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10 Automation Tools for Web Testing: A Comprehensive Guide

Automation Tools for Web Testing

Are you tired of manually testing your website and finding bugs? Do you want to save time and increase efficiency in your web development process? Look no further! In this comprehensive guide, we have compiled a list of the top 10 must-have automation tools for web testing. From Selenium to TestComplete, we’ve got you covered with everything you need to know about each tool and how it can improve your web testing experience. So sit back, relax, and let us help take your web development game to the next level!

Now a days, software developers have no provision to deliver a software application even with a minor defect. Therefore, they have adopted automation testing to increase the set of tests on a software application.
In this guide, we will take a look at some of the must-have automation tools for web testing.

Automation Tools for Web Testing

Introduction to Automation Testing

Automation testing is a process of automating the execution of test cases. It can be used to regression testing and can also be used to generate test reports. There are various tools available for automation testing, but not all of them are created equal.
Various tools exist on the internet, and each of them possesses different combinations of features. Once you find the one that suits you get it. Let’s have a look at the top 10 automation testing tools list.

What are the Benefits of Automation Testing?

Automated testing can help improve the quality of your web applications by catching bugs and errors early on in the development process. Additionally, automated tests can be run more frequently and at a faster pace than manual testing, providing more comprehensive coverage of your codebase. Automated tests can also be written to specifically test for edge cases and corner conditions that may be difficult to replicate manually.
Automation testing helps developers to enhance the overall quality of applications. It also reduces the testing cost and makes it faster than the traditional one. Hence, the efficiency of testing gets maximized due to automation.
Overall, automated testing can save you time and money while helping to ensure the quality of your web applications.

Top 10 Must-Have Automation Tools for Web Testing

Web testing is a process of verifying the functionality of a website or web application. It helps ensure that the site is accessible and usable by users. There are various tools available to help automate this process, making it more efficient and less time-consuming.

The following is a list of the top 10 must-have automation tools for web testing:
1. Selenium
2. Appium
3. Katalon Studio
4. LoadRunner
5. HPE Unified Functional Testing (UFT)
6. Tosca
7. TestComplete
8. Cypress
9. IBM Rational Functional Tester (RFT)
10. Karate

1. Selenium: Selenium is a widely used open source tool for web testing. It can be used to test both web applications and websites. It supports various browsers and operating systems.

2. Appium: It is an open-source framework that allows QAs to conduct automated app testing on different platforms like Android, iOS, and Windows

3. Katalon Studio: Katalon Studio is an all-in-one platform for low-code web, API, mobile, and desktop (Windows) automated testing.

4. LoadRunner: LoadRunner is a performance testing tool from HPE. It can be used to simulate heavy load on a website or application in order to test its scalability and stability under high traffic conditions.

5. HPE Unified Functional Testing (UFT): Micro Focus Unified Functional Testing, formerly known as QuickTest Professional, is software that provides functional and regression test automation for software applications and environments. UFT supports keyword and scripting interfaces and features a graphical user interface.

6 . Tosca: TOSCA is an automation tool for functional and regression testing of various software products. It also includes GUI, CLI (command line interface), integrated test management, and API.

7. TestComplete: TestComplete is a functional automated testing platform developed by SmartBear Software. TestComplete gives testers the ability to create automated tests for Microsoft Windows, Web, Android, and iOS applications.

8. Cypress: It is a JavaScript-based end-to-end testing tool designed for modern web test automation. This developer-friendly tool operates directly in the browser using a DOM manipulation technique and enables front-end developers and QA engineers to write automated web tests while eliminating pain points.

9. IBM Rational Functional Tester (RFT): It is an automated functional testing and regression testing tool. This software provides automated testing capabilities for functional, regression, GUI and data-driven testing.

10. Karate: Karate is an open-source general-purpose test-automation framework that can script calls to HTTP end-points and assert that the JSON or XML responses are as expected.

– Selenium

Selenium is a web testing tool that automates the testing of web applications. It is an open source project that allows testers to write tests in any programming language they want. Selenium has become the de facto standard for web testing and is used by major organizations such as Google, Facebook, and Netflix.

Selenium can be used to test all kinds of web applications, including those written in Java, .NET, PHP, Python, and Ruby. It can also be used to test mobile applications. Selenium is a powerful tool that can be used to automate both simple and complex web tests.

Benefits with Selenium:

1. Open Source and comes free without licensing cost.
2. Multi-Language Support like C#, Java, Python, JavaScript, and so on.
3. Multi-Browser Support like Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari, and so on.
4. Platform Support like Windows, Mac, Linux, and so on.
5. It can be used with multiple frameworks like TestNG, JUnit. There are different frameworks like Data Driven Framework, Keyword Driven Framework, Hybrid Framework, etc.
6. Multiple test scripts should be executed in parallel to reduce the test execution time. With the help of Selenium Grid, multiple scripts can be executed on remote machines.
7. Scripts can be reused since the same tests developed can be validated against multiple browsers.
8. Selenium test automation can be integrated with TestNG and Junit for managing test scripts and generating reports. Continuous Integration testing can be integrated with CI/CD tools like Jenkins, Maven, Docker, etc.
9. It reduces manual testing efforts by performing functional, regression, end-to-end, cross browser, smoke, sanity, acceptance, integration, and so on.
10. Since Selenium has been around for a long time, it has a huge community of helpful users. There are guides and documentation to help the testers solve the issues that they are met with.

– Appium

It is an open-source and free automation mobile testing tool. It is used in testing mobile applications. It is created and maintained by Sauce Labs to automate native, and hybrid mobile applications. It supports cross-platform testing. It means the same set of test cases can be run on different mobile platforms to check the efficiency of the application. Multiple devices can be easily tested on the Appium testing tool in parallel.

Let’s take a look at its key features:

– Open source tool: As mentioned earlier, Appium is an open source tool that can be used by anyone without any licensing fees. This makes it a very popular choice among developers and testers alike.
– Cross platform: Appium can be used to test applications on Android and iOS platforms. So, if you want to develop and test a cross platform application, Appium is the way to go.
– Supports multiple programming languages: Appium supports various programming languages such as Java, Python, C# etc. This allows you to choose your preferred language for scripting the tests.
– Easy setup: Setting up Appium is relatively easy when compared to other automation tools. All you need is to download and install the required dependencies (Appium server & NodeJS).
– It permits the automated testing of hybrid, native, and web applications.

– Cucumber

Cucumber is one of the most popular open source automation tools for web testing. Cucumber is a tool that supports BDD (Behaviour Data-Driven). It acts as a bridge between a software engineer and business analyst, manual testers and automation tester, and developer and manual tester, as cucumber makes it easy to read and understand application flow.

In BDD, before a developer write a code, the first user writes test scenarios or acceptance tests as per the behavior of the system from the customer’s perspective for review and sign-off by product owners.

Benefits of Cucumber:

It involves business stakeholders who can easily read the code.
Main focus is an end-user experience.
Easy reuse of code in the test as simple test script architecture.
Easy to set up and execute.
Multi-language support like Java,.Net, Ruby, etc.
Works as a bridge between business and technical language.
Coding knowledge is not required to write a test.
Efficient tool.

– WebdriverIO

WebdriverIO is an E2E test framework designed to automate modern web applications. In addition, WebdriverIO can also automate mobile applications through either emulation/simulation or on an actual device.

WebdriverIO is an independent implementation of Selenium Webdriver’s communication protocol. It is supported by all browsers and does not require you to download a modified browser that you would not actually use.

Benefits of WebdriverIO:

It is easily extendable, enabling you to quickly add helper functions or more complicated sets of existing commands.
It is built entirely in JavaScript, which is a blessing for most web testers and web developers, who work with JavaScript codebases.
It is built entirely in JavaScript, which is a blessing for most web testers and web developers, who work with JavaScript codebases.
It is completely open-source testing utility for nodejs.
It uses Selenium beneath it, that simplifies to run my tests in all sorts of browsers.

– RestAssured

Rest Assured is used to verify the REST APIs with the help of the Java library. Java library acts like a headless client to act upon the Rest web services. The libraries based on the Rest Assured library are also capable of validating the HTTP responses from the server.
It is commonly used for REST API Automation Testing. The framework enables users to access functionality and identify issues in REST Web Services.
It helps fetch values of request and response from complicated JSON structures. It helps set assert statements and conditions.

Features of RestAssured:

– It eliminates the aspect of writing complex codes that are required to set up an HTTP connection, send or receive a request, and parse a response.
– It makes the test results easy to read as it supports notations such as ‘given’ or ‘then’ or ‘when.’
– Integrating REST Assured into a continuous delivery setup is easy when paired with Java testing frameworks like TestNG, JUnit, etc.
– Apart from technical response data validation, REST Assured also supports data-driven API testing to allow testers to perform complex tests.
– REST Assured serves as the main support system for XML- and JSON-path syntax for checking several elements of the response data.

– Katalon Studio

Katalon Studio supports testing on all platforms and operating systems, ranging from Windows, macOS, Linux, to Android and iOS for mobile application testing. Users can also use Katalon Studio to automate web, API, mobile, and desktop applications – all in a lightweight, downloadable package.

Being built on top of Selenium and Appium, Katalon Studio not only offers similar functionalities in a more simplified user experience for its end-users, but it also provides enterprise-centralized features for the growing teams with different automation purposes.

Key features:

1. Easy to install. Supports most common Operating systems and Browsers
2. Supports Web, Mobile, and WebService testing
3. Open source
4. Works for both technical and non-technical testers
5. Eliminates the complexity of setup and framework definition that tools such as Selenium pose
6. Brings the robust QTP-like UI/Object recognition to a free automation tool- You can add multiple properties to recognize an object and not have to choose/guess which locator works best.
7. Test data can be created in the tool itself or can be picked up externally from Excel sheets or database.
8. SingleIDE to generate variety of application automation scripts.
9. Integrates with requirement management and test management tools JIRA and qTest respectively.

– HPE Unified Functional Testing (UFT)

HP Unified Functional Testing is a functional testing tool that integrates the features of various other HP products (Quickest Professional, WinRunner, and HP Service Test). Functional tests are automated by recording the actions of a user on the application or system under test. Scripts are used to store the recorded actions in UFT.
Unified Functional Testing was created to address the difficulties posed by the ongoing technological advancements and procedures. Automation testing could significantly increase the quality of your software while reducing testing complexity and costs even in environments that are rapidly changing.

Advantages:

– Supports both GUI and API testing.
– Supports multiple browsers
– Faster installation process.
– Supports playback and record.
– Can utilize technical and non-technical users.
– Supports some add-ins such as Java, Oracle, NET, SAP, People Soft, Web Forms, etc
– You can enhance existing tests without using AUT via active screens
– Supports well-known automated frameworks –testing approach that is keyword driven, data-driven, as well as the modular testing approaches
– Includes a built-in IDE.
– Could be incorporated with tools for test management such as Test Director, Quality Center, as well as Winrunner.
– You can easily maintain different suite types like Sanity, Regression, Smoke, etc
– Supports XML
– Maintenance is easy
– You can test report via QTP for purpose of analysis

 

– Tosca

Tosca is one of the popular Automation tools offered by Tricentis. The tool comes with a certain price but provides an equal number of features to enjoy. Tricentis Tosca has gained a lot of attention because it offers a good balance between performance and quality. Tosca is a paid tool and comes at a reasonable price as compared to other tools available in the market.

Tosca testsuite is an enterprise software testing tool, which is commonly used to automate the process. It offers a complete functionality of the test cases to provide an effective test management process.

Features of Tosco:

– Multiple Features in One Tool
– No Scripting Required
– Testing Methodology
– Supports Multiple Platforms
– Quality Vendor Support
– Easy to Use Interface
– Reasonably Priced
– Regular Updates
– Quick Results
– Suitable for large scale operations

– TestComplete

TestComplete is a powerful automated GUI testing tool for mobile, web, and desktop applications. Create accurate and repeatable automated tests across multiple devices, platforms, and environments quickly and easily – whether you are a complete beginner or an experienced automation engineer.

The tool’s object recognition engine is now also supported by artificial intelligence, which enables you to detect and test the elements of any GUI, including PDFs and charts, as well as mainframe and SAP applications.

Features of TestComplete:

1. Record & Replay feature allows us to build a solution for complex scenarios without writing a single line of code.
2. Test complete comes with support for seven different languages which enables a wide range of testers to write automation scripts
3. Wide Test Coverage with the Complete Object Recognition Engine
4. Artificial Intelligence for Technical and Non-Technical Testers.
5. Easily Create Data-Driven Tests.
6. TestComplete is famous for creating Keyword-driven Testsuits.
7. TestComplete Web enables comprehensive GUI testing applications by providing out-of-the-box support for third-party controls of various types.
8. Convert TestComplete Web tests into performance tests to reduce test creation time. No need to script to change as performance scripts.

Cypress

Cypress is an up-and-coming web testing framework. This growing solution for web test automation is a solid complementary framework to Selenium, which has long been the de facto web automation framework.

Benefits:

1. Cypress is more universal because it is written in JavaScript and based on Mocha and Chai. It also uses Node.js when running in browsers.
2. With Cypress, dependencies and libraries are already set in place with no configuration needed.
3. You can debug your web apps with Cypress quickly and easily.
4. Cypress is known for its fast test execution — with a response time of less time.
5. Cypress is a free and open-source framework. It operates on a freemium model, where you can use the free version or paid version. The paid version includes advanced features, such as a dashboard with artifacts, such as DOM snapshots, which are helpful for debugging, as well as video storage.

IBM Rational Functional Tester (RFT)

Rational Functional Tester is an object-oriented automated functional testing tool capable of performing automated functional, regression, GUI, and data-driven testing. RFT supports a wide range of applications and protocols, such as HTML, Java, .NET, Windows, Eclipse, SAP, Siebel, Flex, Silverlight, Visual Basic, Dojo, GET and PowerBuilder application.

Benefits of RFT:

– With the recorder tool, non-developers can record and write automated test cases
– Customer Support and frequent fixes
– Execution logs with screenshots and timestamps as well HTML reports
– Integration with other IBM RCLM tools to keep records of test run results
– Supports multiple programming languages
– Supports browsers Safari, Chrome, Inter Explorer, and Firefox
– Reusability: tests can instantly be run with different versions of an application helping reduce time taken during regression testing
– Consistency: in every test that is run from an RFT script the exact same steps will be undergone each time

Karate

Karate framework follows the Cucumber style of writing the program which follows the BDD approach. The syntax is easy to understand by non-programmers. And this framework is the only API testing tool that has combined API Automation and performance testing into a single standalone tool.

Benefits of Karate:

– Easy to start with little coding.
– Karate features native JSON support and one can write JSON expressions right within feature files
– Karate features a very powerful JSON validation.
– In Karate, one can do coding in JS or java.
– Karate features a multi-thread parallel execution.
– It has detailed logs and reporting. Allows parallel execution.
– By integrating the Gatling framework, performance testing can also be conducted.