Is your application, server delivering required services as needed? Is your application perform well under certain load? How do you know?

There is only one way to verify all of these by using performance testing tools. Performance testing tools verify the performance and load test of your application and server. Before learning about tools of performance testing, let’s understand –

Performance testing is the process of determining speed, scalability, reliability, responsiveness, and throughput of the system, network, program or application. Performance testing tools can also be used in comparing two or more applications in terms of speed, bandwidth, reliability, data transfer rate and scalability.

Can We do performance Testing Manually?

That’s the very first question which will strike in your mind. The answer is yes you can do. But it’s extremely difficult to manually find performance related information of your application. The best option is to use performance testing tools available in the market. There are a lot of tools are available, some are open source and some are licensed. It all depend on your choice what you want?

Best Performance Testing Tools and Load Testing Tools

Here I am going to introduce you some of the performance testing and load testing tools available in the market. However, the fact is many of these tools are not necessarily suited to your needs. Some of them are limited to HTTP or HTTPS protocol. Most of the tools are not flexible in providing required parameterisation, assertions and distributed testing capabilities. So choose the right performance testing tool for your need:

AppPerfect Load Test

AppPerfect Load Test is a fully Automated Load Test, Stress Test, and Performance Test Solution that is easy to use and cost effective. The Web Load Test helps you design and simulate thousands of users in a realistic manner which can be used to load test your application infrastructure for performance, reliability, and scalability. This tool is freely available and also for unlimited use.

It supports HTTP/S, REST, JDBC, SOAP, LDAP, XMPP and customisable for any other protocol. You can create an unlimited number of virtual users in it. It has full intuitive UI. This is a stand-alone application and also supports console based execution. It also has a sophisticated record and replay capabilities. The tool supports multiple parameter types. It also supports cross browser testing.

This tool is easy to use because it doesn’t require any of any programming knowledge. The main feature of the product is that it also support custom scripting and distributed testing.

The Grinder

It is a Java load testing framework that makes it easy to run a distributed test. It is freely available under a BSD-style open-source license. The cons of the product are that it has no intuitive UI. It has only console view, therefore, some of the programming knowledge requires to use this product.

HP Load Runner

It gives you an accurate picture of end-to-end system performance to identify and resolve issues before applications go live. The tool is not freely available Hence, approx $100000  requires for 500 virtual users. The cons of the product are that it’s very tough to simulate multiple browsers. Additional investments needed to procure licenses for new protocol support

Apache JMeter™

Apache JMeter™ is open source, a 100% pure Java application to load test functional behavior and measure performance. The tool supports only HTTP/S, JDBC, SOAP, and LDAP. It needs some of the programming knowledge to run this product.

NeoLoad

NeoLoad is a load and performance testing tool that realistically simulates user activity and monitors infrastructure behavior so you can eliminate bottlenecks in all your web and mobile applications. The tool is not freely available, requires approx $15000 for 500 virtual users. It doesn’t support cross browser testing.

WAPT

It is a load and stress testing tool that lets you easily analyze the performance of your website. It can be a mobile application, a web service or an ERP system.

Tsung

It is an open-source multi-protocol distributed load testing tool. The purpose of Tsung is to simulate users in order to test the scalability and performance of IP-based client/server applications.

In Conclusion, the AppPerfect Load Test is an Easy and cost-effective way to test your Websites, Mobile/Web Applications, and Web Services. First of all its freely available and have lots of key feature in it. You can simulate thousands of users in a realistic manner. You can get 24*7 Customer support for the Load Test.