Best Automation Testing Tools for 2018

Software development practices change over time, so do the tools and technologies. Such changes aim to improve productivity, quality, customer satisfaction, to tackle ever-shorter delivery time, and to deliver successful products and services. Software testing obviously plays an important role in achieving these objectives.

The recently released World Quality Report 2017-2018 by Capgemini, Sogeti, and Micro Focus points out several interesting trends in software quality and testing. Two of three key trends are increasing test automation and widespread adoption of agile and DevOps methodologies. As the report shows, organizations need intelligent automation and smart analytics to speed up decision making and validation and to better address the challenges of testing smarter devices and products that are highly integrated and continuously changing. The report also suggests the need for smart test platforms that are self-aware and self-adaptive to support the complete application lifecycle.

In the test automation landscape, automation tools certainly take a center stage. This post summarizes the top test automation tools and frameworks that have the potential to help organizations to best position themselves to keep pace with the trends in software testing. The list includes both open-source and commercial test automation solutions.

1. Selenium

Selenium is possibly the most popular open-source test automation framework for Web applications. Being originated in the 2000s and evolved over a decade, Selenium has been an automation framework of choice for Web automation testers, especially for those who possess advanced programming and scripting skills. Selenium has become a core framework for other open-source test automation tools such as Katalon Studio, Watir, Protractor, and Robot Framework.

Selenium supports multiple system environments (Windows, Mac, Linux) and browsers (Chrome, Firefox, IE, and Headless browsers). Its scripts can be written in various programming languages such as Java, Groovy, Python, C#, PHP, Ruby, and Perl.

While testers have flexibility with Selenium and they can write complex and advanced test scripts to meet various levels of complexity, it requires advanced programming skills and effort to build automation frameworks and libraries for specific testing needs.

Website: http://www.seleniumhq.org/

License: Open-source

2. Katalon Studio

Katalon Studio is a powerful test automation solution for web application, mobile, and web services. Being built on top of the Selenium and Appium frameworks, Katalon Studio takes advantage of these solutions for integrated software automation.

The tool supports different levels of testing skill set. Non-programmers can find it easy to start an automation testing project (like using Object Spy to record test scripts) while programmers and advanced automation testers can save time on building new libraries and maintaining their scripts.

Katalon Studio can be integrated into CI/CD processes and works well with popular tools in the QA process including qTest, JIRA, Jenkins, and Git. It offers a nice feature called Katalon Analytics which provides users comprehensive views of test execution reports via dashboard including metrics, charts, and graphs.

Website: https://www.katalon.com/

License: Free

3. UFT

Unified Functional Testing (UFT) is a well-known commercial testing tool for functional testing. It provides a comprehensive feature set for API, web services, and GUI testing of desktop, web, and mobile applications across platforms. The tool has advanced image-based object recognition feature, reusable test components, and automated documentation.

UFT uses Visual Basic Scripting Edition to register testing processes and object control. UFT is integrated with Mercury Business Process Testing and Mercury Quality Center. The tool supports CI via integration with CI tools such as Jenkins.

Website: https://software.microfocus.com/fr-ca/software/uft

License: Commercial

4. Watir

Watir is an open-source testing tool for web automation testing based on Ruby libraries. Watir supports cross browser testing including Firefox, Opera, headless browser, and IE. It also supports data-driven testing and integrates with BBD tools like RSpec, Cucumber, and Test/Unit.

Website: http://watir.com/

License: Open-source

5. IBM Rational Functional Tester

IBM RFT is a data-driven testing platform for functional and regression testing. It supports a wide range of application such as .Net, Java, SAP, Flex, and Ajax. RFT uses Visual Basic .Net and Java as scripting languages. RFT has a unique feature called Storyboard testing in which users' actions on AUT are recorded and visualized in a storyboard format through application screenshots.

Another interesting feature of RFT is its integration with IBM Jazz application lifecycle management systems such as IBM Rational Team Concert and Rational Quality Manager.

Website: https://www.ibm.com/

License: Commercial

6. TestComplete

TestComplete by SmartBear is a powerful commercial testing tool for web, mobile, and desktop testing. TestComplete supports various scripting languages such as JavaScript, VBScript, Python, and C++Script. Like Katalon Studio, testers can perform keyword-driven and data-driven testing with TestComplete. The tool also offers an easy-to-use record and playback feature.

Like UTF, TestComplete's GUI object recognition capability can automatically detect and update UI objects which helps reduce the effort to maintain test scripts when the AUT is changed. It also integrates with Jenkins in a CI process.

Website: https://smartbear.com/

License: Commercial

7. TestPlant eggPlant

An image-based automated functional testing tool that enables testers to interact with AUT the same way end users do. TestPlant eggPlant is completely different from traditional testing tools in its approach: modeling user's point of view rather instead of the test scripts view often seen by testers. This allows testers with less programming skills to learn and apply test automation intuitively. The tool supports various platforms like Web, mobile, and POS systems. It offers lab management and CI integration as well.

Website: https://www.testplant.com/

License: Commercial

8. Tricentis Tosca

Tricentis Tosca is a model-based test automation tool that provides quite a broad feature set for continuous testing including dashboards, analytics, and integrations to support agile and DevOps methodologies.

Tricentis Tosca helps users to optimize the reusability of test assets. Like many other test automation tools, it supports a wide range of technologies and applications such as web, mobile, and API. Tricentis Tosca also has features for integration management, risk analysis, and distributed execution.

Website: https://www.tricentis.com/

License: Commercial

9. Ranorex

Ranorex is a quite comprehensive commercial automation tool for web, mobile, and desktop testing. The tool features advanced capabilities for GUI recognition, reusable test scripts, and record/playback. Codeless test creation is also a very useful feature that allows new automation testers to learn and apply test automation to their projects.

The tool supports Selenium integration for web application testing. Testers can distribute the execution of their tests across platforms and browsers using Selenium grid. Ranorex offers a low-pricing model for businesses.

Website: https://www.ranorex.com/

License: Commercial

10. Robot Framework

Robot Framework is an open-source automation framework that implements the keyword-driven approach for acceptance testing and acceptance test-driven development (ATDD). Robot Framework provides frameworks for different test automation needs. But its test capability can be further extended by implementing additional test libraries using Python and Java. Selenium WebDriver is a popular external library used in Robot Framework.

Test engineers can leverage Robot Framework as an automation framework for not only web testing but also for Android and iOS test automation. Robot Framework can be easy to learn for testers who are familiar with keyword-driven testing.

Website: http://www.robotframework.org/

License: Open-source

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As we can see, each of these automation tools has unique features to offer in addressing the growing challenges of software automation in the years ahead. Most provide capabilities for continuous testing and integration, test management, and reporting. They all support increasing automation needs for Web and Mobile testing. However, intelligent testing and smart analytics for adaptive and heterogeneous environments are still something to be desired for automation tools.

For further information on automation tool selection, refer to article A Comparison of Automated Testing Tools on DZone.