Regression testing, we have already covered in detail what regression testing is. 

In this blog, let’s list down 10  Regression testing tools and how Regression testing with TestGrid makes the app testing journey easy for your team.

Regression testing is the type of testing performed to ensure that a code change in software does not affect the product’s existing functionality.

This ensures that the product functions correctly with new functionality, bug fixes, or changes to existing features. To validate the impact of the shift, previously executed test cases are re-executed.

10 Best Regression Testing Tools:

Regression testing costs will rise if your software is frequently changed. In such cases, manual execution increases both test execution time and cost.

In such cases, automation of regression test cases is a wise choice. The level of automation is determined by the number of test cases that can be reused for subsequent regression cycles.

#01 Selenium

Pros of Selenium:

• Extensive library of plugins and extensions
  Selenium’s standard functionality can be expanded with a variety of plugins. For example, selenium has somewhat officially endorsed some of them.
  
  If you Google “Selenium plugins tool name>,” you might find an extension for easy integration with your favorite programming product, such as Jenkins or Eclipse.
  
  These plugins are available for WebDriver and Grid, and Selenium IDE. The latter is particularly extensive, capable of strengthening the functionally-weak tool and making it production-ready.

• Third-party Integrations
  Selenium does not limit a QA’s ability to use reporting tools, build systems, or other aspects of their Development/Testing Stack. Instead, it works well with well-known tools like SauceLabs, Selenium-Grid, Extent, JUnit, etc.

• Language-Independent
  QAs working on a specific language do not need to learn a new language to automate their tests with Selenium. Selenium offers language bindings for C#, Java, Ruby, JavaScript, PHP, and Python. There are also a few unofficial language bindings for the remaining languages.

• Huge community
  Enlyft (formerly iDataLabs), a data-driven research firm, offers an intriguing look at the software testing tools market.
  
  As can be seen, Selenium has a staggering 27.48 percent market share of all software testing tools, with its closest competitor Apache Jmeter taking just over 10% – incredible statistics.
  
  Selenium has amassed a fan base of developers from major players such as Google and startups. Selenium proficiency is a required skill in job postings for QA professionals.
  
  As previously mentioned, there are alternatives to Selenium, but their prices range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. Having a great free tool on hand keeps old testers loyal and new ones interested in Selenium.

• No Licensing cost
  There are no upfront costs or payments required for the use of selenium. Instead, it is open-source, allowing for the extension and modification of the base framework for personal or professional use.

Cons of Selenium:

• Only works with web application testing.
• Selenium does not support mobile automation.
• It does not automatically generate Captchas or barcodes.
• There is no built-in reporting function.
• It is incorrect for dynamic pages.
• The images cannot be tested.
• Automation necessitates a high level of skill.
• Dependent on Cucumber for reporting purposes.

Website: https://www.selenium.dev/

Pricing: One user cost $2800, an extra $850, you can add further machines and users

#02 IBM Rational Functional Tester

Pros of IBM Rational Functional Tester:

• An HTML execution log contains detailed information about the actions, verifications, and screenshots with timestamps.
• Response time was quick, and the support was excellent. IBM releases updates regularly to address customer needs and resolve issues.
• All included a solid object inspector, a sizeable functional library, and a playback monitor.

Cons of IBM Rational Functional Tester:

• Installations and updates were not always flawless. However, if there were errors, it would be necessary to clean previous installations or reinstall Java.
• Browsers other than Internet Explorer have no or minimal support.
• It consumes a lot of memory and can cause memory problems on significant tests.

Website: https://www.ibm.com/products/rational-functional-tester

Pricing: $3500/month

#03 Micro Focus Unified Functional Testing (UFT)

Pros of Micro Focus Unified Functional Testing:

• Installations and updates were not always flawless. However, if there were errors, it would be necessary to clean previous installations or reinstall Java.
• Browsers other than Internet Explorer have no or minimal support.
• It consumes a lot of memory and can cause memory problems on significant tests.

Cons of Micro Focus Unified Functional Testing:

• Reporting assistance in a variety of formats should be possible. UFT currently supports exporting reports in either HTML or PDF format, either short or detailed /design. It would be greatly appreciated if report exporting could be expanded to Excel, CSV, XML, XSLT, and MHT formats.
• They must improve their performance. Performance degradation on the test environment will occur due to long continuous executions of automation scripts, resulting in inconsistent results; a better way to resolve this issue should be addressed at some point.
• During execution, consistency should be maintained.

Website: https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/home

Pricing: Free Trial Available

#04 Sahi Pro

Pros of Sahi Pro:

• Simple to use There is no need for any special training to use the tool.
• There are numerous built-in APIs.
• Reporting has many features such as histogram, suite level, individual script level, export excel, zip, and accessible error analysis.
• The tool is simple to use.
• No heavy coding skills are required; instead, light coding skills and the use of built-in APIs are sufficient.
• Custom functions and their use are simple, as is navigating to those functions.
• Running as a suite is a valuable feature, and inbuilt suite analysis is simple.
• The DD CSV file is an excellent feature for script execution and is simple to manage.

Cons of Sahi Pro:

• It is a slow tool, especially when interacting with the local machine.
• Unfortunately, the user interface is poor, and it appears to be from a college project.
• However, there are a lot of bugs and a lot of bug fixes.
• The detection of web elements should be robust.
• Based on the historical pass/fail ids, an auto-correct feature or something similar could show the best web element id to use.
• There is no internal chat to communicate with other script developers.
• There is no built-in forum where all colleagues can offer suggestions, post problems, and share information; it is an isolated tool.
• Integration of the UI and the API Returning to the UI while execution is unavailable
• Over time, the repository for built-in features/APIs should grow.

Website: https://www.sahipro.com/

Pricing: $58/month, offer free trials

#05 WATIR

Pros of WATIR:

• This is a Ruby library.
• Support for multiple browsers (and operating systems)
• Has a robust API
• There is a ‘Simple’ class (for non-tech users)
• Watij & Watin (Java &.NET) provide a more stable and straightforward feeling by automatically waiting for the page to finish loading and detecting when Watir’s API has finished loading. As a result, it is more abundant than Selenium.
• Provides a “attach” method that allows me to access both the original and linked domains windows from the same test programmatically.

Cons of WATIR:

• You must learn Ruby (unless you prefer Watij or Watin).
• Each browser necessitates a unique library.

Website: http://watir.com/

Pricing: Free of cost 

#06 TestComplete

Pros of TestComplete:

• Identifying UI objects and the structure of the application
• Test extensibility via scripts and script extensions/plugins
• low entry barrier (you can get started quickly, and others don’t require much explanation to contribute on a fundamental level)
• Jira integration for reporting is a possibility.
• There are relatively few (and usually simple to resolve) git conflicts when working concurrently. The test data is easily handled, even for iterative tests.

Cons of TestComplete:

• The documentation is lacking in many areas, mainly scripting, script extensions, and plugins, where there is a lot of copy/paste.
• When editing/renaming/moving objects, the Name Mapping can become unstable, resulting in occasional crashes.
• TestComplete is not fully dpi aware and can struggle when operating multiple screens with different resolutions, resulting in “click” events not hitting the actual button and the application itself being far too large or small when sized based on a screen is not located.

Website: https://smartbear.com/

Pricing:

• Free Trial Available
• TestComplete Base – $6,519
• TestComplete Pro –  $10,150

#07 SILKTEST

Pros of SILKTEST:

• After tests, quickly and easily create documentation.
• It promotes effective collaboration among business users, developers, and testers.
• It makes use of Domain-Specific Languages (DSL)
• BDD allows you to specify specifications and accept tests in manageable chunks.
• It encourages the development of functional features as soon as possible.
• It enables you to focus test runs on specific functional areas.

Cons of SILKTEST:

• Creating and maintaining feature files takes time.
• Writing feature files necessitates a high level of communication.
• Therefore, the BDD documents should be kept.
• More time is required to write automation code.

Website: https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/products/silk-test/overview

Pricing: Free Trial Available

#08 Serenity

Pros of Serenity:

• After testing is completed, it creates documents quickly and easily.
• It promotes effective collaboration among business users, developers, and testers.
• It makes use of Domain-Specific Languages (DSL).
• BDD allows you to specify specifications and accept tests in manageable chunks.
• It encourages the development of functional features as soon as possible.
• It enables you to focus test runs on specific functional areas.

Cons of Serenity:

• Creating and maintaining feature files takes time.
• Writing feature files necessitates a high level of communication.
• Therefore, the BDD documents should be kept.
• More time is required to write automation code.

Website: https://serenity-bdd.info/

Pricing:  Free Trial Available

#09 RANOREX STUDIO

Pros of RANOREX STUDIO:

• Testing on Multiple Platforms
  Ranorex allows you to test applications across multiple platforms, such as web, desktop, mobile, and so on.
  
  This feature is lacking in many of its competitors. For example, it uses the built-in Selenium WebDriver integration, enabling cross-browser web testing across multiple browsers and operating systems.

• Perform testing without testing
  Ranorex’s recorder feature employs a keyword-driven testing method, allowing users to test their GUIs without writing a script. All you have to do is set your keywords at the start, and they will be used throughout your test cases.
  
  This saves a significant amount of time spent writing and rewriting scripts, making the entire testing process much easier to read and design. In addition, beginners in automation can use Ranorex Studio’s built-in methodology to automate data-driven or keyword-driven testing.

• User-Friendly User Interface
  Ranorex has the most user-friendly interface and the most user-friendly test automation tools.
  
  They provide features such as prerecorded demos and detailed instructions in three different languages to help you easily understand the process of creating, recording, and analyzing your automated test series.

• Tracking of Images
  Ranorex Studio’s innovative object identification feature detects any change in the position of an image in an already tested GUI within its interface.
  
  It includes GUI recognition elements such as RanorXPath, Ranorex Spy, and others that aid in identifying and editing UI elements within an application. On the other hand, Selenium does not provide such a feature to its users.

• Teamwork that works
  Ranorex offers its users cross-fictional team solutions to enable efficient coordination between development and testing teams. By sharing reusable object repositories and test automation modules, all team members can work together to create effective solutions.

• Reports in Summary
  At the end of each test run on its platform, Ranorex generates a detailed Run Summary Report and even includes screenshots for verification.
  
  Their reports are comprehensive, combining previous test runs with current ones. The reports are fully customizable, with the option of generating a PDF or a Junit-compatible format.

Cons of RANOREX STUDIO:

• Paid License
  Ranorex is a paid, licensed tool instead of many open-source competitors such as Selenium, Katalon Studio, Watir, and others.

• Limited Language Support
  In contrast to Selenium, Ranorex Studio only supports two scripting languages for coding: C# and VB.NET.

• It doesn’t support Mac OS X.
  Ranorex does not integrate with macOS. It’s written in.NET, which means it won’t run on macOS unless you use the Mono project, which Ranorex doesn’t support.

• There is no community support.
  Ranorex has a much smaller community than its open-source competitors Selenium and Watir, making it difficult to find solutions to common issues on the internet.

• Irregular Updates
  Though Ranorex is quick and frequently releases new versions, they often contain bugs that must be fixed.
  
  This impacts a developer’s daily operations because new versions take time to update the existing suite for automation testing, slowing down the entire testing process.

Website: https://www.ranorex.com/

Pricing: $3,590.00 per licensing

#10 Telerik Test Studio

Pros of Telerik Test Studio:

• Telerik Test Studio is highly user-friendly and simple to learn.
• Good language support; Test Studio does not necessitate code in many scenarios; however, it does support C# and VB.NET if necessary.
• Testers can design and maintain tests and pass them to developers via source control to help with more complex, edge-case scenarios.
• Data-driven testing is well supported in Test Studio. All recorded test steps have data-related properties that enable you to associate them with a data source. Test Studio supports a variety of data sources. Furthermore, it includes a data grid that allows you to create your data source right inside your test quickly.
• A comprehensive HTML and Silverlight control suite, In addition to native Telerik control support, the Test Studio software testing solution includes an extensive suite of HTML and Silverlight control translators that abstract out the control specifics. With the help of these translators, testers can quickly and easily create automated tests for complex control-based applications.
• Custom controls are supported. Developers will sometimes extend the components they use to create their applications. Test Studio automatically detects the control’s base class and suggests verifications for that base control – quick tasks, action handling, mouse actions, and more.
• Telerik RadControls are natively supported. Because Telerik RadControls are well-known, if your applications are built with Telerik AJAX, Silverlight, or WPF controls, Test Studio will automatically detect them and provide tailored verification, allowing you to test even complex controls such as hierarchical grids, schedules, and so on.
• Without writing a single line of code, you can run automated tests on both real devices and emulators.

Cons of Telerik Test Studio:

• Test Studio is a stand-alone application, and if you want to use a VS plugin, you’ll need an additional VS professional or higher license.
• You cannot reuse elements from one project in another, so you must create only one task, which will become heavy over time. However, this is dependent on the size of your application. For example, you can copy and paste content from one project to another as a workaround.
• You can convert all of your steps to code but not reverse them.
• The issue with the usability of the “If-else” statement is that to use the If-else condition, your element in the “If” condition must be present; otherwise, the entire test case fails.
• Android app testing and desktop application testing are not supported (only WPF is supported).
• If you need to create customized reports, you will need to write code.
• Test Studio will cause numerous performance issues while recording if your application’s DOM is large, such as Test Studio and Application hanging. You must first use the trial version for this.
• It’s not a free tool, and it’s also not cheap.
• A powerful computer is required to run all capabilities.
• Numerous customization options are available, but they are time-consuming to set up.

Website: https://www.telerik.com/teststudio

Pricing: licensing cost starts from $2,499.00

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How To Select Regression Testing Tools For Web Applications?

Below are a few of the essential factors that you should consider while selecting a regression testing tool for testing web applications.

#01 Easy to Maintain

Whenever an application change occurs, it is necessary to retrace the affected automated test cases to modify the tests. For example, a change may be associated with several direct and indirect automated tests, not just one. 

Every change must be identified and evaluated to determine whether or not maintenance is required. As the application’s chances increase, so make the maintenance efforts.

The automated Regression Testing tool must be capable of maintaining tests automatically after each change.

The automated regression testing tool must be intelligent enough to auto-heal the tests in the event of a UI change. 

In addition, if necessary, the automated regression testing tool should make it simple to edit/modify the test cases to accommodate the changes.

#02 Prioritizing test cases for regression testing

You may need to re-run only the potentially relevant tests to ensure they continue to pass when you change your source code.

For example, you can prioritize test cases as high, medium, or low priority with automated regression testing tools to communicate the order they must be run effectively. If necessary, you can also change the order of the tests or move the automated tests to a different category.

#03 Should Be Easy To Maintain

Whenever an application change occurs, it is necessary to retrace the affected automated test cases to modify the tests. For example, a change may be associated with several direct and indirect automated tests, not just one. 

Every change must be identified and evaluated to determine whether or not maintenance is required. As the application’s chances increase, so make the maintenance efforts. Automated Regression Testing must be capable of maintaining tests automatically after each change.

The automated regression testing tool must be intelligent enough to auto-heal the tests in the event of a UI change. In addition, if necessary, the automated regression testing tool should make it simple to modify the test cases to accommodate the changes.

#04 Detailed Reports 

This reporting feature is required in regression testing tools to track the complete details of the test cases such as the number of tests executed, test case status, test suite’s visual logs such as videos and screenshots, error logs, etc. 

With the automated regression testing tool, you should be able to make informed decisions by tracking the status of test runs broken down by the operating system, browser version, or resolution configuration.

#05 Allows collaboration

QA teams must review ideal regression test cases and remove duplicates. A team that works well together and communicates effectively about regression risks can make regression testing smoothly.

The automated regression testing tool should enable easy collaboration to share quick updates and actionable feedback so that developers can make the necessary changes.

#06 Parallel execution

Regression Automation Testing tools should be able to schedule your automated tests to run in multiple environments in parallel as many times as you want, saving you time during execution.

It is necessary to identify variables sensitive to different execution environments using other datasets likely to change in different execution environments at each stage, such as development, testing, staging, and production.

#06 Quick Feedback

Regression tests that are automated produce faster results. Quick checks from automated regression testing tools will assist you in making sound release decisions. 

Feedback must be received as soon as possible so that the necessary actions can be taken for a faster turnaround time and quick resolution of issues for the timely release of the software.

#07 Easy Script Creation And Maintenance

It should be relatively simple to create test automation scripts without much effort, mainly when using agile delivery practices that require high velocity. 

You’ll need new regression tests with each sprint, but if you don’t have the right regression testing tool to help you, you’ll spend a lot of time updating your tests as your app under test is updated. 

In addition, you must be able to create automated tests quickly, and your tests must be able to adapt to minor changes so that you do not have to spend extra time reworking your automated regression tests.

#08 Reusability And Scalability

If the code change affects your app under test, you should manage all affected tests easily without rewriting every test script. Your preferred functional regression testing tool should allow you to modularize your tests. 

In addition, you should be able to build a library of scripts or reusable test snippets so that you can quickly create new tests. In addition, you should use data-driven testing strategies that allow you to use a single test across an unlimited number of scenarios.

Conclusion:

The primary goal of functional regression testing is to identify discrepancies between old and new code and ensure that the changes implemented are working as expected. 

In layman’s terms, visual regression testing tools are used to determine whether the application’s previous functionality is still operational and whether new changes have affected it or introduced bugs.

A wide range of web regression testing tools is available on the market today, with a few of the significant tools mentioned in this article. 

If regression analysis is something you want to do for one of your special projects, connecting with an established software testing agency will be the best option because they will provide a comprehensive roadmap based on your specific needs.

TestGrid is a go-to and all-in-one option for creating, executing, and continuously developing automated tests without writing a single line of code. 

It is a built-in tool that makes your testing experience adaptable and straightforward. It is cross-browser and OS version compatible, and it can be set up in the cloud or on-premise with secure access. 

Join Test Grid for a one-stop shop for end-to-end solutions for your automated regression testing needs. 

TestGrid’s outstanding scriptless automation testing is the best choice because it is user-friendly and saves time, money, and resources. With a few exceptions, the testing quality is excellent. 

You can click here to create your free account and start your testing journey with TestGrid or you may head over to our blog section to learn more!