Best Cloud Testing Tools Shortlist
Here are the top 10 cloud testing tools I’d like to highlight out of the 19 I cover in this article:
- 1. New Relic — Best for real-time performance insights for cloud-based applications and infrastructure
Absolutely everything is “in the cloud” nowadays—from our shopping list apps to our bug and issue tracking logs. Companies are increasingly needing to navigate cloud testing tools in order to ensure the security and reliability of any application or service hosted on cloud computing platforms.
In the ever-changing world of technology, cloud testing tools have become essential for software development teams. Cloud testing tools allow developers to test their applications while they are still in development and provide them with quick feedback and analysis on the performance of their application. The best cloud testing tools provide greater reliability, higher test coverage levels, multi-user testing, continuous testing, and shorter test cycles.
In this article, I will be discussing the best cloud testing tools available that can help increase the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of your application development process.
How I Selected the Best Cloud Testing Tools
Perhaps you're wondering how I selected the best cloud testing tools for this list. To build this top 19 list, I evaluated and compared a wide range of cloud testing tools with positive user ratings.
After determining my long list of top choices, I further honed my list by using the selection criteria below to see how each platform stacked up against the next one. I also drew on my years of QA experience to pinpoint the features that add a lot of value.
If you have general questions about cloud testing tools or how to pick the best cloud testing tools for your organization, take a look at our frequently asked questions section below. Or, you can skip directly to my detailed software summaries if that's what you need the most.
Selection Criteria
Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best cloud testing tools for this article:
User Interface:
The UI and graphical interface is the first thing a customer encounters when they use an app. Therefore, it should inspire usage while making navigation and discovering relevant features easy.
Usability:
Ease of use and the ability to interact with a tool to accomplish stated objectives are crucial to satisfying customers. No matter how advanced a product may be, customers should find it relatively easy to use.
Software Integrations:
In the cloud computing ecosystem, software integrations are the life force that extend the power, capabilities, and functionality of an application. You'll probably want to connect your cloud testing tool to bug tracking, task management, and collaboration software. The more robust a testing tool’s APIs and integration endpoints, the better.
Pricing:
Pricing makes a difference to customers, even as most cloud products use SaaS pricing models, which is primarily a subscription-based, pay-as-you-go payment system.
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Overviews Of The 19 Best Cloud Testing Tools
Here’s a brief description of each cloud testing tool to showcase each one's best use case, some noteworthy features, screenshots, and pricing information.
New Relic
Best for real-time performance insights for cloud-based applications and infrastructure
New Relic is all about application performance management and monitoring. It's a tool that's designed to help you keep an eye on your software and make sure everything's running smoothly. It's like having a 24/7 watchdog for your apps, making sure they're performing at their best and alerting you if anything goes wrong.
Why I picked New Relic: There are a few standout features that really make New Relic shine. First off, it's got real-time analytics. This means you can see exactly what's happening with your software, right as it's happening. It's also got an intuitive dashboard that makes it easy to understand your data. Plus, it's got a great alert system that lets you know if anything's going wrong, so you can fix it before it becomes a big problem.
New Relic Standout Features & Integrations
Features include backend monitoring, Kubernetes monitoring, mobile monitoring, model performance monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, log management, error tracking, network monitoring, vulnerability management, and browser monitoring.
Integrations include over 500 apps, such as AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Jenkins, CircleCI, Travis CI, Slack, PagerDuty, and other monitoring and analytics tools like Grafana, Datadog, and Splunk. It also has an API you can use to build custom integrations.
Pros
- Integrates seamlessly with popular dev tools
- AI-powered anomaly detection and intelligent alerting
- Wide range of monitoring capabilities
Cons
- Added complexity from reliance on agents installed on application servers
- Bit of a learning curve
Testsigma
Best highly-customizable, automation test tool
Testsigma is an open-source automation tool that provides QA teams and test engineers with the ability to customize tests for a variety of test profiles, whether they want to execute data-driven, regression, cross-browser, mobile, or continuous testing mechanisms.
Why I picked Testsigma: Although Testsigma works out of the box, it is highly configurable for a variety of end-to-end tests. It gives testers the flexibility of going code-agnostic, creating simple test scripts, or adopting AI-driven auto-pilot test maintenance.
Testsigma is ideal for development teams who are burdened with executing various test suites with a plethora of test scenarios. Testsigma’s SDKs and APIs help them to both customize and automate the process to meet their requirements.
Testsigma Standout Features and Integrations
Features include AI-driven test automations, cross-platform compatibility, cloud-based testing, continuous integration, reporting, multi-language support, and collaboration tools.
Integrations include Jenkins, Travis CI, CircleCI, Jira, Trello, BrowserStack, Sauce Labs, Scrum, Kanban, Appium, Selendroid, Postman, and Swagger.
Testsigma offers customized pricing upon request. Testsigma is free to use with some feature limitations.
Pros
- No coding experience is required to use Testsigma.
- Flexible, with multiple programming language support.
- Open source, ease of use along with cross-platform compatibility.
Cons
- Some of its desired features aren’t included in the open-source version.
- It still poses a challenge to automate complex tests.
Visual Studio App Center
Best cloud mission control center for apps
Visual Studio App Center is a comprehensive Microsoft cloud platform for building high-quality applications for a diverse range of platforms, whether on Windows, Android, iOS, Cordova, UWP, or macOS platforms.
Microsoft has described App Center as “the next generation of Xamarin Test Cloud.” As a result, it incorporates the features and functionality of Xamarin Test Cloud while adding more features, such as the ability to execute a Launch Test on real devices with the App Center Test service.
In addition, App Center provides an SDK, the infrastructure to build, test, distribute, and securely deploy apps. During tests, App Center allows you to monitor real-world usage so you can collect crash and other pertinent analytical data.
App Center makes it easy to test and release your app on various app stores, including Google Play, Apple’s App Store, open betas, Microsoft Intune, and even for private distribution. While Visual Studio App Center is a Microsoft product, it nevertheless supports a wide range of languages such as C, C#, Python, and NodeJS.
Visual Studio App Center Standout Features & Integrations
Features include automation, continuous monitoring, rich diagnostics, continuous integration and deployment, cross-platform testing, automated testing, distributed testing, code signing, analytics, crash reporting, and notifications & alerts.
Integrations include Azure DevOps, GitLab, and Bitbucket. Others include popular bug trackers like VSTS, Jira, and GitHub.
Visual Studio App Center is free to get started, and many of its features remain so. However, if you add concurrent builds, you’ll be billed $40 monthly per build concurrency. In addition, running UI tests in the cloud requires $99 per month per standard test device concurrency.
Pros
- It is centered on a great IDE, which is very popular among developers.
- A cool platform and environment for delivering world-class mobile and desktop DevOps experience.
Cons
- It lacks video recording for tests executed in the cloud.
AppPerfect
Best cloud testing tool for versatility
AppPerfect is a proprietary, fully automated performance, load, and stress test execution suite. It provides suites for various functionalities, such as load and web testing, including agentless monitoring and big-data analytics.
Why I picked AppPerfect: AppPerfect runs on operating system platforms like Windows, Linux, Solaris, UNIX-based systems, and macOS. It can simulate thousands of tests to test your application infrastructure realistically.
Its rich set of features is designed for both QA professionals and developers. It helps test teams identify issues and problems with a software application before it goes into production. However, no programming experience is required to use AppPerfect.
AppPerfect Standout Features & Integrations
Features include test management, automation, test & browser recording, agentless monitoring, and generated ready-made scripts.
Integrations include Jdeveloper, NetBeans, IntelliJ Idea, JBuilder, Salesforce, and Eclipse.
AppPerfect is free for unlimited use.
Pros
- All-time free usage.
- GUI-enabled for smooth, user-friendly operations.
- Cross-platform support.
Cons
- Limited third-party integrations.
- Limited documentation provided.
Nessus
Best vulnerability management tool for the cloud
Tenable Nessus is a cloud-based penetration scanner used to scan systems for vulnerabilities such as misconfigurations, unauthorized access, data leakage, default passwords, and denial of service attacks. Organizations use Nessus to analyze and stress test their security posture.
Why I Picked Nessus: Nessus was one of the first products that pioneered the concept of a “remote vulnerability scanner.” Among other features, Nessus provides vulnerability testing and configuration assessment.
Nessus is built for security practitioners and DevSecOps rather than ordinary test teams. Its point-in-time assessment can be used to identify and fix vulnerabilities quickly.
Configuration is easy so Nessus can be up and running in just a few minutes. In a nutshell, Nessus is designed so that your vulnerability assessment is convenient, simple, and intuitive.
Nessus Standout Features & Integrations
Features include web security scanning, report customization, scalability, templates, and pre-built governance policies.
Integrations include penetration testing tools such as Core IMPACT, Metasploit, and Immunity CANVAS. It also integrates with other credential and patch management systems such as CyberArk, AirWatch, and Red Hat.
Nessus offers a free forever plan with some feature limitations. Paid plans cost from $2190/year.
Pros
- Easy to set up.
- Minimalist yet attractive GUI.
- Provides quick testing vulnerability scans backed by up-to-date vulnerability databases.
Cons
- While Nessus can pinpoint vulnerabilities, it can’t help you resolve or fix them.
- The tool finds it challenging to tune out false positives.
SOASTA CloudTest
Best cloud performance testing application
CloudTest is a performance-testing platform from SOASTA, the US subsidiary of Akamai Technologies. It provides organizations with production application readiness from the convenience of the cloud.
Why I picked CloudTest: SOASTA CloudTest effectively leverages cloud computing resources so DevOps can focus their time and effort on delivering product features rather than building tests. CloudTest provides various forms of cross-platform support with browser recording (WebUI/Ajax), messaging (HTTP(s)), and SOAP/REST API service connectivity. It is ideal for enterprises, especially for large-scale testing.
It aims to make testing in production feasible, safe, and easier through its ability to span dozens of cloud providers seamlessly. However, it also facilitates low-level performance tests that make it possible to detect and identify performance issues much earlier in the development lifecycle.
CloudTest Standout Features & Integrations
Features include custom dashboards, scaling tests worldwide, big-data analytics, unlimited processing, dynamic ramp, traffic simulation, load simulation, multi-user test aggregation, real-user scenarios, and drag-and-drop test cases.
Integrations include Jenkins, Travis CI, CircleCI, VMware, Hyper-V, Apache JMeter, Gatling, Nagios, New Relic, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, MySQL, MongoDB, Apache, Nginx, Tomcat, Glassfish, as well as Network appliances such as firewalls, load balancers, and routers.
You need to contact Akamai sales for a pricing quote for CloudTest. CloudTest provides prospective customers with a 30-day free trial.
Pros
- User-friendly interface design
- Takes web application performance seriously
- Provides organizations with the ability to test and validate code in production
Cons
- Users complain of missing information with regard to load testing.
- Display of graphs on reports need improvement.
BitBar
Best mobile app testing platform to test on physical devices
Bitbar Cloud is a cloud-based mobile application testing platform that provides access to a wide range of real devices and emulators for testing and automation purposes.
Why I Picked BitBar Cloud: Bitbar Cloud is a cloud-based mobile application testing platform that offers users a number of benefits and features. One of the key strengths of Bitbar Cloud is its ability to provide access to a large pool of real devices. This allows users to test their applications on a wide range of devices and operating systems, ensuring compatibility and performance across different platforms.
Bitbar Cloud also includes advanced testing capabilities, such as parallel testing, automated testing, and performance testing. These features can help users optimize their applications and ensure that they perform well under different conditions.
BitBar Cloud Standout Features & Integrations
Features include real device testing, third-party integrations, scalability, customization, parallel testing, automated testing, performance testing, and automated reporting.
Integrations include Jenkins, Appium, Selenium, JUnit, TestNG, Android Studio, Xcode, and AWS Device Farm.
BitBar Cloud costs from $47/parallel/month and comes with a 14-day free trial.
Pros
- Access to a large pool of real devices for testing
- Customizable testing environments and configurations
- Easy integration with popular tools and technologies
Cons
- Learning curve for advanced testing capabilities
- More expensive than other testing solutions
BlazeMeter
Best continuous cloud testing platform with open source compatibility
BlazeMeter allows DevOps to run open-source-based performance tests at a massive scale with ease. It is popular with large enterprise organizations that must run and execute end-to-end unified agile methodology for continuous testing.
Why I picked BlazeMeter: BlazeMeter tests web, mobile, or API endpoints with shift left quality early and often. It allows you to create new tests or reuse existing test scripts while producing detailed reports on an open source platform. In cases where DevOps need to verify performance at a later time, BlazeMeter provides the capability to schedule and run tests at a later time.
BlazeMeter’s most common use case is to test and monitor CI/CD pipelines.
BlazeMeter Standout Features & Integrations
Features include continuous integration, test recorder, seamless scripting, automation, and infrastructure as code option.
Integrations include Apache JMeter for cloud load testing. It also integrates with CI/CD tools such as Jenkins.
BlazeMeter provides three pricing tiers, namely: Starter (Free), Basic ($99/month), Pro ($499/month), and Unleashed. You’ll need to contact BlazeMeter sales for a price quote on Unleashed.
Pros
- One of the best tools to run open-source tests from the cloud.
- Clean interface and easy to use.
- Allows QA teams to import tests from JMeter.
Cons
- Doesn’t provide versioning control of test cases.
- Its Google Chrome extension needs improved stability, especially during test recordings.
AWS Device Farm
Best cloud testing service for multiple browsers and devices
AWS Device Farm is a real-time application testing service that allows QA professionals to improve the quality of web and mobile apps. Device Farm allows you to do these without the hassles of managing or provisioning any infrastructure.
Why I picked AWS Device Farm: AWS Device Farm allows you to test on both real and physical devices, in addition to simulated environments and emulated devices, with almost the same level of effectiveness. To speed the execution of test suites, AWS Device Farm lets you simulate test scenarios with multiple browsers and devices and run concurrent tests on them.
You have the ability to use AWS Device Farm to test your scripts with its in-built frameworks, so you don’t have to maintain or even write test scripts. Additionally, employ automated tests that allow you to run tests, collect action logs, web driver logs, and video recordings, reproduce issues and fix problems faster—all in parallel.
AWS Device Farm Standout Features & Integrations
Features include protocol decoding, live capture, offline analysis:, deep packet inspection, display filters, and advanced analytics.
Integrations include tcpdump, TShark, libpcap, AirPcap, WinPcap, Snort, and Nmap.
AWS Device Farm pricing is divided between testing on mobile devices and testing on desktop browsers. The pricing for testing on a desktop browser is more straightforward, priced at a pay-as-you-go rate of $0.005 instance per minute.
With regard to testing on mobile devices, it provides three pricing tiers, namely: Pay as You Go ($0.17 device per minute), Private Devices (starts at $200 per month), and Unlimited Testing (starts at $250 per month).
Pros
- Convenient pay-as-you-go option.
- Productive integration with CI/CD pipelines.
- Easy testing with multiple devices.
Cons
- The costs add up quickly if you use it substantially.
Jenkins
Best CI/CD testing server
Jenkins is a Java-based, open-source automation server used for continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) purposes. Jenkins allows DevOps to implement various stages of the software development lifecycle, especially those involving testing, building, and deployment.
Why I picked Jenkins: As part of the deployment pipeline, QA engineers typically use Jenkins to perform tests on code. However, Jenkins is self-contained and can be used to automate all sorts of development-aligned tasks, whether it involves delivery, deploying, building, or testing.
Jenkins can be installed on standalone machines with Java Runtime Environment (JRE). However, it can also be deployed on the cloud, with Cloud Native groups of collaborators and contributors working to improve its cloud-run environment, like offering architectural changes that optimize a stateless Jenkins.
Jenkins Standout Features & Integrations
Features include SCLC pipelines, task automations, workflow management, continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), distributed builds, extensible, and open source.
Integrations include many software development and CI/CD tools like GitHub, GitLab, and BitBucket, including build tools such as Gradle and Maven. Additionally, they offer over 1,700 plugins to support different kinds of automation.
Jenkins is fully open-source and free to use.
Pros
- Excellent facilitator for DevOps operations.
- Reduces test and deployment time.
- Jenkins saves a lot of operational time through automating its deployment process.
- Abundant plugin support and version management.
Cons
- It is very dependent on Java architecture.
- Single-server architecture limits resources to a single computer or virtual machine.
- It needs to be used on high performance servers.
The Best Cloud Testing Tools Summary
| Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Relic Best for real-time performance insights for cloud-based applications and infrastructure | Free version available | From $49/user/month | Visit Website |
| 2 | Testsigma Best highly-customizable, automation test tool | 30-Day free trial and free plan available | From $399/Monthly | Visit Website |
| 3 |  Visual Studio App Center Best cloud mission control center for apps | Not available | From $40 monthly per build concurrency | Visit Website |
| 4 |  AppPerfect Best cloud testing tool for versatility | Not available | Free for unlimited use | Visit Website |
| 5 |  Nessus Best vulnerability management tool for the cloud | 7 days free trial | From $473.90/month for a license (billed annually) | Visit Website |
| 6 |  SOASTA CloudTest Best cloud performance testing application | 30-day free trial | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
| 7 |  BitBar Best mobile app testing platform to test on physical devices | 14-day free trial | Starts at $39/month | Visit Website |
| 8 |  BlazeMeter Best continuous cloud testing platform with open source compatibility | Not available | Visit Website | |
| 9 |  AWS Device Farm Best cloud testing service for multiple browsers and devices | Not available | From $0.17 device/minute | Visit Website |
| 10 |  Jenkins Best CI/CD testing server | Not available | Free To Use | Visit Website |
Other Options
Here are a few more options that didn’t make the best cloud testing tools list:
- Watir
Best web-browser cloud automation tool for ruby libraries
- Wireshark
Best network protocol analyzer testing tool
- Cloud Sleuth
Best cloud distributed tracing tool
- Tricentis Test Automation
Best for agile teams
- BugBug
Best cloud testing tool for startups and software agencies
- Sauce Labs
Cloud-based testing platform that provides automated testing of web and mobile applications on a vast array of browsers, operating systems, and devices
- Kobiton
Cloud-based mobile app testing platform that provides real device testing and automated testing capabilities
- BrowserStack
Cloud-based platform for testing web applications, offering real device testing, automated and manual testing
- Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift is a Kubernetes-based platform for deploying and managing containerized applications
- SmartBear TestComplete
Functional and automated testing platform that provides a unified solution for web, mobile, desktop, and API testing
People Also Ask
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We Do the Research—so You Don’t Have To
In conclusion, cloud testing is a valuable tool to have in your arsenal if you are in the software development industry. It can provide an effective and efficient solution for testing with minimal cost and effort. The 10 best cloud testing tools listed above offer great features and unique advantages depending on your needs. To get the most out of your cloud testing experience, it is important to understand the differences between each one and select the right fit for your project.
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