Tricentis NeoLoad is a solution for continuous performance testing software to automate API and application load testing. It was developed by the French company Neotys and acquired by Tricentis, along with the company, in March 2021.
NeoLoad is a performance and load testing solution to help deliver responsive, scalable and reliable applications in production to avoid loss of customers and revenue. It works by testing for performance issues early into the development process at the API level to find issues when they are easy to fix. It also works by hitting the full application with high load in an end-to-end testing environment that simulates what the end user will experience, all while delivering the fastest approach to test design and test maintenance.
Tricentis NeoLoad Features
Supported: Performance test automation
Supported: Real time test analysis with APM data
Supported: Cloud based load generation
Supported: As-code performance testing for advances users
Tricentis NeoLoad is a solution for continuous performance testing software to automate API and application load testing. It was developed by the French company Neotys and acquired by Tricentis, along with the company, in March 2021.
Simulating realistic user behavior: Tricentis NeoLoad allows users to define the actions that simulated users will take when accessing a website or application. This can include clicking links, filling out forms, and accessing specific pages or resources. This allows organizations to test the performance of their applications under realistic conditions.
Testing the performance of APIs: Tricentis NeoLoad can be used to test the performance of APIs by simulating multiple requests and measuring the response times and error rates. This can help organizations ensure that their APIs can handle the expected traffic and usage patterns.
Identifying performance bottlenecks: Tricentis NeoLoad can identify performance bottlenecks by measuring response times, throughput, and error rates at various points in the application. This can help organizations pinpoint the specific parts of their applications that are causing performance issues and take steps to address them.
Testing the scalability of applications: Tricentis NeoLoad can simulate increasing loads on an application to test its scalability and identify the point at which it starts to degrade in performance. This can help organizations ensure that their applications can handle expected traffic growth and unexpected spikes in usage.
Generating detailed reports: Tricentis NeoLoad generates detailed reports that provide insights into the performance of an application, including response times, throughput, error rates, and other key metrics. These reports can be used to identify performance issues and track progress over time.
Ease of use: Some users find certain features or aspects of the interface to be confusing or hard to use. Improving the overall usability of the tool could make it more accessible and easier for users to get up and running with it.
Integration with other tools: Tricentis NeoLoad does not have many integrations with other tools. Adding more integrations with popular tools and platforms could make it easier for users to work with Tricentis NeoLoad as part of their overall workflow.
Mobile testing: Some users wish that Tricentis NeoLoad had more robust support for testing the performance of mobile applications. This could include the ability to simulate different mobile devices and networks, as well as the ability to test the performance of native mobile apps.
Cloud support: Tricentis NeoLoad does not have as much support for cloud-based applications and infrastructure. Adding more support for testing the performance of applications hosted in the cloud could be a useful feature for some users.
Advanced scripting capabilities: While Tricentis NeoLoad does offer some scripting capabilities, it would be nice to have more advanced options for customizing and automating load testing scenarios. Adding more advanced scripting capabilities could make it easier for users to create complex load testing scenarios.
You can manage variables and data sets for your tests
NeoLoad is highly customizable. If anything having a faster way to load general testing templates or choose them from pre-made libraries might be helpful.
Ability to segment a 'Type' of users in a mix of users.
Ability to throttle transaction volume at increasing rates while identifying crucial throughput/failure points.
Ability to test changes like switching to a different Database with precise throughput transaction metrics.
Building Test Plans takes time. When the input fields of page changes it breaks the previous plan. The tool would be better if it had a way to migrate an existing plan and adapt to small changes.
Documentation is fair, but would be improved with more detailed screenshot by screenshot configuration changes rather than summation using words.
NeoLoad supports performance test engineers with a strong feature set to analyse the results. The first metric you have in mind is response time of the application. The metric satisfies the stakeholder if it meets the requirements. Otherwise, the stakeholder wants to know some comments and suggestions for improvement. I rely on the data gathered by monitoring agents when I analyse test results. The monitoring agent is a service which collects different counters from an operating system, databases, web server, etc. The results can be analysed in individual composed graphs. This is a powerful feature to deliver conclusive reports to stakeholders. Even the export of reports in various formats is helpful for communication with different stakeholders.
Our customers like the flexible license model of NeoLoad. A usual performance test project starts with the development of tests and configuration of the test environment. Finally, there is a first test execution followed by a couple of additional test executions. Usually, it is hard to say how long it takes to implement the issues based on the test results. So we usually do not know how long is the period between first and last test execution. It does not matter how long the period might be. In most of our projects we prefer daily licenses of NeoLoad. If you buy e.g. a four-day license you can use NeoLoad at four different days.
As a performance test engineer, I like the impressive APIs of NeoLoad. NeoLoad is just a performance test tool and the vendor Neotys is focused on this job. Whenever you would like to add something into a test scenario which is not mainly a performance issue you can integrate these parts by APIs which are easy to handle and very powerful. They also support you in case technologies which are not supported yet by NeoLoad. Maybe there is a new device which you want to monitor. Therefore you can report the measurements of the specific counters by the data exchange API during test execution. So you can analyse the data in the usual way. In our company we developed already a couple of features based on the APIs of NeoLoad and we are very happy with this flexibility.
NeoLoad allows the user many switches and options. Sometimes it is hard to understand dependencies. But the documentation and the support helps you.
In most projects it is necessary to develop small scripts. NeoLoad only supports JavaScript and the editor is weak. There is syntax highlighting but sometimes you can not see where the cursor is located exactly. NeoLoad supports a workaround if you register .js-files in Windows to a different editor.
Building performance testing scripts is easy. NeoLoad builds the scripts for you by recording your session as you navigate through the application under test.
NeoLoad works with mobile applications using the same recording technique.
NeoLoad has modules that permit gathering OS metrics from the target host and correlating the data with the load testing results. The modules are agentless, meaning that there no need to deploy NeoLoad code modules on the host to gather these metrics.
There is no support for VT3270 terminal emulation to support mainframe-hosted applications.
The ramp-up and ramp-down time data are not automatically excluded from the average response time calculations. Instead, you must exclude these times manually each time you run a test.
There is not a summary graphic that shows the distribution of all of the response times on a single graph. We currently export the data as a coma separated variable (CSV) file and import into Excel to generate this summary graph.
Correlation cannot be simpler than the way NeoLoad does. You can even use XPATH.
Handling virual user in runtime such as kick out some and add them back in runtime or simply keep adding them to test the stress level of server is awesome.
The ability to manipulate the script by inserting JavaScript is also tremendous. It's one of the features few other tools have.