Top Website Performance Testing Tools

Building a website is not about just making a pretty layout with working functionality. Scalability, reliability, and speed are three key characteristics of good websites. Website developers should keep these characteristics in mind while building their websites.

Fortunately, there are several free and paid tools available that can help us test the load, speed, and the performance of a website. In this article, we will take a look at some of these top tools.

Apache JMeter



Apache JMeter is an open source, cross-platform Apache project that is developed to analyze and measure software applications’ performance. Apache JMeter, first released in 1998, is one of the oldest open source load testing tools. The current version of Apache JMeter is 3.0, released on March 17, 2016.

From website: Apache JMeter

Apache JMeter is an open source, cross-platform Java application that can run on Linux, Mac, and PCs. JMeter can be used to test the performance of both, static and dynamic, web pages and resources including Web services, PHP, ASP.NET, Java, database, and queries. It can be used to simulate a heavy load on a server, group of servers, network, or object to test its strength or to analyze the overall performance under different load types. You can use it to make a graphical analysis of performance or to test your server/script/object behavior under heavy concurrent load.

Apache JMeter features include

• Ability to load and performance test many different server/protocol types,
  
  
  • Web - HTTP, HTTPS
  • SOAP / REST
  • FTP
  • Database via JDBC
  • LDAP
  • Message-oriented middleware (MOM) via JMS
  • Mail - SMTP(S), POP3(S) and IMAP(S)
  • Native commands or shell scripts
  • TCP
    
    
• Complete portability and 100 percent Java purity.
  
  
• Full multithreading framework allows concurrent sampling by many threads and simultaneous sampling of different functions by separate thread groups.
  
  
• Careful GUI design allows faster Test Plan building and debugging.
  
  
• Caching and offline analysis/replaying of the test results.
  
  
• Highly Extensible core,
  
  
  • Pluggable Samplers allow unlimited testing capabilities.
  • Several load statistics may be chosen with pluggable timers.
  • Data analysis and visualization plugins allow great extensibility as well as personalization.
  • Functions can be used to provide dynamic input to a test or provide data manipulation.
  • Scriptable Samplers (BeanShell, BSF-compatible languages and JSR223-compatible languages)

  Want to learn more about JMeter? Get Started with Apache JMeter >

NeoLoad



NeoLoad, developed by Neotys, claims to be one of the fastest, most automated performance testing solutions on the planet.

NeoLoad comes in four different versions: Free, Standard, Professional, and Enterprise. The free version supports 50 virtual users with an unlimited number of tests. Detailed pricing of NeoLoad is listed here NeoLoad.

The current version of NeoLoad 5.2 is available now. Some of the key features of NeoLoad, as mentioned on the website, are the following.

Fast. Realistic. Powerful.

NeoLoad load and performance testing solution realistically simulates user activity and monitors infrastructure behavior so you can eliminate bottlenecks in all your web and mobile applications.

Fast and Automated

Using the scriptless GUI and a host of automation features, NeoLoad lets you design tests 5-10x faster and maintain scripts in as little as 10 percent of the original design time while helping you automate testing with your Continuous Integration system so you’re as agile as your development teams need you to be.

Supports the Latest Web and Mobile Technologies

With unparalleled support for WebSocket, HTTP/2, GWT, HTML 5, adaptive bitrate streaming and many more technologies, NeoLoad provides a full performance testing tool box for web and mobile apps so that you can fully test the technologies your apps have today and be ready for anything your dev team might use tomorrow.

Unmatched Test Realism

Capabilities to help you create real world testing scenarios so you catch performance problems early, before they show up in production.

• Complex application behavior replay
• Real device mobile app recording
• Network virtualization
• Real device/ browser metrics under load

Cloud and In-house Testing

Generating load on your on own infrastructure or on-demand from the cloud is easy with the fully integrated Neotys Cloud Platform. Pick from several locations around the globe and from multiple cloud providers through a single interface for geo-realistic tests and pay-as-you-go licensing.

Cloud and In-house Testing

SmartBear Testing Tools

Smartbear provides a list of software testing tools focusing on QA, load, and API. Top three tools are QAComplete, TestComplete, and LoadComplete.

From the definition

The TestComplete Platform, which powers TestComplete Desktop, Web, and Mobile, helps you quickly create automated tests across multiple devices, platforms, and environments. You can learn more about Test Complete here.

QAComplete is a test management tool with centralized planning, scheduling, and reporting available for manual, Selenium, API, and automated functional tests. Learn More.

LoadComplete helps you design and run performance tests for mobile, websites, and web apps. Generates load using virtual machines, on-premise computers, or even the cloud. Learn More.

TestLeft is a powerful yet lean functional testing tool for dev-testers working in Agile teams. It fully embeds into standard development IDEs. A built-in access to object and method library is also available with TestLeft. Dev testers can thereby easily and quickly create robust functional automated tests without leaving their favorite IDEs, such as Visual Studio. It also works well with other tools in dev ecosystems, such as source control or continuous integration systems. Learn More.

SmartBear also provides tools for API monitoring, Web browser testing, and security testing tools.

Check out more details here. 

Loadster



Loadster is a full-featured load testing solution for websites, web apps, and web services. It's built for real web apps and effortlessly handles cookies, user sessions, custom headers, dynamic form data, and more. Loadster simulates individual user states and gathers stats for each virtual user, separately.

Load test your web apps to know ahead of time that your app can handle hundreds or thousands of concurrent users. Avoid expensive crashes, slowness, and downtime by simulating peak traffic conditions, so you can find the breaking point before your real users are ever impacted.

Loadster lets you run unlimited free load tests for up to 25 concurrent users from your own workstation.

Learn more from Loadster. 

Summary

Software performance and load testing are the key components of software development process. In this article, we discussed top website performance and load testing tools.