This is the go to tool for all the web service testing needs. You can do functional testing, regression testing, automate the testing and drive the data from external sources like a Excel spread sheet or an xml document and finally performance testing. It can get better in scenarios where the response is to be compared with UI, with more automation. The license cost needs to be considered when there are many open source tools out there in the market.
Good for simple requests, simple scripts, assertions, and small workflows. Also not bad with the Open Source version if savvy with code as you can do a lot with custom functionality.Free version has limited compatibility with scripts/projects created from the Pro version, but functionality-wise can probably be made up with coding. As such, the free version may not be too suitable for complex scripts or for those who are not familiar with coding as functionality/usability may be limited.
Fast and efficient execution of automated testing.
Built in Javascript that can be used to run test cases with a repository tool such as HP Quality Center. This will show the test results and allow the QA engineer to pass, fail, or set a test case to N/A.
As always, this is not a free tool and you have to pay for license. There are many open source tools which can perform similar job with no cost albeit with less functionality and more head work.
There is still some more room for improving the automation which can include more UI level components to make life lot easier when comparing the response vs UI.
Compared to SoapUI, we have been using "light" tools like RestClient extension in Firefox, or Postman. Compared to Postman, SoapUI is more simple for WSDL / SOAP webservices, as SoapUI generate all envelop, but Postman does not. For Rest API, I think that Postman is a little above SoapUI, but not too far away.
It has been of tremendous help as the ONE STOP TOOL to test the APIs end to end. Ease of use is great and their support staff is excellent. They always conduct brown bag sessions for us to learn about new features. Overall it has given us a great ROI considering how fast we can test and deliver to market.