Load Testing Tool: How to Choose the Best for you?

What should a great load testing tool do for you?

• Establish Performance Testing as a trusted partner within the software delivery chain
• Execute superior performance testing while shortening the build/test cycle
• Enable collaboration across Dev, QA, Ops, and Business

To support Agile processes and make performance testing a competitive advantage, you need a modern load testing tool that enables your objectives of quality and speed. Whichever load testing tool you choose, it should help establish performance testing as a trusted partner within the software delivery chain for your organization.

Load testing tool: how to choose the best for you?

The ideal tool should support your objective to test faster across the SDLC, support your Agile/Shift Left approach with test automation and CI integration, accelerate the complex system-wide performance testing phase with faster test design, updates, and analysis.

Finally, the best load testing tool for your needs will support your DevOps evolution – even if you are not yet fully DevOps, or if you just considering it. Today’s performance engineering skill set is not only useful for performance testers. Performance engineering spans across the organization; every stakeholder can work on performance testing and use the performance testing results to optimize applications.

Enable faster test design

Most testing tools (including JMeter) include a GUI with record/playback capabilities that require some coding to customize further scripts – every time there is a change to the application or test adjustment.

NeoLoad is very different from other load testing solutions in the market because there’s no coding required. Also, NeoLoad facilitates automatic execution of correlations at the end of each recording. Parameterization and randomization of variables take just a few clicks, and logical actions are all drag-and-drop. Former users of script-based tools like JMeter tell us that using NeoLoad results in up to 10 times faster test design compared to what they were used to.

Make script maintenance easier and leverage automation

JMeter users know how long it takes to maintain scripts that break whenever their applications change. What good is running automated performance tests if your scripts break, and your fixing effort takes forever?

That’s why NeoLoad provides a user path update feature allowing you to update a designed script with a quick recording, automatically retaining variable extractors; this makes the script maintenance process significantly faster so that performance testing can keep pace with current Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment environments.

Easily integrate into your testing ecosystem

A great performance testing platform is designed to easily integrate into your Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery platforms, as well as for leading APM platforms.

Industry-leading support for new technologies

A great load testing tool would have a consistent track record for supporting new technologies and protocols – months (sometimes years) – ahead of many other tools including Open Source tools like JMeter. This means you don’t have to spend time and resources hand-coding a workaround to include testing support for emerging technologies for IoT and Mobile apps. Of course, the hallmark of a great load testing tool is not just its ability to incorporate a particular technology; it’s how well your tool can test it.

Many current NeoLoad customers were once JMeter users who made the switch because NeoLoad was able to more accurately capture and replay traffic from applications utilizing technologies like HTTP/2, WebSocket, GWT, Oracle Forms, Flex, and adaptive bitrate streaming.

A great testing tool doesn’t break your budget

• Lower Up-Front Costs – The cost of a NeoLoad license is significantly lower than you will pay for license costs for legacy tools like LoadRunner. It’s intuitive to use, so it’s easier and faster to get testers up to speed with NeoLoad – with a much faster learning curve than many other load testing tools.
• Lower Operating Costs – The ongoing savings and efficiency gains due to NeoLoad’s efficient design and visual programming features result in significant cost savings as it is designed by Performance Engineers to be easy to use and speed up testing workflows.
• Lower Maintenance Costs – NeoLoad’s automatic script update capabilities, along with other advanced features, can significantly speed up the script maintenance process. This means lower labor costs for script maintenance with NeoLoad.

The NeoLoad difference

NeoLoad delivers several significant benefits and associated cost savings that are worth considering when you are evaluating several load testing tools, selecting one that meets your business’s specific technical, process, workflow, and business needs. These benefits and cost savings include:

• Identify and Resolve of Performance Issues Earlier in the SDLC – NeoLoad enables “Shift Left” testing so that testing teams can find/fix performance bottlenecks early in the SDLC, where resolution is faster and less expensive. Customers have reported that they have improved overall application quality, reduced production issues by up to 8%, leading to significantly lower costs to address these problems
• Accelerate Release Cycles – Incorporation of the automation built into NeoLoad can save a considerable amount of time, both during design time and test execution (e.g., as part of the nightly build process). With this approach, performance testing becomes just another piece of the build – not an additional, manual step performed late in the SDLC
• Increase Confidence and Lower Risk – Cover more test cases; ensure professional-grade application quality; make testers trusted partners. Improved code quality because everything is KNOWN to perform as designed, under real-world loads
• Leverage Existing Testing Investments – NeoLoad provides out-of-the-box integrations with leading test ecosystem vendors’ solutions

More about load testing and tools?

Discover more load testing and performance testing content on the the Resources pages, or request a trial the latest version of NeoLoad and start testing today.