Scale with confidence.
Understand performance limit and identify bottlenecks.

Searching for new load testing tool for your organization? LoadView is a great alternative to Silk Performer. Quickly and easily set up tests and run load against your web pages, applications, and APIs.

The Importance of Load Testing

Load testing your websites, applications, servers, and APIs is critcal for many reasons, but most importantly, that they can stand up to spikes in visitors in real-world conditions to ensure users don’t have a negative experience.  If your pages don’t load properly, or as quickly as users want them to, you’ll likey see an increase in abandonment rates. 

Silk Performer is an extremely popular enterprise-level load and stress testing solution and it shares many features and capabilities with LoadView, but we’ll outline what makes LoadView different than other solutions in the market.

LoadView versus Silk Performer: Load and Stress Testing 

LoadView was created with usability in mind. LoadView utilizes fully managed cloud networks, so you don’t have to manage load generators or worry about the time-consuming tasks like managing additional hardware.  LoadView allows you to just focus on creating and executing load tests.

Load testing is vital for many reasons, including the following:

• Infrastructure
  Determining if your infrastructure needs improvement, so you don’t unnecessarily invest in new hardware. 
• Scalability
  Understanding why your site or application slows down as the number of users increases.
• Real-world Performance
  Your website and web applications can handle everyday traffic, but what about when you run a marketing promotion or during the busiest shopping days of the year? How will your site respond with thousands of additional visitors?
• Third-party Services
  Monitor third-party services that may end up inadvertently impacting web page or application performance.

One of the benefits of LoadView is that the platform provides load/stress testing from the cloud, so you don’t need to rely on several different tools to spin up the appropriate number of concurrent user.  On the other hand, Silk Performer is one of several tools in the Micro Focus portfolio designed for functional/performance testing. For example, if you are a Silk Test user, you can reuse your functional tests and upload them into Silk Performer for load and stress testing.

• Silk Test. Used for automation, functional, and regression testing.
• Silk Performer. Used for web and mobile performance testing.
• Silk Performer CloudBurst. Used to launch any size peak-load test from the cloud.
• Silk Mobile. Used for functional testing of mobile devices.

An important differentiator between LoadView and Silk Performer is that Silk Performer must be installed on a local Windows machine, therefore, depending on the application under test, you are bound by the pre-defined maximums on the number of supported virtual users per computer-based agent and cloud-based agent.  Silk Performer requires Microsoft Windows 7 or newer, or Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 or newer.

Silk Performer works with three types of virtual users. Each type allows to simulate different application types:

Creating Load Testing Scripts: Silk Performer vs. LoadView

When it comes to creating scripts, the Silk Performer recorder gives users seemingly unlimited options to create and configure scripts based on their specific environment, browser, or application being tested. In most cases, users must know and select the correct option before creating the script. There is no shortage of rules and guidelines for the various settings, applications, technologies, and environments. This alone can make it quite burdensome to efficiently begin load and stress testing.
On the other hand, the LoadView platform makes it easy. Depending on what you’re testing, you need only to select from three options: HTTP/S, Web Page, or Web Application.

For load testing web applications, the EveryStep Recorder LoadView platform utilizes a single web-based recorder called the EveryStep Web Recorder. You can record every step of a web transaction and replay your scripts in real browsers. The recorder supports over 40+ desktop/mobile browsers and devices as well technologies used to create interactive content, such as Flash, HTML5, Java, PHP, Ruby, Silverlight, and more.

Silk Performer also allows users to use real browsers (Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox). Note that recording within Chrome or Firefox is currently not supported, however, once you’ve recorded your script within the browser application, your scripts can be replayed in Chrome or Firefox.

Executing Load Tests: Silk Performer vs. LoadView

With the unlimited options Silk Performer gives users and applications the platform supports, there are specific guidelines, prerequisites, and rules that need to be followed to run load tests. This is great when it comes to supporting all the different technologies and applications, it gives users more customization options, but users must wade through various steps, such as defining user types, finding baselines, adjusting workload, assigning agents, and verifying your tests scripts on all agents – all before executing their test.

Compared to Silk Performer, LoadView is straightforward. Simply pick from a handful of settings (such as SSL check, content validation, authentication, DNS options) three types of load curves (Load Step, Goal-based, and Dynamic Adjustable), an execution plan, and lastly, the location(s) you want to run the test from.

To run larger load tests from the cloud with Silk Performer, you must utilize a separate solution called CloudBurst that allows you to rent additional infrastructure and virtual users on a per-use basis.

Silk Performer also provides a wide-range of reports and results, such as baseline reports, time series, TrueLog files, user results. Silk Performer users also have the ability to view custom charts and tables that include statistics on the overall number of virtual users, transactions per second, errors, and throughput. You can also capture raw measure data and store it in a CSV file. From there you can import it into a spreadsheet program and create custom charts and graphs, for example.

Free Trials & Pricing: Silk Performer vs. LoadView

Micro Focus does provide a 45-day free trial, but does not provide pricing or plan information for their functional/performance testing products. You must contact them for pricing.

The LoadView trial includes up to 5 free load tests upon sign up. LoadView has subscription-based plans, starting at $199 per month. With our subscription-based plans, all unused resources rollover and accumulate month-to-month as long as your plan remains active.  Alternatively, you can also select from a pay-as-you-go plan. Pricing is calculated and displayed before you begin new test, so you know exactly what you’re paying for. If your specific needs require more than what is listed above, please contact us for Enterprise-level plans.

LoadView Professional Services 

We also provide Professional Services to assist you and your teams with executing performance tests, interpreting data, and fine-tuning your system without our team’s involvement. Our techniques are tested and proven. You can pick and choose which elements you need assistance with, and our performance engineers will coach you through them. Our team is also available to perform the entire load testing exercise for you, offering consultation to optimize your code and infrastructure. The level of Dotcom-Monitor cooperation is entirely up to you.

Conclusion

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Silk Performer is very comprehensive load testing tool, with support for multiple programming languages. If you’re a medium to large enterprise that manages multiple programming languages and environments, Silk Performer might be the solution for you. However, when it comes to simplicity, ease of use, and pricing consideration, the LoadView platform outperforms Silk Performer. With LoadView, users can utilize a point and click scripting tool to build scripts and execute load tests for websites, web applications and APIs in just minutes. No need for any additional downloads, cloud accounts, or add-on solutions.

With Silk Performer, there’s a steep learning curve, separate downloads, requirements, and multiple conditions that need to be met in order to begin using the tool. Performance testing tools shouldn’t be a burden to IT and DevOps teams. Teams need a tool that can help save them time and create efficiencies and puts the focus on executing tests. LoadView by Dotcom-Monitor is that tool. LoadView offers multiple pricing plans, even an on-demand plan, so if you only need to execute load and stress tests a few times a year, you can do so easily without any hassles.