The 16 Best Free Test Management Tools List
Here are the top 10 test management tools I’d like to highlight out of the 16 I cover in this article:
Our one-on-one guidance will help you find the perfect fit.
Having a small budget shouldn't mean you need to scrimp on quality assurance. Whether you're a multinational enterprise or a small and scrappy startup, the good news is that there are free test management tools on the market that are both effective and accessible financially.
In this article, I have compiled a list of the best free test management tools to help agile QA teams find free software solutions for quality assurance tasks like bug and issue tracking. I'll be sharing the features you need to look out for when choosing software to facilitate your whole product testing life cycle and improve your test results.
After presenting the best free test management software tools on the market, I will answer some FAQs that arise when QA and DevOps teams start looking for the best test case management tools.
What Are Free Test Management Tools?
Free test management tools are cloud-based software platforms that help teams manage and prioritize testing activities like creating a test strategy, building and executing tests, and capturing results. These tools offer many of the same features as their paid counterparts but do not have a monthly fee.
Most of the tools on this list represent the "freemium" plan of a paid provider, meaning that you can easily upgrade to a paid plan as your needs change and your team grows.
Overviews Of The 10 Best Free Test Management Tools
Here’s a brief description of each of the 10 best free test management tools on my list, showing what the specific tool does best, plus screenshots to showcase some of the features.
New Relic
Best for simulating user journeys
New Relic is a performance monitoring and management platform that helps you keep an eye on your applications, infrastructure, and customer experience. It's designed to help you identify and fix issues before you roll them out.
With New Relic, you can test apps for user errors before they happen. Being proactive with error management can help you improve user retention and improve the quality of your builds. Among its many features, Synthetic Monitoring is the one that lets you simulate entire user journeys that let you test for traffic across thousands of public and private locations.
Additionally, you can identify underperforming users by testing different browsers, devices, and operating systems. As the system identifies failures, you can see if these come from AWS, your backend services or other third-party resources you may be using.
New Relic's free version includes up to 5 full users and gives you access to unlimited hosts and CPUs, alerts and notifications, and up to 100GB of data ingest before you start paying your first cent. Integrations include over 600 applications within the categories of application monitoring, infrastructure, security, traffic simulation, logging, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Services, open-source monitoring, machine learning ops, and Prometheus.
Loadium
Best for performance and load testing
For teams involved in performance and load testing, Loadium comes with some of the most valuable features an open-source tool can have. For instance, users can use automated test scripts developed using Selenium when testing for performance. The software provides reporting features with graphic or tabular data.
The Loadium free trial lasts an entire month with all the features. After the free trial, you can decide between one of the paid plans or the free Basic plan. The free basic plan only allows for 15 tests, while the first paid plan allows for 250 tests.
Swing2App
Best for easy editing
Swing2App is a free no-code mobile app builder. Its user-friendly drag-and-drop editor makes it easy for businesses without mobile developers to build a new application from scratch. Users can also use Swing2App to import data from their existing website to create a professional-looking mobile app version of their site.
Appium
Best for cross-platform mobile testing
The developers of Appium describe it as “an open-source test automation framework for use with native, hybrid and mobile web apps,” which “drives iOS, Android, and Windows apps using the WebDriver protocol.” The tool is designed based on the idea that testing native apps should not involve an SDK or recompiling your app.
To use Appium for free, there is no need to download or install anything on your device. Also, you can use any testing framework with the tool.
RedLine13
Best for executing and managing load testing
RedLine13’s is great for teams that are scaling. The tool makes it possible to customize tests that can be reused several times, saving time in the process. It also allows users to create their own open-source load testing plugins or use ready-made ones.
RedLine13’s free plan lasts for one day and includes all the features that are part of the paid version. This makes the tool more suitable for teams that want to quickly determine if this is the tool they want to use.
Perforce Helix TeamHub
Best for source code repository hosting
Perforce Helix TeamHub provides development and QA teams with a solution for storing their source code. Users can also add multiple repositories in a single project and create a distinct repository for every project they are running.
A free Perforce Helix TeamHub account accommodates up to five users and 1 GB of data. It also allows for integration with common tools like Jira, Slack, and Jenkins.
Obkio
Best for categorizing issues based on seriousness
One great feature of Obkio is the tool’s ability to speed things up for development and QA teams. For instance, the copy and paste command or typing the hardware’s serial number in the app can get you started with your test management task. The ability to detect a failure within 5 seconds and the deployment of automatic updates are other features you can expect from this tool.
The Obkio free trial lasts 14 days and gives users access to all the tool’s premium features. However, you can register for the free plan that comes with limited features. The free plan only includes one customer device, standard device polling of 5 minutes, two agents maximum, seven days history, and one monitoring session.
QADeputy
Best for integrating with existing bug tracking tools
QADeputy is a testing management tool that can easily integrate with most existing tools. The software facilitates efficient communication between stakeholders while also allowing teams to customize the tool based on their unique needs.
QADeputy’s free trial allows for one user and one test suite. It also comes with 100 test cases. Free plan users can also run unlimited tests, customize the platform, and use integrations.
Loadster
Best for teams managing apps with many users
Loadster provides QA teams and developers with the ability to record load test scripts on their browsers using the free Loadster Recorder extension. Also, the tool is designed to make it easy to capture and validate users’ responses so that you can use them in the script later.
The Loadster free account comes with all the vital features, including fast recording of scripts, editing on the browser, and automatic test reports. The free trial allows for 50 hours of testing.
qaManager
Best for teams looking for simple installation
qaManager is a free platform-agnostic web app for managing QA projects. Its features include project tracking, test case management, and resource management. Powered by OpenXava, it also offers an online library and allows testers to set up alerts, restrict user roles, and generate detailed reports.
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The Best Free Test Management Tools Summary
Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | New Relic Best for simulating user journeys | Free version available | From $49/user/month | Visit Website |
2 | Loadium Best for performance and load testing | The free basic plan only allows for 15 tests, while the first paid plan allows for 250 tests. | Visit Website | |
3 | Swing2App Best for easy editing | Not available | Visit Website | |
4 | Appium Best for cross-platform mobile testing | Not available | Free to use | Visit Website |
5 | RedLine13 Best for executing and managing load testing | Not available | Visit Website | |
6 | Perforce Helix TeamHub Best for source code repository hosting | Not available | Visit Website | |
7 | Obkio Best for categorizing issues based on seriousness | 14 Days Free Trial | Visit Website | |
8 | QADeputy Best for integrating with existing bug tracking tools | Not available | $18 per mont | Visit Website |
9 | Loadster Best for teams managing apps with many users | Not available | Visit Website | |
10 | qaManager Best for teams looking for simple installation | Not available | Visit Website |
Other Free Test Management Tools Options
Here are a few more test management tools that didn’t make the top list.
- Swing2App - Best for easy editing
- qaManager - Best for teams looking for simple installation
- Kiwi TCMS - Best for open-source test management
- TESTMASTER - Best for test case logging and test automation
- WebTst - Best for use centric testing
- Salome-TMF - Best for automatic test execution
How I Selected The Best Free Test Management Tools
Perhaps you're wondering how I choose the best free test management tools for this list? Here I'll share my process.
I started out by creating a long list of the most popular free test management tools on the market based on user rankings. I dove into each software vendor’s website in fine detail to make sure their software covered all the basic features that QA engineers would need to manage their processes from end-to-end.
Next, using the selection criteria below, I made my final decisions. With these criteria as a framework, I compared each free test management tool to see how it stacked up to the rest of the tools, and finalized the shortlist you see here.
Selection Criteria
What do I look for when I select the best test management tools? Here’s a summary of my evaluation criteria:
- User Interface (UI): Is it clean and attractive? Just because the tool is free or has a free version should not mean that it has to be unattractive.
- Usability: Is it easy to learn and master? Is it user-friendly? Does the company offer good tech support, user support, tutorials, and training? Even though free tools are likely to offer limited support, you want to select the one that makes life as easy as possible. Open-source tools may offer communities where you can ask for help.
- Integrations: Apart from providing functionalities like regression analysis or the ability to do manual testing, how well does the free software integrate with other tools you already use for your testing activities?
People Also Ask
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What Do You Think About These Free Test Management Tools?
What do you think about the free test management tools I have listed here? Have you used any, or any other test management tools? If so, tell us about your experience in the comments section.
If you have used the free versions of other tools we haven't listed here, we would like to hear your evaluation of the tools as well. And if you're looking for tools to use specifically with Jira, here's our list of the 10 Best Test Management Tools For Jira In 2023.
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