Six Automated Software Testing Services to Boost Your QA Strategy Modern engineering and product teams feel the pressure to accelerate the feedback loop to developers, shorten release cycles, and deliver high-quality results quickly. For many, fusing manual strategies with automated software testing services is part of the solution to ensure consistency and immediate test execution. We agree! But instead of singularly relying on one platform to handle automated test creation, execution, feedback, and test runs, build a comprehensive tech stack to maximize your investment in automated testing capabilities. Let’s start by outlining some of our partners in the automated testing space. But different software solutions cater to a niché segment of every market, so what if you still haven’t found the right tool? We’ll also give you a blueprint to approach your independent evaluations of automation platforms and their capabilities. What is Automation Software Testing as a Service? Automated software testing as a service involves using automated testing tools to validate how an application performs. This involves validating an app’s: Functionality. Using automated tools for functional testing, you simulate user interactions and data inputs to see if the application behaves as expected. Performance. Your automated tools simulate real-life scenarios and the kinds of workloads the app may have to handle to see if it’s as responsive as the team needs it to be without consuming too many resources or inhibiting throughput. Reliability. Testing reliability centers around using automated tools to see if the app is stable under various operational conditions. Reliability testing may also include pushing the software to the point it crashes to see how it performs under stress. The Benefits of Automation Software Testing as a Service Automation software testing services provide you with a more robust testing system because they enable: Faster, more efficient testing. Your testing speed increases when you leverage an automated system because the tools perform the repetitive tasks that humans would normally have to spend time handling. Cost-effective testing. After the initial setup and configuration costs, the more thorough and streamlined testing saves you money in the long run. This is especially helpful for startups with limited budgets. More accurate and consistent testing. Specialized automated tools help to eliminate human errors, ensuring accuracy and consistency in your testing environment. Improved scalability. Your automation makes it easier to deploy large-scale testing systems without hiring more human testers. You can use the same automated test scripts again and again and in a variety of environments as you expand your test systems. Fuse manual and automated testing with these integrations If you’re using Testlio’s platform, we have a selection of partners that integrate into our platform to maximize automation where needed. While they all provide the traditional benefits of software testing (releasing with confidence, coverage across devices, and O/S combinations), they also have unique features that squeeze out every last inch of ROI from your automated testing journey. Quick, here’s a primer on the benefit of combining manual and automated testing strategies. Applitools Founded by software developers, Applitools is a visual-UI regression testing automation platform. Their platform also includes access to software development kits (SDKs) that streamline the process of checking frameworks and programming languages.Since Applitools is hosted on the cloud, they offer large backend servers that can store a mountain of screenshots, test results, and additional integrations. BrowserStack More than just bringing together the right people and processes, fusing manual and automated testing strategies requires managing a diverse tech stack to maximize results. If you don’t already have a mobile testing lab, in-house testing team, or software testing partner, BrowserStack is an immediate on-demand software testing platform. If you want to integrate the tool into part of a larger strategy, use BrowserStack’s cloud web and mobile testing platform to analyze test automation, test results, and session artifacts. BrowserStack can run automated test cases by specifying various browsers in automation scripts. Watch how to realize the full value of automated testing with on-demand quality engineering talent. HeadSpin HeadSpin provides a complex, data science-driven platform that accelerates dev cycles with AI test automation. With data collected in test runs, this platform can run automatic and proactive error detection, measure end-to-end app, network, and device KPIs, and give AI-powered insights and alerts (that you can implement quickly). By integrating HeadSpin into your tech stack, your devs can harness practical, context-aware AI and analytics. Dive into how HeadSpin helps provide an end-to-end manual and automated testing workflow. Watch the free webinar here. Mabl Manual testing has long been the cornerstone of QA, leveraging human expertise to ensure a high-quality and consistent end-user experience. But, without a full-time in-house team (or with an already overworked QA team), you need a third-party partner to scale testing and meet increasing demands on coverage and capacity. Mabl’s intelligent test automation provides a low-code solution to that sometimes critical talent shortage. Implementing Mabl in your tech stack: Speeds up test creation Requires less technical acumen Reduces maintenance effort Standardizes information from tests Sauce Labs Regardless of the coding language or framework preferred by your dev team, Sauce Labs has an automated test creation and deployment solution for it. Run tests from your CI system or straight from the command line. If you’re especially concerned about security, firewall, and privacy, Sauce Connects has tunneling technology that ensures the security of your tests. Check out some of SauceLabs’ automation framework options: Selenium Espresso Appium XCUITest TestCafe Cypress Suitest In the living room devices market? Suitest focuses on delivering automated testing for SmartTV platforms. Appealing to low-code and no-code testing teams, Suitetest offers a codeless visual test editor for test automation. Suitest can run your tests in parallel on 100+ devices with nearly immediate pass/fail, bug reports, and performance results. How to Analyze Other Automated Software Testing Services While these automated tools are a great place to start, you’ll need to evaluate offerings independently. Yes, the software test automation market is flooded with choices and saturated with sales pitches jammed with jargon and buzzwords. When selecting automation software, you must choose a tool your testers can use effectively. While this may seem obvious, it’s an element that can be quickly forgotten when caught up in the whirlwind of options and the promise of AI technology. When evaluating adding an additional software, be readily available to cover these topics: User base. Is your testing team using devs who are more interested in being able to engage with application programming interfaces (API)? Technical testers who are already experts? Third-party testers focused on functionality? Find the right product for the right end-users. Pricing. While there are open-source options with their communities online, you need to consider what you’ll be saving on licensing fees and how much it will cost to employ a dedicated person to maintain this software. As a rule of thumb, for companies, going with a software testing partner is substantially more valuable than employing additional staff. When selecting a commercial option, you will need to review all the features included with automated testing tools and ensure that your package consists of the ones you need. Integration compatibility. If your product or service is online, it must be compatible with in-house platforms, client platforms, etc., especially if you plan to fuse manual and automated strategies. Capabilities. Simple. What can the product actually do? Coverage. While you can minimize errors by defining your target demographic, it’s never good to isolate clients due to blind spots in testing. A crucial offering of automated testing is the option for multiple integrations to maximize end-user coverage. Future Outlook The future outlook for automated testing solutions is bright. As automation becomes more and more standard, a wider range of real-world scenarios can be tested in less and less time. As automation tools play an increasingly larger role, companies will be incorporating automation strategies—and fusing multiple tools—to enable continuous testing. As a result, automation testing services will continue to improve overall product quality. With Testlio, you get all of the advantages listed above, as well as some additional, unique benefits. For example, Testlio’s fused software testing enables you to integrate automated and manual testing systems, reducing your DevOps troubleshooting time. You also get automated testing as a service, so you can optimize your resources, freeing up your team to focus on your most important objectives. Need help deciding what platform could be right for you? We can help.