Postman vs. ReadyAPI vs. SpecFlow

Postman is good for organising your API credentials, vendor settings, environments etc. It's also a good way of getting stared with APIs as you get to use a GUI which can help you understand what we mean by a 'body' or 'bearer token'. I think people generally gravitate towards GUI tools for getting started in a new technology area.

Incentivized

As stated, we do a LOT of API testing, the swaggerhub import makes it easy to add APIs. This is very well-suited, as well as easy management of the steps/cases/suites inside of ReadyAPI. The one thing I do wish ReadyAPI was better suited for is changes to data, we have a lot of test cases in ReadyAPI and if we make a change to how the backend data is structured, one-by-one adjustments need to be made to the steps. Less appropriate, UI testing.

Incentivized

It is best suited for implementing the automated test cases in a human readable form so it's easy for non-technical members of the team and stakeholders to understand the test cases, features and the functionalities of the application. Automation of Integration tests and End to End tests are good use case. It is less appropriate or situations where the focus is only on the writing and maintenance of unit tests.

Incentivized

• It has opened a door for me to explore more out of it, as it is associated with so many APIs that I never felt any difficulty in finding the right API template, which are well organized and easily available.
• It is very secure to use and provides great services which are user-friendly.
• Due to this software I have got rid of the excessive emails and the slack channels, Now I am using my own private API and even it give me an option to produce my personal Postman’s API Builder from its Private API Network and this features has shared my excessive workload.

Incentivized

• Ease of use (ability to automatically import API definitions, Jenkins integration for running in the pipeline).
• Detailed test reports (allow to easily identify weak spots during both functional and performance testing).
• One platform for all tests (allows to closely couple and reuse existent tests).

Incentivized

• Versatility to be used in combination with different kinds of automated testing like automated performance testing, API testing, UI testing etc. I use JavaScript, Selenium, C#, email testing libraries, database testing libraries in combination with BDD with SpecFlow. I am able to use all these with SpecFlow to make my automation framework to be able to automate any kind of automated testing.
• It provides different widely used runner options like NUnit, XUnit etc. Before I started to work on establishing proper test automation in my workplace, the previous automation framework (non-BDD based) as well as unit tests used NUnit runner. The transition to using BDD was smooth because we could use the same runner and there were no compatibility issues.
• The auto-complete feature is good. I use it with Visual Studio as well as Rider and I don't have to recall the entire Gherkin statements. I just type a few words and the entire Gherkin statement implemented in framework is auto-suggested by SpecFlow. It saves time and context switching.

Incentivized

• Wherever you need to automate tests that involve database verification or rely on data from databases, Postman is less suitable.
• Postman's disc usage is extremely high, and it occasionally causes the computer to fade.
• It doesn't have the ability to generate random data. To achieve randomness in my tests, I've been working around scripts.

• Needs good documentation
• Need to improve the performance of the tool
• Setup is very complex and for such [a] commercial tool, it should easy and straightforward
• Tool says it supports security testing but in reality, it is not at an extensive level.

Incentivized

• SpecFlow does not accepts optional input variables in the methods defined during Gherkin statement implementation. Cucumber supports optional input variables in the methods defined during Gherkin statement implementation.
• The tests identified while using SpecFlow with NUnit removes all white spaces in the scenario names. It makes the tests less readable. If the white spaces are not auto-removed, it would be much better for readability as well as their actual identification in the repository.

Incentivized

The only reason this isn't a '10' is because of the cost. This product is definitely meant for organizations who are serious about making sure they invest in the full ecosystem of API design, development, maintenance. But there is a significant cost associated with this investment. and because of this cost (and the non-tangible output for executives), it is a difficult line-item to justify in this post-pandemic environment.

Incentivized

1. Friendly user friendly - when I started using Postman, I was a beginner to the API world, and it gave me a friendly view to begin its usage 2. Postman offers many features, including API testing, monitoring, documentation, and mock servers 3. Environment variables simplify testing across multiple environments (dev, prod) without repetitive configuration.

Incentivized

SoapUI allows us to combine multiple tests and adhere
to the sequence that they need to run in order to complete successfully.
It has an excellent GUI design and the reporting mechanism is also very
good. It does consume a lot of memory though during concurrent testing

Soap UI has managed to continuously build on it's solid foundation and keep improving by each release. It is by far the most dependable and accurate testing tool out there of its kind. Available via connecting to VM's created as SoapUI test machines give access to it anytime, anywhere practically.

It has an excellent GUI design and the reporting mechanism is also very
good. It does consume a lot of memory though during concurrent testing.

There is a lot of in-depth documentation for Postman available online, including detailed guides with screenshots and videos. They provide example APIs for new users to explore while learning how to use the tool. Generally, bugs in the client are quickly addressed through frequent free updates. Community and professional support options are available - most of the time, the free/community level support is adequate

Incentivized

To be honest, we didnt had much issues with the support, as there is already plenty of online communities available for help. But if ever there were some minor issues with the membership or the certificates, the tech support was always quick and efficient enough to resolve the issue ASAP

Incentivized

no very easy but lacks documentation

Previous to using Postman, I would either use browser tools directly, or write an in-house tool to send requests. Postman eliminates that need while providing a much better experience and more features. At the base level, Postman is as simple as typing in the address as you would in a browser. Authentication can be provided simply as well.

Incentivized

ReadyAPI provides intuitive GUI capabilities compared to their own open source product. When compared to Postman, ReadyAPI also supports SOAP based services, which is a saver especially when integrating with legacy or other third party systems.

Incentivized

SpecFlow is .Net based which supports C#. Behave is Python based. Cucumber is Java based. Ghost Inspector is no-code based but provides very limited testing features. We wanted to implement BDD so we rued out using Ghost Inspector. Most of the developers in my team are C# experts so it was decided for everyone's comfort to go for SpecFlow rather than Behave or Cucumber. It's import to have technical experts in the language of the automation framework because there are many situations where the solutions to the test automation needs are not straightforward and implementing those requires expertise in the related programming language.

Incentivized

It has an excellent GUI design and the reporting mechanism is also very
good. It does consume a lot of memory though during concurrent testing. However, I have read that added monitoring tools have been added, which if so the 7 could possibly go to a 8 or 9.

• Postman is free (although there's a paid tier that offers more features) so using it for testing APIs comes with little to no risk (besides learning curve).
• The learning curve is a little steep for non-developer users, but developers should find it easy to pick up and use right out of the box, so to speak.

Incentivized

• Very quick regression testing, hence having the testing results very soon, even the same day of deployment
• for same above reason, it can save money for corporation (so no tedious, costly and erroneous manual testings)
• The test reports are compatible with TestNG, so the corporation can integrate the reports in our Autamation frameworks such as Allure or Jira Zephyr

Incentivized

• Everyone stays on the same page regarding the behavior of existing functionalities whether it be technical or non-technical individuals. So there is less need for multiple people to get involved which saves time and thus money.
• Reusing the same code through the implemented Gherkin statement saves test automation time and thus reduces cost.
• We combine SpecFlow with other opensource testing technologies to make our automation framework more versatile which further saves costs for us.

Incentivized