Reasons to Choose an Open-Source Test Automation Tool
Today’s competitive world demands “ Quality at Speed with minimal costs.“
To meet this demand, tester’s rely on test automation tools to rapidly roll out high-quality software. Open-source software development has grown increasingly popular over the last two decades.
Popular OS like Linux and Android; Browsers like Firefox and Chrome; Programming languages like Python and JavaScript; Automation tools like Selenium and Appium; are all Open-Source.
Startups are generally budget-challenged. Startups and large organizations are cultivating a cost-conscious culture. They are leveraging open-source testing tools that are reliable, secure, and free to use. Even organizations that build proprietary software are consumers of open-source. They realize the importance of contributing back to open source.
Open source test automation tools have revolutionized the way teams test software. Open source test automation tools have enabled testers to accelerate the speed of releases and deliver value to their customers faster. Additionally, they have allowed organizations to gain a competitive advantage by reducing the time to market.
The testing community has embraced open-source test automation tools making them the de facto way to automate tests. This article will discuss everything open-source and the benefits of choosing an open-source tool for test automation.
Wait, before we proceed, there is a huge announcement to make! ?
EXCITING NEWS — TESTSIGMA IS NOW OPEN-SOURCE!
Testsigma will be available as an open-source project and distributed under the Apache 2.0 license.
Testsigma is a leading AI-powered, low code, cloud-based test automation platform for modern QA teams.
Testsigma realizes the importance of giving back to where their success belongs, the testing community. Testsigma team believes that going open-source will positively impact the larger community to benefit from them.
Open-sourcing Testsigma strengthens its vision to build a robust, secure, and free test automation tool by leveraging the power of the community.
Their goal is to empower every tester to automate, even with minimal coding skills. Open-sourcing will help them accomplish their vision and serve you better at the same time.
Community plays a crucial role in the success of open-source software. Testsigma is committed to building a passionate, strong, and diverse open source community to work on the shared challenges in the space of test automation. Testsigma is excited to work alongside you; it’s your opportunity to improve the product by solving some challenging problems. Join hands with Testsigma, join this discord group to get involved
What is Open Source?
A proprietary software(closed source) is where a person, team, or organization has complete control over the source code. Unlike proprietary software, open-source software is available in a public repository for the developer community to collaborate and contribute.
Open source means that the software’s source code is accessible to the community. Developers can learn, modify, improve, maintain, or redistribute depending on the license terms. Open-source software projects aim to provide solutions to a specific set of problems for the larger community’s benefit. Open source development fosters transparency, collaboration, and innovation. Open-source initiatives do not start with monetization in mind. Furthermore, they offer greater freedom, control, and flexibility for a free or nominal price.
Top Reasons to choose an open-source Automation tool
Below are the top reasons to choose open source test automation tool for your team -
- Cost-Effectiveness
The significant reason that comes to our mind for using an open-source tool is the cost. Open-source software is more cost-effective than its proprietary counterparts. With the increasing software testing costs, testing leaders look to put their budget to good use and maximize the value. Open source test automation tools allow leaders to save costs without compromising on quality. With open-source automation tools, you need not worry about any recurring license or maintenance fees.
- Quality
Open source is no longer just a cheap alternative for proprietary software. Open source communities have grown quality conscious over the years. Today’s open-source software is more robust and offers better quality than its proprietary counterparts.
Open-source software results from the collaboration of hundreds of developers worldwide with diverse levels of experience and expertise. Good practices like TDD, code reviews, code refactoring, multiple testing, and feedback stages. Continuous integration, alerting and monitoring, and initiatives like test days and bug bounties have helped improve the quality of Open-source software.
- Flexibility
Open-source software provides automation testers the flexibility to customize the software and build solutions to their business needs without any hassles. Furthermore, even develop their own tweaks, tools, innovations, and enhancements.
With an open-source automation tool, testing leaders can prevent the risks of vendor lock-in. Testing teams will have the freedom and flexibility to switch to another tool at their disposal. Moreover, with open-source tools, automation testers can scale quickly to meet the ever-changing demands of their organizations.
- Transparency
Some organizations are hesitant to use open source software as they feel it can compromise security. In reality, both Open source and proprietary software can be vulnerable to security threats. With the increasing concerns about privacy and data security, the open-source software promotes trust as anyone can inspect the code anytime. This transparency ensures open-sourced products do not misuse users’ data deliberately.
The advantage of open source is that many contributors review and test the code. Their efforts help in preventing, finding, and fixing security flaws regularly.
Along with the code, open-source communities also give you the complete visibility of feature roadmaps, Open bugs and their status, community discussion forums, etc.
What makes Testsigma stand out from the rest of the open-source automation tools?
- Enterprise-grade features for free
Choosing the right tool is crucial to succeeding in test automation.
Testsigma is an enterprise-ready tool with powerful test automation capabilities. Testsigma is more than just an automation tool and replaces multiple tools in your agile delivery pipeline. It is a complete platform with all the essential elements for continuous testing and easily integrates with your existing tools.
Additionally, Testsigma’s AI capabilities help you reduce maintenance and improve the team’s efficiency. By open-sourcing Testsigma, the testing community can access most enterprise-grade features for free.
It comes with a wide experience of serving enterprise customers like Freshworks, HPE, Sage, APA, SignEasy, IEEE to name a few.
- Intuitive User experience
You may have observed that several open-source projects are poorly designed and do not offer a good user experience. Poor UX makes them harder to adopt and frustrating to use. Testsigma provides an intuitive UI that makes it easy to speed up your test automation game and onboard without any hiccups to get sprinting.
- Minimal learning curve
One of the significant limitations of getting started with most open-source test automation tools is the steep learning curve of their usage. Testers new to test automation may not have the necessary skill sets (like programming) to benefit from an open-source test automation tool.
Even though open-source test automation tools are free, there is still a cost associated with setting them and creating frameworks from scratch. The technical entry barrier can discourage the automation beginners from adopting the tools or getting the maximum benefit from the tool.
On the contrary, Testsigma has one of the fastest learning curves in the market. Testsigma eliminates complex initial steps to ensure that teams learn and adapt the tool faster without prior knowledge of test automation. Testsigma enables teams to achieve ROI on test investment earlier than other tools.
Tester’s can use the natural language-like syntax (NLP-based test authoring) to write automation tests. This innovative approach helps to cultivate the whole team approach quality. Every team member, expert, and beginner can easily automate complex scenarios. You can train your non-technical team members to contribute to the automation test suite.
- Comprehensive Documentation and Support
Documentation is an afterthought in many open source projects. Though several open-source projects claim to be well documented, their documentation quality is poor and is often criticized. Documentation is the entry point for most users and decides the success of an open-source project. People choose to continue with the tool or move on based on their initial impressions about the documentation. Good documentation empowers the community to be self-sufficient and learn about the project.
Testsigma offers a comprehensive knowledge base for the community to easily consume information. The robust documentation lets users get accustomed to the tool quickly. People who hate going through documentation can also use the video tutorials on YouTube.
Testsigma’s community forum is highly active and makes your life easier by resolving any challenges you face. Testsigma is also planning to provide community users with 24*5 expert technical support.
Conclusion
Both Open-Source and Proprietary software have their benefits and drawbacks. However, a software license (whether Proprietary or open-source) does not decide the quality and robustness of the product. Rather the organizations, teams, or the community who build them and the maturity of their development process does.
Don’t choose a tool only because everyone is using it. Every testing team has its own set of challenges. Avoid the bandwagon effect while choosing your test automation tool. It would be best to choose the right tools to solve your problems on a use-case basis.
Identify your testing needs and make an informed decision that benefits your team and organization. Keep an open mind while evaluating and comparing available open-source and commercial testing tools. Sometimes you can have the best of both worlds, avail the benefits of what both commercial and open-source tools have to offer.
Open source fosters collaboration, transparency, and knowledge sharing towards a shared goal by developing a sense of community among contributors. People love open source projects for a reason; they want to be a part of something bigger and give back to the community. It’s your opportunity to influence and shape the future of test automation technology.
Originally published at https://testsigma.com on February 7, 2022.
