Sauce Labs vs. Selenium vs. Tidal by Redwood

Access to specific devices is good, as well as access to a specific browser/platform. We are not able to connect our dev environments to Sauce Labs because the devices are put in our VPC. Some versions are not available like iPhone with iOS 12.1. With iOS, there is limited/no support for push notifications without real devices due to Apple's provisioning profiles.

Incentivized

When you have to test the UI and how it behaves when certain actions are performed, you need something that can automate the browsers. This is where Selenium comes to the rescue. If you have to test APIs and not the frontend (UI), I would recommend going with other libraries that support HTTP Requests. Selenium is good only when you have no choice but to run the steps on a browser.

Incentivized

1. Tidal Automation is a super robust application for Regular SQL tasks or other file maintenance which in-turn can help employee's to free up their time which they spend on working on repetitive tasks. 2.This has significantly reduced the time and effort required for setting up and managing workflows, ultimately increasing productivity. 3. Although we faced few problems while integrating the software with existing systems and was time consuming.

Incentivized

• Gets good people to work for it. These guys and gals are freed and just want you to succeed.
• Sauce Labs listens to what the customers want. (Though I could still use an AWS East-1, hint-hint.)
• They come to us when we ask, so that is pretty cool.

Incentivized

• For any web based UI automation, Selenium is the best tool out there to automate your tests.
• It supports multiple coding languages like Java, Python, Ruby, C# etc.. to choose from.
• There is a huge community of users and can get many answers on StackOverFlow.
• It has lot of other plugins to make your tests even more efficient.

Incentivized

• Tidal Automation is good in it's integration with Oracle ERP
• Tidal Automation was robust enough to perform all the workloads smoothly on SAP Integrations.
• Tidal Automation has the robust HA and DR features
• Tidal Automation has the best and simple user interface.
• Tidal Automation documentation is the best compared to other Workload Automation solutions in the market.

Incentivized

• Cost: it's a little bit pricey, but I don't pay the bill so I'm not complaining too much there. Overall, I'd say the price isn't ridiculous but it's not inexpensive.
• Logs: I don't find their logs very useful for front-end web tests, I usually refer to my own logs if I have a bug/issue/error that needs investigation.

Incentivized

• Recognize Adobe Flash and MS Silver Light elements without additional help
• Detect and locate Java applets ingredients
• Having the "Wait-till-Displayed" or "Wait-till-Present" as a built in Web Driver function instead of requirement for writing loops and defining expliccit wait, visiblewait, invisiblewait, etc.

Incentivized

• Still a bit slow when navigating. If you close a job you have to wait a few seconds to open another one. Even when you made no changes.
• When viewing a job and make no changes, the "ok" button changes the last modified date as if you made a change. No big deal, but wastes time when troubleshooting a problem and looking into what jobs were changed last.
• You can see the parameters column in the "job activity", but not in "Job definitions".
• Can't search the parameters field in the filter.
• Changing a variable name does not change it on the job. It still works because Tidal Automation uses the ID number. It just causes confusion when you see a variable on a job and can't find the variable under "Variables". On top of that, Tidal Automation does not show the ID column under "Variables" making it even more difficult to find the variable.

I love how it's super easy to use. Not only that but it ensures security and it always has great updates to ensure that it continues to be awesome. Also, I love how nice the people there are too. Their support tea is amazing. Anytime, I have a question, they are super speedy to answer.

Incentivized

We love this product mainly because of its high customization abilities and the ease of use. Moreover, its free and can be learned easily through online communities and videos. The tests are more consistent and reliable as compared to Manual tests. It has enabled us to test a large number of features all in one go, which would have impossible through manual tests. The reports generated at the end of the tests are really helpful for the QA and the development teams to get a fair view of the application.

Incentivized

We are on the fence. The increased pricing for renewals is staggering. With new automation options like Microsoft's Power Automate and Event Driven Ansible on the field, there are other options now available.

I think Sauce Labs is great and I've been using them since late 2014. With that said, I'm very used to how their interface works and how to get what I need. I think if a brand new user would come in and use it, it would still be easy, but maybe not as easy as it is for me. That's why I rate this area a 9 instead of a 10. Still great though!

Incentivized

For those who are unfamiliar with coding, there is a bit of a learning curve. There is plenty of helpful documentation and resources but it can take a little time to get the software up and running. Once you get the hang of how Selenium works, and what it can do, you realize how many things you can use it for, and how many processes you can automate.

Incentivized

Yes, Sauce labs is always there, and it is easy to troubleshoot when you are having any connectivity issue, they always keep you informed when they plan to perform any type of maintenance window on their side in advance, so you can plan and will not affect your current work. I do not recall any outage.

Incentivized

The time where they acquired TestObject and were trying to integrate their services would probably be the most annoying time. Annoying as features were in two separate places (websites) for example. But since the introduction of their unified platform, we haven't run into any issues as of yet and we've used them for at least 5-6 years now.

Incentivized

The support is good for Sauce Labs. It is hard to get an initial response but the support has cleared our issues with Sauce Labs. Sometimes we have to follow up and it's hard to get a hold of the team initially. Once we get a hold of the team, the issues are always resolved.

The Selenium app has a pretty fat community of users. For the problems we are experiencing, we are primarily receiving support from these communities. In addition, there is widespread service support. Instant support is given to the problems we experience when we need Online support. We and our team are happy to provide this support, especially before important deployment processes

I am not sure if it's my company that makes getting Sauce Labs integrated into the team difficult or is it Sauce Labs. The process for getting Sauce Labs for a project is quite a tedious process and the information for using Sauce Labs initially is quite lacking. There is little support for getting started

We did everything we needed to use it. Now we can execute our tests on different operational systems and browsers running few tests simultaneously. We also implemented Appium framework to execute our tests on mobile devices, such as iPhones, iPads, Android phones and tablets. We use SauceLabs for our test execution and Jenkins for continuous integration.

Incentivized

Having provided consulting services for years on Tidal by Redwood, I recommend going with a solutions partner or consultant to deploy it. I believe there are sizing and tuning guidelines that should be followed for environments of scale. I believe they are not critical when first lighting up the product, but if you are not aware of them you will encounter performance degradation after a few thousand job objects are added.

Firebase is pay per use and so was difficult to work out the true costings, it also felt more developer focussed whereas Sauce Labs had better Appium support for our Automation team. AWS Device Farm appeared to require either Android or iOS and we wanted both, so that wasn't a great fit. It was also not possible to run Cucumber tests on Android in AWS but this may no longer be the case, but it was another unknown for us and not worth the risk. Sauce Labs explicitly mentioned Cucumber support.

Incentivized

At the time of adoption, there were not many other alternatives that were even close to being competitive when it comes to browser testing. As far as I know now to this day, there is still little competition to Selenium for what it does. Any other browser-based testing still utilises Selenium to interact with the browser.

Incentivized

Tidal by Redwood excels at performing complex workflows, event-driven automation, and compliance-focused procedures in big companies with varied IT infrastructures. This includes claims, policy, and billing processes are included in this. The sending of our documents and checks to our printers for automatic printing has also been automated with TA. The majority of our regular file transfers to and from our company are done utilizing TA and SFTP. Key characteristics:- Control over access and security. Resource management and error correction. Tools for reporting and observing. Capacity for extensive automation and job scheduling. Scalability for large enterprises. Orchestration of workflow for intricate operations. Uses:- A good fit for big businesses with complicated IT environments. Ideal for managing dependencies and automating complex operations. effective at organizing cross-platform and system functions. strong support for governance and compliance.

Incentivized

With private devices, you have full reign over usage of them, so no complaints there. Public devices are available if no one else is using it, which is understandable. Browser VMs are based on number of open sessions and Saucelabs give you a certain number depending on what you need. If you need more, then you pay for more. It is as simple as that. You need more devices, then you can pay for more private ones too. A workaround for public devices is to pick the first available one and not be too picky, that's if you are able to of course.

Incentivized

• Provided an ability for us to run 55,000+ tests/month across all browsers.
• Gave us an opportunity to showcase the great things we have done in quality using Sauce Labs. This was through a white paper and an opportunity to speak at Sauce Con. People in our company have a far better appreciation for the what we do and how far we have progressed in the quality space.

Incentivized

• Generation of detailed finding reports helped in cost savings in regard to direct labor.
• Quality Assurance technicians found value in repeating mundane duties that they perform daily. It saved mental energy due to the automation process.
• The value was established in high volume usage in setting up meetings as well as new accounts with A/B testing. Also merely cleaning up old test documents by evaluating them and organization or deletion.

Incentivized

• It has a positive impact on factors like increase in productivity, easy to implement as there some options pre-built in it which automates and perform.
• It also reduces human error mostly as it involve less manual performance and tool is time saving in this perspective.
• It also has negative impacts like cost of the tool as its expensive and if it's not properly utilized it may lead huge revenue loss as all will be scheduled per plan.
• We have to continually monitor its effectiveness to ensure a positive return on investment.