Item: ReadyAPI
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

ReadyAPI is used at our organization primarily in a testing capacity, within I.T.
When new functionality is implemented and is exposed via web services, both development teams, and testing teams, use ReadyAPI to test the functionality against expected results.
LoadUI Pro is also used, in a more limited capacity, by testing teams, to conduct performance testing of the web service.

Pros and Cons

The ability to be data-driven is a huge asset.
Cross-compatible with many protocols - it's not just SOAP-based.
Provides a full eco-system of products. Very feature-rich.
Solid Enterprise integration, including singles-sign-on, and OAuth2

Pricing. It's both complicated to understand how it's priced, and it's very costly.
The UI is very outdated. It's not a friendly user experience
Lack of connectors for different, popular products and platforms

Return on Investment

Increased reliability in web services before promoting to higher environments
Increased efficiency in how the testing cycle was performed by using ReadyAPI automation
A hard item to keep on the budget due to cost

Alternatives Considered

The main competitor for ReadyAPI was Postman. It is much more lightweight, but that means you also get fewer features.
ReadyAPI also provides an ecosystem in which you can have an entire lifecycle for your API, if that is what you want - and are willing to put in the work to create it and maintain it.
Postman doesn't have that concept of an ecosystem, but it also doesn't claim that it does.
Both have collaboration features, but again, Postman's is lightweight, and ReadyAPI's is much more enterprise-class - with the associated cost and weight.

Key Insights

Do you think ReadyAPI delivers good value for the price?

Are you happy with ReadyAPI's feature set?

Yes

Did ReadyAPI live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of ReadyAPI go as expected?

Would you buy ReadyAPI again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Postman, Apache JMeter, Oracle SQL Developer

Likelihood to Recommend

I would recommend ReadyAPI if the organization is ready to fully embrace the ReadyAPI ecosystem. It is the most feature-rich and fully integrated suite of products for API design, testing, and collaboration. But it is opinionated in how it does things, and it really only provides value (for the cost) if you leverage the whole suite.
If you're looking for something lightweight, that can start providing value right away without too much setup, then you may be disappointed with ReadyAPI.

Users and Roles

50 - All users of ReadyAPI are situated within various I.T. roles.
They are primarily software developers, and QA testers.
There is a very rare scenario in which a business user (a 'power-user' of sorts) will use ReadyAPI to test some functionality.
But this will be mostly under the guidance of an I.T. member having setup and pre-populated the requests.

Support Headcount Required

We do not have anybody that officially supports ReadyAPI in-house. We have some 'experts' who are more experienced with the tool, and may have leveraged it for more advanced use-cases. In those cases, they are able to help their peers through some of the hurdles in creating advanced use-cases. However, that knowledge is not then distributed across teams, or put in a central location as a knowledge-base article. Luckily, we've found the need for dedicated support is minimal with this tool. It is relatively intuitive to use.

Business Processes Supported

Functional Testing of Service Operations
Technical Testing of Service Operations
Performance Testing of Web Services

Innovative Uses

The ability to use the product to produce 'mock APIs' with representative (domain-aware) responses

Future Planned Uses

leverage it as a central repository of all APIs (and as a 'source of truth' for API contracts)
use it for service discovery
central mock-data repository

Likelihood to Renew

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.

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Price
Product Features
Product Reputation
Prior Experience with the Product

ReadyAPI is by no means an API *solution* for an enterprise. It is a tool to help with *productivity*. It should be evaluated as such.
The feature-set was the most important aspect. We needed to make sure that it had the ability to ease the pain-points that developers were experiencing when designing, developing, and testing services.
Reputation was next (tied with prior experience). As we were in the middle of an on-going project, it was important that our team members across the department could get up and running as quickly as possible. So the fact that SmartBear and their ReadyAPI product is very well known (almost the de-facto standard), was a very strong motivator in choosing the product.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

The only change in the evaluation process would be the cost. I wish I could have found a way to not place as high a metric on the cost of the product. Because, in many ways, it is worth the cost, but it is not software that has output in a tangible sense, it facilitates development and testing, which is very hard to quantify on a financial spreadsheet.

Great product, if you're willing to put the work in

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with ReadyAPI (formerly SoapUI Pro, LoadUI Pro, & ServiceV Pro)