Selenium vs Testsigma for continuous testing in fast-paced Agile and DevOps
Selenium is definitely one of the early and best tools out there. But Selenium alone cannot address your continuous testing needs for fast-paced agile and DevOps practices. You need to build a customized solution that is scalable and reliable using Selenium. And, it becomes a parallel development project. Is that what you should be focusing on instead of providing a solution for your customers?
Test Automation is not just about writing scripts!
It's an ecosystem of many things put together. Selenium is part of it. Let us look at the essential elements:
Multiple automation testing tools (Selenium, Appium, etc.) to write test scripts
Modular, scalable and disciplined framework to reduce scripting & maintenance efforts
On-demand and scalable test lab with test machines of different configurations
Comprehensive and dynamic reports for stakeholders at different levels
Test management to understand the automation coverage and traceability
Enterprise-class test data management to increase the test coverage
Shared object repositories. Reusability to increase the maintainability of tests
Test planning and designing capabilities to optimize the efforts and organize test asserts
Integrations with CI/CD tools to automate your continuous delivery pipelines
Integrations with bug tracking tools to automate bug isolation
Integrations with collaboration tools to stay up to date with the results and progress
Integrations with project management/test management tools for better traceability
Integrations with external test labs on-demand to increase the test coverage
Multiple automation testing tools (Selenium, Appium, etc.) to write test scripts
Modular, scalable and disciplined framework to reduce scripting & maintenance efforts
On-demand and scalable test lab with test machines of different configurations
Comprehensive and dynamic reports for stakeholders at different levels
Test management to understand the automation coverage and traceability
Enterprise-class test data management to increase the test coverage
Shared object repositories. Reusability to increase the maintainability of tests
Test planning and designing capabilities to optimize the efforts and organize test asserts
Integrations with CI/CD tools to automate your continuous delivery pipelines
Integrations with bug tracking tools to automate bug isolation
Integrations with collaboration tools to stay up to date with the results and progress
Integrations with project management/test management tools for better traceability
Integrations with external test labs on-demand to increase the test coverage
It's not a new problem to solve.
Why reinvent the wheel?
Huge initial time & costDue to multiple tools, setting up the framework, integrations with other tools, and high ramp-up time | Near-zero initial time and costReady for continuous or agile testing with the shift-left approach. No setup, coding knowledge, and ramp-up time required. |
Slow test developmentTakes lots of time to create scalable, reliable, and maintainable tests due to involved programming efforts. | Test development at 10X fasterSimple English based test development, best in class reusability features let you automate tests at least 10X faster. No coding skills required. |
High execution time and infra costsRequires huge time, efforts and cost to set up a test infrastructure which can scale up and down based on your requirements | Very less execution time and infra costsCloud based Testsigma Lab lets you access thousands of test machines and devices to run tests in parallel. |
High maintenanceDue to cryptic results and programming efforts needed it takes lots of time to maintain the tests continuously for every change in the application. | AI to save maintenance efforts by 70%AI auto-heals your tests, creates test plans automatically on code changes, and identifies possible failures upfront. |
Slower response to changeModern applications undergo changes very frequently, but it takes a very long time and resources to change your tests accordingly. | Faster response to changeWith auto-healing, identifying affected resources features and Intuitive UI can change your scripts quickly and effortlessly. |
Years to achieve good coverageDue to slow test development, continuous maintenance efforts, and lack of a unified platform for all types of apps it takes years to achieve significant test coverage. | Increased automation coverageSimple English based test authoring with AI-driven maintenance and a unified platform for end-to-end testing increases test coverage faster. |
Longer payback time(ROI)Huge initial time & cost, dedicated team, slow test development, and high maintenance means longer payback time. | Immediate payback(ROI)Continuous testing ready from day one, you can start seeing ROI from day one instead of months and years. |
You need a dedicated test automation teamDue to the level of programming needed, only the developers and automation teams can understand the tests. | No additional resources requiredTest creation in Testsigma is as simple as writing the test steps in simple English. Can be done by testers and non-technical members in your current team. |
Your QA and SMEs can′t automate testingDue to the technical barrier,you can′t let everyone automate your testing, that's against your DevOps principles. | You can let your QA and SMEs automate testingYou can let your QA and SMEs automate testing With Testsigma′s simple English based test creation even the non-technical members of your team can write tests after little training. |
Experts for failure identificationCryptic results require experts to analyze & isolate true failures, leaving out false detections and duplicates. | Actionable results for immediate actionsDoesn′t require experts to analyze and isolate true failures. Readable and actionable results let everyone take immediate action. |
Less or no collaborationWith the Selenium approach, there would be very less or no collaboration between manual & automation engineers resulting in duplicate efforts. | Inbuilt collaboration for improved productivityWith Testsigma, both manual and automation engineers can collaborate on the same platforms to avoid any possible redundant efforts. |
Handling design complexitiesShift left/continuous testing requires not just UI automation, but support for API, other application types like iOS, Android, etc. | Automate complex workflowsShift left/continuous testing support not just for UI automation, but also for API, iOS, Android, Database and many other applications. |
Tough for non-technical members to reviewAs the test cases are written in programming languages, the non-technical members cannot be involved in review of the automated test cases. | Easy to reviewEveryone on the team and clients can be involved in the review of automated test cases to keep the test development in line with business requirements at all times |
Continuous integrationAs discussed earlier the selenium framework has to be an integral part of the testing ecosystem. Need continuous efforts to integrate with other tools. | Native integrations with all the essential toolsTestsigma readily integrates with all the project management, bug tracking, collaboration tools and tools for CI/CD workflow and test management. |
Only forum for helpYou may either scour the forum for an appropriate solution mentioned somewhere or you add a question and wait for an indefinite amount of time for an answer. Only a forum for help will always require more time and effort. | 24x7 SupportOur support team will be there to guide you from onboarding to first tests to solving any problems - to help you achieve your goals, any time of the day. |
Why Testsigma? Key differentiators
No coding knowledge required
Testsigma is built for everyone on your team to write automated tests using simple English via NLP.
Test automation is more inclusive
With Testsigma’s unified test development approach, all team members can take part in the test automation process - create them and review them. Thus, now you can achieve better test coverage faster.
Visual testing
In addition to end-to-end functional testing capabilities, Testsigma supports tracking of every pixel of your application via Visual Testing to make your applications perfect visually.
Comprehensive and dynamic reports
You can slice and dice the execution results to create custom reports for all the stakeholders at different levels.
Support for shift left testing
Start writing test cases right from the design phase. Helps you reduce the time between dev complete and testing complete significantly.
Unified platform for both manual and automated tests
Avoids possible duplicate efforts, helps you understand the coverage across manual and automation processes to make better release decisions faster.
Unified continuous testing platform
Supports automation for Web Applications, Mobile Web Applications, Android Apps, iOS Apps, API testing, Database testing, and many more.
Inbuilt test management
Requirements mapping, preconditions, reviews, assign to users, and many more for better traceability. Also, track the productivity of your team.
Enterprise-class test data management
Supports multiple internal and external data sources, makes end-to-end test data management easy and helps keep test coverage high.
AI to make tests stable and reliable
With the main focus on maintainability and stability, tests written in Testsigma are more stable and reliable than Selenium-based scripts.
Easily integratable with the other tools in the ecosystem
Integrations with CI/CD tools, collaboration tools, bug tracking tools, project management tools, cloud based test labs and APIs to integrate with other custom tools.
Don't just look at the tool cost.
With Selenium there are many other hidden and indirect cost factors
- Dedicated automation engineers and architects
- Initial time, cost and resources to build the solution
- Continuous framework development efforts
- Indirect cost due to slow test development speed
- Cost for infrastructure to host the solution
- Continuous maintenance of the test cases
- Initial ramp-up time and cost spent for every new resource
- Duplicate test management efforts due to the lack of unified platform
- Other elements, like test data management, integrations with other tools etc.
- Longer payback time due to huge investment initially