Top 5 Best Automated Software Testing Tools

To deliver successful products and services at the pace demanded by today’s digital economy, software developers can’t afford to rely on anything less than the latest software development practices . According to the most recent edition of the World Quality Report , test automation, the use of special software to control the execution of tests, is helping organizations speed up their decision making to deliver better products in a shorter time.

Best Automated Software Testing Tools

The increased reliance on test automation has resulted in the emergence of a large number of automated software testing tools, making it difficult to decide which of them are the best. To help you with your automation efforts, we have created this list of the top 5 best automated software testing tools based on our own experience and that of others.

1. Selenium

Selenium is arguably the most popular automated software testing tool among web developers and testers. It was first released in 2004, and it has evolved considerably since then. The latest version of Selenium consists of several components, including Selenium IDE and Selenium WebDriver.

Selenium IDE is a complete integrated development environment (IDE) for Selenium tests, and it’s used primarily for creating quick bug reproduction scripts and scripts to help in automation-aided exploratory testing. On the other hand, Selenium WebDriver is a collection of language-specific bindings to drive a browser, and it was developed to better support dynamic web pages.

Selenium is compatible with all major web browsers and supports a number of popular programming languages, including JavaScript, Java, Ruby, Python, PHP, and C# , just to name a few. While Selenium makes it possible to author automation tests without any programming skills, complex test scripts require advanced programming skills.

Considering that Selenium is free, open source, and enjoys the support of some of the largest browser vendors, all automation testers who want to be competitive should see Selenium as a professional investment and at the very least familiarize themselves with it.

2. Appium

Appium is an automated software testing tool for use with native, hybrid, and mobile web apps . With mobile apps on the rise and major app stores becoming increasingly competitive, there is an urgent need to deliver only quality apps to the consumer.

The goal of Appium is to automate mobile app testing without an SDK or recompilation. Appium allows testers to write test using their favorite tools and programming languages. Getting started with Appium could hardly be any easier, and this remarkable automated software testing tool is open source and hosted publicly on GitHub.

Appium has been successfully used to automate large regression tests, convert manual test cases to automated scripts, and more. Because it supports both Android and iOS , there’s no need to learn a new language for each platform, which saves time and aligns with the needs of most app developers.

3. Katalon Studio

Katalon Studio is a cross-platform automation testing solution built on top of the Selenium and Appium frameworks. It’s completely free, easy to deploy, and its active community of over 100,000 automation testers has created a wealth of tutorials and guides that make learning how to use Katalon Studio effortless.

Non-programmers can use Katalon Studio to record test scripts, while automation testers with some programming knowledge can explore some of the more advanced features of Katalon Studio and create powerful automation scripts using Groove, Java, or JavaScript .

Katalon Studio works well with popular tools in the QA process, and it can be integrated into the CI/CD processes. There’s also a streamlined version of Katalon Studio, called Katalon Recorder, and it can be installed in just a few seconds on both Chrome and Firefox.

4. Cucumber

Cucumber is a popular automated software testing tool that supports Behavior Driven Development (BDD), which is a software development process that implements important acceptance test scenarios while development is in progress in order to help organizations get most out of software testing.

While Cucumber was originally used exclusively for Ruby testing, it now supports a variety of different programming languages through various implementations, including JavaScript, Java, PHP, and Lua. Cucumber also features its own programming language, called Gherkin. Used to define test cases, Gherkin was designed to be human-readable, and its purpose is to promote BDD practices .

Cucumber is perfect for those who would like to focus on the end-user experience and involve even those stakeholders who can’t code. It’s also free, easy to set up, and has been downloaded over 30 million times, making it the world’s most popular automated software testing tool for BDD.

5. Eggplant Functional

Eggplant Functional was conceived by Doug Simons, Jonathan Gillaspie, and John McIntosh and first released in 2002 by Redstone Software. Unlike other automated software testing tools on this list, Eggplant Functional uses an image-based approach to testing , as opposed to looking at the tested application from the object perspective. This means that the technology used to build the tested application is irrelevant, as is the system on which the application runs.

Plug-ins for some of the most popular continuous integration and application lifecycle management (ALM) tools are available, including IBM UrbanCode, Bamboo, HP Application Lifecycle Management, IBM RQM, and Jenkins, among others. Because Eggplant Functional has secured a patent for its intelligent image recognition method, it has been able to enjoy a somewhat privileged position on the market, but its accomplishments stand on their own.

Conclusion

Automation testing has matured significantly since the days of SQA, Mercury, and Segue. Modern automated software testing tools are versatile, polished, and more than able to support any sound testing strategy. When selecting an automated software testing tool, it’s important not to let a tool’s popularity and the hype around it influence the decision-making process.