What Makes a Good Load Testing Platform

Last Updated: April 10, 2024

Successful companies nowadays prioritize the speed of their business applications, knowing that frustrated customers may swiftly switch to competitors. Each lost customer directly impacts your financial revenue. Therefore, businesses are increasingly focusing on enhancing the reliability of their applications and investing more in load testing and application monitoring. Load testing helps identify and eliminate performance bottlenecks from pre-deployment to production, while application monitoring is instrumental in detecting outages or slowdowns, allowing for prompt resolution during production stages.

In this article, we’ll shed light on load testing platforms, highlight some distinguishing features, and explain why LoadView should be your choice for your next performance engineering project.

Different Load Testing Solutions

In recent years new load and performance testing tool solutions have appeared in this growing market. Pioneers such as JMeter and LoadRunner are typically deployed on their machines in a company’s local network. With the rise of cloud computing, some companies extended their load testing services to SaaS or on-demand.

When it comes to load testing solutions, businesses have two primary options to consider: on-premises and cloud/on-demand solutions. Each type offers distinct advantages and considerations, catering to different needs and preferences.

Load Testing On-Premises Solutions

On-premises load testing solutions involve deploying and managing testing infrastructure within the organization’s own data center or physical servers. Here are some key characteristics:

• Control and Security: With on-premises solutions, organizations have full control over their testing environment, ensuring compliance with security and data privacy regulations.
• Customization: Businesses can tailor the testing environment to meet specific requirements and integrate seamlessly with existing systems and processes.
• Costs: While initial setup costs may be higher due to hardware and infrastructure investments, long-term operational costs may be lower compared to cloud-based solutions, especially for large-scale or continuous testing needs.
• Scalability: Scalability may be limited by the organization’s physical infrastructure, requiring additional investments in hardware and resources to accommodate growing testing demands.

Load Testing Cloud and On-Demand Solutions

Managing a local load testing infrastructure can pose significant challenges. Transitioning to a cloud-based solution eliminates the hassle of maintaining local load testing suites. The advantage lies in avoiding maintenance tasks and fees, with clients paying only for the services they require.

Cloud-based or on-demand load testing solutions leverage third-party infrastructure and services, allowing businesses to conduct testing remotely over the internet. Here are some key features:

• Flexibility and Accessibility: Cloud-based solutions offer flexibility in terms of access, allowing teams to conduct testing from anywhere with internet connectivity. This is particularly advantageous for distributed teams or remote work setups.
• Scalability: Cloud-based solutions provide virtually unlimited scalability, allowing organizations to scale up or down resources based on testing requirements without the need for upfront investments in hardware.
• Cost-effectiveness: While cloud-based solutions may entail subscription or usage-based fees, they often eliminate the need for upfront hardware investments and reduce operational overhead associated with managing on-premises infrastructure.
• Updates and Maintenance: Cloud-based solutions typically handle updates, maintenance, and infrastructure management, freeing up IT resources and ensuring access to the latest features and capabilities.

How Does Load Simulation Work?

Manual tests are designed to identify functional issues, such as features not working as intended. However, these tests are not suitable for assessing how a new application performs under conditions resembling real-world usage. Performance testing, on the other hand, is crucial for verifying the reliability of your system under both current and anticipated loads. Unlike manual testing, load testing is a complex task that often requires the expertise of experienced specialists or an extensive load testing tool.

The key steps involved in setting up a load test include:

1. Calculating the load pattern
2. Identifying relevant user interactions
3. Automating testing scripts
4. Configuring test scenarios for both regular and peak loads
5. Assigning load injection machines
6. Executing the tests
7. Analyzing the results
8. Addressing any defects and repeating the test until hotspots are resolved

What Makes a Good Load Testing Platform

Many companies find themselves dissatisfied with their current load-testing suites due to various reasons, including high costs, poor usability, excessive maintenance efforts, and limited script reusability.

Based on our experience, an exceptional performance-testing platform should meet the following key criteria:

• User-Friendly Interface: The ability to create scripts and execute load tests should be achievable within a few hours, ensuring ease of use for testers of all skill levels.
• Comprehensive Technology Support: The platform should support capturing and replaying interactions across a wide range of browsers, mobile devices, web2.0 techniques, as well as applications built on Java, Citrix, SAP, and .NET.
• Realistic User Simulation: It should offer various user simulation techniques, including protocol-based, headless, and full browser-based simulations, to accurately replicate real-world user behavior.
• Script Reusability: Automated user interactions should be reusable for both performance testing and application monitoring during production stages, maximizing efficiency and minimizing redundancy.
• Strong Community Support: Access to a knowledgeable support community and a robust knowledge base should be available to assist in resolving automation or tooling issues promptly.
• Low Maintenance Efforts: The platform should require minimal maintenance effort, allowing testers to focus on testing tasks rather than troubleshooting tool-related issues.
• Cost-Effectiveness: A pay-as-you-go charging model is preferable, ensuring that companies only pay for the resources they use, without any hidden costs or upfront investments.
• Self-Monitoring Features: The ability to distribute load across injection machines and built-in mechanisms to prevent overloaded machines from skewing load test results are essential for accurate and reliable testing outcomes.

Choose LoadView: An Outstanding Load Testing Platform

Businesses often question the need to set up and maintain their own performance testing suite, as it is a time-consuming and costly endeavor. LoadView offers a solution to this dilemma with its fully cloud-hosted SaaS platform, eliminating the need for deploying private load generation machines. With LoadView, users can create accounts and immediately initiate test automation and execution without the hassle of installation or setup. If you still need to load test behind a firewall or test locally, LoadView also offers a solution for this too.

Unlike many complex performance testing solutions, LoadView simplifies the process with its user-friendly web-based interface and intuitive design. Test scripts can be created and executed within minutes, even without coding skills. LoadView also tackles the challenge of unrealistic load patterns by offering flexible user simulation techniques, ensuring accurate testing outcomes. Additionally, it automates script calibration and load distribution across machines, preventing overloaded injection machines from skewing response times. With LoadView’s closed-loop testing approach, users can seamlessly transition from performance testing to production monitoring, ensuring ongoing reliability and performance optimization.

Load Testing Platform Evaluation Sheet

There are hundreds of load testing solutions on the market today. Companies often have no idea where to begin or what criteria should be used to make their decision, therefore, we’ve created a matrix to assist in the decision-making process.

1. Answer this form for each load testing solution on your short list
2. Select the appropriate rating for each criterion

• ++ means that it completely fulfills the criteria
• + means that this is a good fit
• – means that it somewhat meets the criteria
• — means that it doesn’t meet the criteria in any way

3. Calculate the score

• Each x in ++ column is a 3
• Each x in + column is a 2
• Each x in – column is a 1
• Each x in – column is a 0

The matrix below shows the rating for LoadView. Its score of 23 (24 would be the max value) is extremely high and demonstrates that LoadView is a perfect match for forward-thinking and cost aware companies.

Stop wasting your funds—swap out your ineffective load testing solution with LoadView. Start today and launch a load test within minutes!