The exponential technological advancements worldwide have encouraged consumers to grow reliant on quality software products to find solutions for their pain points. Your company has to deliver products that promise a consistent user experience to secure long-term customers.
QA testers ensure the software development lifecycle (SDLC) flow by detecting and identifying defects, bugs, and errors before updates reach the code bed.
While dev teams rely on this feedback loop, QA teams can quickly get overwhelmed by the scale and complexity of projects. Software QA testing tools assist testers by automating test processes so that your products exceed business and customer expectations.
What is Software Quality Assurance (SQA)?
Before we move on to discussing software QA testing tools, let’s start by answering, ”What is software quality assurance?”.
Software quality assurance (SQA) is the systematic practice of ensuring all software development methods, tools, and activities comply with an organization’s predefined standards based on the project or the product being manufactured.
SQA runs parallel with the software development lifecycle to ensure quality software changes are made consistently early in the development cycle to prevent them from causing problems in the future and to guarantee faster delivery of quality software products.
SQA requires organizations to conform to specific quality standards like ISO 9000, CMMI levels and characteristics, and TMMI levels.
What is QA Automation?
In software testing, automation testing refers to harnessing pre-written automation scripts to automatically carry out and execute repetitive tasks and test processes using the appropriate automation tools.
So, what is QA automation?
QA automation aims to remove the manual intervention required for QA testing to help increase test coverage, carry out testing processes consistently, and ensure an error-free testing process.
Top 10 Software QA Tools
With several QA automation tools to choose from, I have compiled a list of the ten best automation tools in the market based on their features and impact on QA teams conducting multiple test processes:
Allure Testops
Allure Testops is a robust test management platform and one of the best software QA testing tools for organizations that want to unify their automated and manual QA testing processes with advanced data enrichment features, native integrations, and powerful analytics.
Novice QA testers who wonder, “What is Software Quality Assurance?” can find an all-in-one testing platform to create and maintain your test cases for a consistent software product deployment strategy.
Smart Test Cases
Allure Testops’s Smart Test Cases feature consistently updates your test result repository after every run to ensure your QA teams are working with accurate data acquired from rapid insights.
Alongside accessing a hub for validating the quality of a particular application system, the Test Cases as Code feature provides an intuitive UI on which you can fine-tune your version control.
Native Integrations for Streamlined Quality Assurance Processes
Allure Testops’s range of native integrations covers software testing tools, programming languages, and test frameworks to automate your QA test processes on any CI system.
Our integrations offer test creds, job sync, and pipeline starting and listing capabilities after installation for Azure DevOps, Jenkins, Bamboo, GitLab, GitHub, CircleCI, TeamCity, etc.
For programming languages and test frameworks, we offer integrations for Java (JUnit, TestNG), Python (PyTest, Nose), JavaScript (Jasmine, Mocha), .NET, Cucumber, Go, and PHP.
Click here to view our complete list of integrations for CI systems, issue trackers, and third-party TMS available on Allure Testops.
Defects and Issue Tracking
Allure Testops automates the analysis and processing of failed test cases to categorize defects and errors into predefined issue tracker buckets to free up resources for QA teams to conduct more pertinent tests like exploratory testing by removing the need for manual intervention.
Pricing
You can subscribe to Allure Testops by choosing between Allure Testops Server and Allure Testops Cloud based on your organization’s IT expertise.
Allure Testops Server is catered towards companies with adequate IT capabilities, where you can maintain your test instances on in-house servers. The pricing plan comes with a 30-day free trial to try our features risk-free.
| Allure Testops for 1 - 50 users | $30/month or $27/month (annual) |
|---|---|
| Next 51 - 100 users | $20/month or $18/month (annual) |
| Next 101 - 250 users | $10/month or $9/month (annual) |
| Others | $5/month or $4.5/month (annual) |
We offer Allure Testops Cloud for companies with limited IT capabilities where we maintain and host your test instances on our cloud platform. This pricing plan has a 14-day free trial to try our cloud features.
| Allure Testops Cloud for 1 – 30 Users | $39/month or $35/month (annual) |
|---|---|
| Next 31 – 50 Users | $36/month or $32/month (annual) |
| Next 51 – 100 Users | $34/month or $30/month (annual) |
| Others | $30/month or $27/month (annual) |
Selenium
Selenium is an open-source automated QA testing tool to validate web-based applications and websites on Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Firefox for Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems.
QA teams can write test scripts in programming languages like Java, Python, C#, Perl, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, etc. You can also simulate user interactions on website elements like button clicks and form submissions.
Features
Selenium’’s framework includes three tools to assist QA teams with their automation requirements:
Selenium Grid - Users can conduct parallel testing for better test coverage with this tool that lets them distribute and execute tests on multiple environments and devices.
Selenium IDE - The open-source playback tool can be used by organizations with limited knowledge of test script writing to record functional tests and build and debug test cases with the help of automation.
Selenium WebDriver - QA teams can simulate user interactions on web-based platforms. You can also use WebDriver to create automated regression test scripts for browsers.
Appium
Appium is an open-source tool based on the Selenium framework designed as a QA automation framework on Android, iOS, and Windows mobile applications.
Features
QA teams can run automated UI tests for native, web-based, and hybrid applications with the JSON wire protocol supported on Chrome, Safari, and other browser platforms.
Appium supports Java, C#, Python, JavaScript with Node.js, Objective-C, Ruby, PHP, Perl, and other programming languages.
The cross-platform testing tool has REST API that lets users write tests on multiple platforms with options for test case reusability. Tests can be executed on simulators and emulators.
Appium requires a small amount of memory to run test processes.
mabl
mabl is a low-code test automation and playback tool designed for QA teams to conduct end-to-end software testing processes throughout the software development cycle (SDLC).
Features
Users can create “reusable flows” to include in other test cases for faster test writing.
mabl includes a Chrome extension to record test cases with support for cross-browser testing for Firefox, Safari, and Edge.
mabl Trainer enables non-technical users to create automated UI test cases based on key user flows without code.
The auto-healing feature is powered by AI technology that evolves its test failure analysis by collecting comprehensive diagnostic data and generating insights for faster deployment of quality products.
QA teams can automate repetitive tests with reusable flows and data tables.
Katalon Studio
Katalon Studio is a low code automation testing solution for QA testers who want to adopt agile development practices.
Features
Support for web, API, mobile, and desktop applications through an IDE (integrated development environment) built on Selenium and Appium frameworks.
Record and playback feature to record and execute test cases.
Integrations with Jenkins, Azure DevOps, and GitLab to expedite CI/CD pipelines.
Built-in templates for test scenarios, keywords, and object repositories to let QA teams execute tests right after installation.
Advanced debugger identifies and isolates root causes for test failures with information for variables, breakpoints, and expressions.
JIRA
JIRA is one of the best software QA testing tools for defect and issue tracking, and project management available on cloud and server environments. JIRA integrates seamlessly into development environments for tracking, recording, and bug reporting for tests.
Features
Option to choose Kanban or Scrum boards with out-of-the-box functionalities.
Support for plug-and-play add-ons that are compatible with any QA test cases after browsing the Atlassian Marketplace.
Reporting and agile project management tools on a centralized platform.
Availability of automation templates for repetitive tasks like auto-assigning and issue cloning.
Tricentris Testim
Tricentris Testim is an AI-powered QA automation testing tool that assists testers with authoring, executing, and maintaining automated test cases with little to no code. QA teams can conduct parallel and cross-browser tests on cloud and Selenium-compatible grids.
Features
The visual editor feature lets users edit test cases to rearrange steps, create reusable test cases, and add assertions or code-in loops and conditions.
Testim supports integrations for TestRail, Jenkins, GitHub, Applitools, BrowserStack, and Sauce Labs on all CI systems.
Users can stop or pass build jobs to treat test failures individually whenever they encounter them in the CI.
Failed step indicators diagnose test case failures instantly.
Bugzilla
Bugzilla is an open-source bug tracking and management tool that QA testers can use to identify defects and issues in complex projects faster, in groups or individually.
Features
The tool enables small and large-scale organizations to track significant bugs in the System Under Test (SUT).
Intuitive UI and optimized database structure to enhance performance and scalability.
An extension mechanism for customizable installation options.
Collaborative and reporting tools supplemented by customizable workflows and permissions.
Cucumber
Cucumber is an open-source testing platform for QA testers looking for software QA testing tools that help them tackle behavior-driven development projects while driving collaboration between team members.
Features
QA testers with limited technical experience can write and execute tests using a natural language format.
Support for behavior-driven development (BDD).
Works on Java, JavaScript, Ruby, and .NET and offers integrations with several programming languages.
Cypress
Cypress is a QA test automation tool designed to test web applications using JavaScript to write test frameworks.
Features
Built on JavaScript runtime environment. QA testers with experience in JavaScript can start writing and executing test cases instantly.
Support for unit and integration testing on the same platform.
QA teams trust Cypress for its reliable automated testing processes, real-time reloads, playback for debugging, etc.
Conclusion
The increasing complexity of software products and applications in various environments can quickly overall QA testers. Your dev teams require constant feedback from testers before code updates are made to ensure the end product meets the organization’s standards.
Software QA testing tools help your QA teams automate repetitive tasks to focus on more complex test cases to ensure an optimized testing experience to prevent defects and errors early in the development cycle and deploy updates faster that comply with your business requirements.
Out of the ten best QA automation tools listed in this article, Allure Testops is my recommended test management tool that streamlines your testing processes with its advanced test documentation features, native integrations to major test frameworks, and automated defect categorization.
We offer the Allure Testops Server plan for companies with adequate IT capabilities to maintain test instances on their servers. If your company lacks the IT expertise, we assist in managing your test cases on our cloud server when you subscribe to Allure Testops Cloud.
Create quality software products and enable your QA teams to streamline their workflows further with Allure Testops today!
