Most Popular Software Testing Tools

5 min readNov 11, 2022

What are software Testing tools and why do we need them?

Software testing tools are products that help with various test operations like planning, requirement gathering, build preparation, test execution, defect logging, and test analysis. These testing tools are mostly used to assess the solidity, accuracy, and other performance metrics of software.

The need for faster software delivery is increasing. With companies implementing Agile and DevOps approaches, it is unavoidable that software must be produced more quickly and with higher quality. According to the World Quality Report 2018–2019, as a facilitator of effective Agile and DevOps adoption, test automation will be the biggest bottleneck to delivering “Quality at Speed.”

So we need software testing tools to overcome these difficulties. This article covers some of the most popular software testing tools in use today based on our own experience and research based on the experiences of others.

Selenium
Cucumber
Appium
Eggplant
Katalon Studio
SoapUI
UFT/QTP

Selenium

Selenium is widely used by web developers and testers as the most popular automated software testing tool. It debuted in 2004, and it has progressed significantly since then. Selenium’s most recent version includes various components, including Selenium IDE and Selenium WebDriver.

Selenium IDE is a fully integrated development environment (IDE) for Selenium tests, particularly used for producing rapid problem reproduction scripts and scripts to aid in automation-aided exploratory testing. Selenium WebDriver, on the other hand, is a set of language-specific bindings to drive a browser that was created to better handle dynamic websites.

Selenium works with all major web browsers and a variety of popular programming languages, such as JavaScript, Java, Ruby, Python, PHP, and C#, to mention a few. While Selenium allows you to create automated tests without any programming knowledge, complicated test scripts necessitate extensive programming expertise.

Given that Selenium is free, open source, and supported by some of the top browser manufacturers, all automation testers who want to compete should consider Selenium as a professional investment and, at the very least, become acquainted with it.

Cucumber

Cucumber is an open-source behaviorally driven development (BDD) tool. It has numerous famous clients, including PayPal and Canon, in addition to supporting multiple languages. Cucumber, which is only supported by the online environment, is used by 20% of testers and was created to provide a better end-user experience.

Appium

Appium is a software testing tool for native, hybrid, and mobile web applications. With the popularity of mobile applications rising and major app stores becoming more competitive, there is an urgent need to provide users with only high-quality apps.

Appium’s purpose is to automate mobile app testing without the use of an SDK or recompilation. Appium enables testers to create tests with their preferred tools and programming languages. Getting started with Appium couldn’t be easier, as this amazing automated software testing solution is open source and publicly available on GitHub.

Appium has been used to effectively automate big regression tests, convert human test cases to automated scripts, and do other tasks. Because it supports both Android and IOS, there is no need to learn a new language for each platform, saving time and aligning with most app developers’ demands.

Eggplant

EggPlant is a black-box GUI test automation tool. Eggplant provides a variety of test automation tools for software testers to use in order to do various sorts of testing. EggPlant is used for functional testing, whereas EggPlant Performance is used for load, stress, and performance testing. It’s also simple to connect with major test management solutions. EggPlant can build many device scenarios with a single test script.

Katalon Studio

Another prominent open-source test automation solution for the online and mobile environment is Katalon Studio. Katalon is built on top of Appium and Selenium, improving features such as a user-friendly IDE, object repository, object spy, and browser plugin. It may also be used in conjunction with other technologies such as qTest, Kobiton, Jira, Git, Slack, and many others. Katalon Studio has a free version as well as a subscription alternative for corporate and enterprise support services.

SoapUI

SoapUI, as the name implies, is a popular open-source test automation tool for SOAP and REST APIs. SmartBear’s SoapUI is a functional testing tool specifically intended for API testing. It is well-known for its asynchronous testing, reusable scripts, and sophisticated data-driven testing capabilities. The utility is available in both open-source and paid versions. The premium edition includes additional features such as a SQL query builder, an assertion wizard, and a form editor.

UFT/QTP

Unified Functional Test (UFT), originally Quick Test Professional (QTP), is an industry-leading cross-platform test automation solution. Automation of regression and functional tests for software applications and environments is provided by UFT. It may be used to automate desktop, mobile, online, and net applications, as well as SAP, ActiveX, Flex, Delphi, Java, Oracle, Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, PeopleSoft, Siebel, and Stingray. UFT is a popular tool due to features such as a keyword-driven framework, business process testing, strong checkpoints, XML support, and test results.

Conclusion

This article discusses a few popular software testing tools used in software engineering. There is no shortage of software testing tools, and the alternatives are as diverse as the criteria utilized in software testing. Depending on your testing requirements, you can utilize a single, integrated platform or a collection of testing tools. When choosing an automated software testing tool, it’s important not to allow a product’s popularity or hype to affect your selection.