“A study commissioned by Verisign concluded nearly two-thirds of consumers believe a business with a website is more credible than a company without one.”
– Broadly
Businesses win by establishing trust through exemplary service. Your website, as your business’ digital home, needs to reflect your commitment to giving your users the best experience possible. A well-functioning website means your customers can access your business faster, more easily, and with higher satisfaction.
Load testing is a critical part of a website’s development cycle, both before and after launch. Let’s look briefly at why.
Load Testing Tools & Your Business
“79% of shoppers reported that they would not return to purchase from a slow loading website.”
– business.com
We live in a busy world, and a website that’s down or lags in its processes can give a frustrating experience to users. Besides, the more time your website is unavailable or the more it lags and gets stuck during critical transactions, the more business you’ll inevitably lose. So in addition to building trust, a well-functioning website also helps you secure and even boost revenue.
How then can we gauge our website’s performance? The answer is simple: load test your website for heavy loads, switch up the loads, soak it under stress for a long time, and you’ll know exactly what you need to do to ramp it up so that it doesn’t fall below par when it’s most needed.
A recent survey conducted by Veeam, a global leader in the backup and data management space, with over 1,500 IT professionals found that the cost of one hour of downtime for high priority applications was over $84,000.
Regular load testing should be a part of your website development process from conception through to regular maintenance and upgrades. Let’s look at what makes certain load testing tools stand out from the competition.
What Separates Good from Great Load Testing Tools?
There are certain criteria that make for a great load testing tool and experience. Here are a few factors to consider.
On-Cloud or On-Premise Load Testing Tools?
An on-premise load testing tool will require hardware and a testing environment in place. The more environmentally friendly, modern, and efficient option for most load testing is an on-cloud load testing tool that eliminates the need for sophisticated and expensive hardware to be set up and maintained.
“Companies using cloud computing to reduce the amount of carbon released into the air by 88%.”
– Business2Community
An on-cloud load testing tool also relieves you from having a limited area of testing. You’ll be able to repeatedly test from a wide variety of locations around the world, including (with our tools at LoadView) China.
Open-Source & Proprietary Load Testing Tools
While an open-source load testing tool may at first appear to be free to use, a proprietary load testing tool will charge you a fee to access the service.
Open-source Load Testing Tools
Costs for open-source load testing tools can include hardware and maintenance, the cost of a testing environment, cloud resources, and costs associated with the talent to use the tool.
The level of professional support available to you with open-source load testing tools is also limited. You’ll typically have access to online resources and forums where you can discuss issues you face with your software in any stage of implementation, but you won’t have expert help with open-source load testing tools unless you pay for it.
Proprietary Load Testing Tools
A proprietary load testing tool will help you avoid unexpected costs that come up with open-source load testing tools. Take away installation costs, maintenance costs, and the potential costs associated with training your employees to use open-source software. With a proprietary load testing tool like LoadView, you won’t need to train anyone.
LoadView makes scripting real user interactions easy with our EveryStep Recorder. The EveryStep Recorder helps you quickly simulate users’ behavior in real browser situations through point and click scripting. Want to test your login or checkout experience at scale? You can do this with LoadView and the EveryStep Recorder.
At LoadView we also give you industry-leading support, which you simply will not get if you use open-source load testing tools.
Ease of Use & Load Testing Tools
With an open-source load testing tool, you or a developer will likely spend hours writing and rewriting test scripts. A proprietary load testing tool like LoadView eliminates the need for you to script because of its ability to generate load testing scripts based on real user interactions with your website. With LoadView you can start testing complex real browser interactions within minutes.
How Real Are a Load Testing Tool’s Users
Realistic user simulation is an important consideration when looking for a load testing tool. Emulating real user interactions with open-source load testing tools will be limited and difficult to accomplish. With our tools at LoadView, you have the option to perform load tests on real browsers. This makes us stand out from the competition in the most important way and separates the good from the great in the load testing industry.
Repeatability
A quality load testing tool will have generic user simulation scripts you can use without having to write lengthy code every time you need to test. It will also allow you to test in various stages of the development process. You should be able to automate tests with generic user simulations and gather data from multiple identical tests. This allows you to change your website’s code and infrastructure and re-test to determine the results of your development work.
Load Testing Tools: Maintenance
With an open-source load testing tool, you’re responsible for the maintenance of hardware and software for testing. A proprietary load testing tool’s maintenance is up to the service provider. If there are any updates to the software, the load testing tool provider is responsible for them.
The Load Testing Tools Market
At LoadView we stay apace of trends in the load testing space and lead the way with new features and tools to adjust to the fast-moving reality the Internet and what businesses need from their website load testing. Here’s a quick look at the top proprietary and open-source load testing tools on the market, starting with our own LoadView.
LoadView Leads the Pack
At LoadView we give you the option to conduct on-cloud, real browser testing from locations around the world, which empowers you to generate the most accurate and comprehensive view of your website’s performance across geography and devices.
Basing your load tests on real user behavior is a critical factor to learn how our website performs in the real world. Without real user testing, your results will not represent actual user experience. Using real browser testing with LoadView will give you more realistic results than competitors’ simulated, headless browsers.
Combined with our powerful EveryStep recorder, which allows you to generate scripts simulating real user behavior in minutes, LoadView is the stand-out choice and the best load testing tool for your business.
Apache JMeter for Open-source Testing
Apache JMeter is a ubiquitous open-source load testing tool. It’s a Java application, and you’ll have to manually write scripts in code. A basic understanding of Java is required for you to be able to manipulate this script. A large-scale test may be difficult with JMeter because it requires the installation of a variety of load injectors. If you want to try your hand at open-source load testing, consider JMeter but know that LoadView will save you time and even budget in the long run.
LoadView is the Best Load Testing Tool for Your Business
We’ve built our LoadView platform to make your load testing workflow a lot smarter. And we make it easy to get started with a free trial. We’ll be glad to hear from you and help you achieve your load testing and website performance targets.