best performance testing tools in the order of convenience for you. Dig in!
#1 Testgrid
Automating performance testing can yield excellent results for your software. It offers an edge over manual testing in terms of lesser time consumption and more economical. Here’s a list of features and advantages that come with TestGrid:
- Testgrid offers scriptless test automation so that testers don’t need to worry about writing a dedicated code for testing
- Easy-to-use interface specifically designed to meet the needs of testers (Even those without any prior knowledge of coding)
- With TestGrid real device cloud you get 100% real performance which emulators and simulators cannot.
- Generates on-premise load or in the cloud
- Testgrid offers a cloud-based testing system that makes it easy to scale up or even scale down your testing.
- Economical for any scale of testing
#2 Loadninja
Load ninja allows you to create scriptless tests and helps you reduce testing time by half. The advantage of Loadninja is that you can replace load emulators with real-time browsers. This allows you with the data obtained via browser-based metrics. Here are a few features that Load Ninja offers which might help you with your performance testing:
- Scriptless load test creation with playback feature
- Browser test execution with scaling flexibility
- Debug testing in real-time with the help of VU Debugger
- Inspecting virtual user activity
- Cloud hosting which enables testing on any scale
- Browser based metrics
#3 Apache Jmeter
Jmeter is an open-source tool used for performance and load testing( a type of testing that tests the performance under real-life conditions). It helps analyze and test various services on the web and web service applications. Jmeter, despite being an open-source tool, offers the following features:
- Can handle multiple load injectors managed by a unique controller
- High-portability, which supports all java-based applications
- Requires scripting. However, very few of them.
- Load statistics and test reports, including resource-usage monitors by way of graphs and charts
- Real-time integrations are possible.
#4 WebLOAD
WebLOAD is slightly different from the above performance testing tools. How? It specializes in enterprise-scale testing. Unlike Testgrid.io, It does not have scale flexibility. WebLOAD has its own Integrated Development Environment, which offers a load generation console. Here are a few features of WebLOAD that are beneficial for testers:
- Variable test creation scenarios which offer flexibility in conditions
- Supports all kinds of significant web technology
- High-impact correlation engine
- Identifies bottlenecks and detects them on its own
- Requires Javascript knowledge for scripting
#5 LoadUI Pro
LoadUI Pro is a similar performance and load testing tool with a unique way of working. LoadUI distributes the created tests across the cloud using load agents and monitors the performance of individual servers under varying loads. Here are a few features of LoadUI pro to make it easy for testers to reduce their testing efforts:
- Scriptless load test creation which enables testing without knowledge of coding
- Contains load-testing templates such as spike, baseline, stress, and smoke
- Distribution agents across the cloud with drag and drop testing
- Analytics and post-test metrics are available, which are helpful for reporting
- Quick conversion of functional tests
Wrapping up!
Performance testing is a complex method that can be done in various ways. However, it is imperative for the flawless working of your software application. There are a variety of tools available in the market.
Testgrid.io is one of the most efficient in terms of efficiency and economy. However, your needs, which are the best fit for your organization, can only be known after trying out the best ones.
