Loadview Performance Testing Makes Realistic Load Testing Cost-Effective:
Until recently, organizations have been unable to perform truly meaningful load tests and stress tests on their websites and applications. Testers have had to settle for load testing solutions that simply bombard websites and applications with traffic from an internal server without simulating actual usage. All this has changed with LoadView Performance Testing.
Dotcom-Monitor, a leading provider of browser-based testing solutions, created LoadView to address a significant gap in existing load testing solutions – they weren’t realistic enough. “Real users access a website from all over the world, exhibiting a variety of behaviors and using any number of browsers,” said Vadim Mazo, Dotcom-Monitor’s Founder and CEO. “Older load testing solutions couldn’t take those factors into account.”
Loadview makes it possible for clients to perform exhaustive load tests without making a significant up-front investment in software and hardware. Instead, customers can pay as they go for on-demand access to cloud-based virtual servers located around the world. This simulates real web traffic patterns, as well as making load testing accessible to smaller organizations that may not have performed load testing in the past due to the prohibitive costs.
Loadview’s emulation of real user experience doesn’t stop there. EveryStep, Dotcom-Monitor’s script recording tool, allows for point and click recording of test scripts that imitate real visits. That means load test scripts can include a variety of activities, such as interacting with a shopping cart or logging into a website. In addition, LoadView offers over 40 varieties of browser emulation, including desktop and mobile browsers.
LoadView represents a significant jump forward in load testing solutions. Previously, load testing services tended to rely on internal load testing that used headless browsers. It was simply impractical and cost prohibitive to emulate more realistic web traffic. This approach left organizations uncertain about the robustness of their websites and web applications. LoadView’s approach makes it possible to know exactly how a site will behave under real-world conditions.
While LoadView is primarily marketed for load testing, it can also be used for stress testing. Load testing is meant to discover how a web application or website behaves under an increasing amount of traffic. This is to ensure a site or application can handle the influx of users that comes with a product launch or viral success. The goal of stress testing is to see how much traffic a site can take before breaking, rather than focusing on realistic usage. This is to make sure a site can fail and recover smoothly or to simulate a long period of normal operation.
“Too often, organizations are forced to skimp on load testing,” Mr. Mazo said. “Yet successful, comprehensive load testing can make or break a project’s success. It doesn’t matter how well a site or application works if it can’t withstand a projected increase in traffic.”
LoadView launched in June 2016 and has attracted clients as varied as Xerox, Aflac, and Roanoke College. Based in Minnesota, Dotcom-Monitor has been providing external monitoring solutions since 1998.