6 Alternatives to Selenium to Complete Your Testing

Although Selenium is the most known framework for test automation, there are other Selenium alternatives.

These Selenium alternatives promise to solve the bottlenecks that arise when using Selenium alone, whether it's making automated testing more efficient and accessible, or catering to other demands that Selenium does not handle.

Selenium is a lightweight and portable software testing tool designed primarily for web application testing. It functions as a browser automation API (Application Program Interface). Selenium is a popular free and open-source tool for automating web application testing across several browsers and platforms.

Selenium is a web application testing framework that is used for functional and regression testing. To create the reasoning behind the test scripts, Selenium supports a variety of programming and scripting languages such as Java, Ruby, Perl, PHP, and Python.

Selenium Pros and Cons

We already took a close look to Selenium Pros and Cons in a previous post, but to name a few, these are the following pro features or advantages when considering Selenium:

• Because Selenium is an open-source testing tool, there are no license fees for users.
• Selenium is a cross-platform testing tool that works with several browsers.
• Users using Selenium may run tests on any operating system, including Android, Windows, Mac, iOS, and Linux.
• Selenium may be used with a variety of browsers, including Safari, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, and Opera.
• Selenium may be connected with other frameworks such as JUnit, TestNG, and NUnit to create reports and manage test cases.

In the other hand, here are some of Selenium's Cons or disadvantages to consider:

• Only web apps may be tested using Selenium. It is not appropriate for testing desktop, mobile, or standalone apps.
• Because it is an open-source product, there is no constant nominal or technical support from any team.
• Selenium tests are unstable. If new versions of Selenium libraries are published to address a problem, the previous test may be disrupted or rendered unstable.
• Selenium's test maintenance is difficult due to its low-level API. It does not aid or support the developer with error capture, page screenshots, or element locators.
• Even though Selenium allows users to conduct parallel tests on several machines, this setup requires quite a bit of additional expertise, without which the tests take much too long to run.
• Testing on pictures is not possible with Selenium.

Selenium Testing Framework Top Alternatives

If you're looking for a Selenium alternative, here are 6 of the most popular options to consider:

1- Cypress

Cypress is an open-source automation system that has acquired popularity as alternative of Selenium with a number of capabilities that complement existing development tools. Furthermore, no setup is required to install Cypress.

Cypress has gained popularity as a Selenium-alternative test automation framework. Cypress is a developer-focused framework with quick scalability, solid documentation, and a growing community. While Cypress offers fewer connectors than Selenium, it provides for a simpler execution environment setup.

Although Cypress is a Selenium substitute, the two frameworks are not necessarily exclusive. Cypress may also be used to enhance current Selenium scripts and increase overall test coverage and stability.

TestQuality can integrate with Cypress Test Automation Framework by Creating a Test Run in Cypress and send Cypress Test Results to TestQuality Test Management Tool which seamless integrates with GitHub or Jira and your CI/CD DevOps workflow.

TestQuality has all the test management capabilities you need for creating, maintaining, organizing, and running tests in Cypress, but TestQuality is different from other test management tools in that it is a Test Management Case built for GitHub and Jira workflows and designed to be integrated with virtually all unit testing tools and test automation frameworks like Cypress.

TestQuality also includes features to create and organize Cypress test cases in a global test repository - with preconditions, steps, attachments, and more. All this, in a collaborative testing environment seamlessly integrated with your CI/CD DevOps workflow with powerful live analytics to help you to identify the quality of your testing effort, test coverage, high value tests, unreliable tests, and release readiness.

In this video, we cover an example of a Test Run in Cypress and its integration with TestQuality where we include: initial TestQuality setup and project creation with integration with GitHub repository, creation of a test in TestQuality and a run in Cypress, examination of the run result file. How to upload a XML file to TestQuality with the Command Line Interface. Connecting CLI to TestQuality and the creation of an script for CI/CD and run Continuous Integration script and upload TestQuality Integration.

Video Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro and create project
01:20 - Create a Test in TestQuality
01:55 - Create a Run in Cypress
05:55 - Examine Run result file
06:05 - Upload XML file to TestQuality
07:55 - Upload XML via CLI
10:25 - Connect CLI to TestQuality
11:10 - Integration Personal Access Token
13:40 - Create script for CI/CD
15:55 - Run CI script and Upload TestQuality Integration

• TestQuality CLI GitHub repository: https://github.com/BitModern/testQualityCli

• Compiled Commands can be downloaded from: http://cli.testquality.com

• Cypress examples repository: https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress-example-kitchensink

• TestQuality Docs - GitHub Integrations: https://doc.testquality.com/administration/integration_config

Sign Up for a Free Trial and add TestQuality to your workflow today!

2- Cucumber

Cucumber is another traditional Selenium substitute, but there are some significant differences between the two systems. Cucumber is an automation tool for behavior-driven development (BDD), whereas Selenium is an automation tool for web apps.

Furthermore, Cucumber runs acceptance tests while Selenium does UI tests.
Cucumber is likely to be preferred by business testers over Selenium because it allows you to create test scenarios in plain English using a scripting language called Gherkin. Using Gherkin instead of code simplifies the process of creating test scripts since anyone, regardless of testing expertise, can read, create, and comprehend the scripts.

Cucumber was originally created in the Ruby programming language, but it currently supports a variety of additional computer languages, including Java and JavaScript.

[Related Blog post > What is Gherkin and How Do You Write Gherkin Tests?]

3- Robot Framework

The Robot Framework is a free and open-source test automation framework alternative to Selenium primarely for acceptance test-driven development (ATDD) and acceptance testing. Robot Framework is a standard that employs a keyword-driven and behavior-driven testing strategy. In our TestQuality Blog, we alreafy offered a comparison of two Selenium best alternatives: Robot Framework and Katalon Studio.

Robot Framework may be used as an automation solution for online and mobile test automation by testers and developers using the keyword-driven approach.

The following advantages makes Robot Framework a rather interesting alternative to Selenium:

• Robot Framework is considerably easier to use than Selenium since the test scripts are written in English rather than code.
• Robot Framework is a collection of third-party libraries, integration tools, and solid functionality.
• Selenium is a library, whereas Robot Framework is an automation framework that utilises other libraries.
• Robot Framework was originally built in Python, however the most recent versions also utilize Java.
• Robot Framework is not bound by technology, application, platform, or operating system. Generic test libraries, high-level design, separate test data editor, clear reports, extensive logs, and other features of Robot Framework make it a dominating framework.

4- Katalon Studio

Katalon Studio as another alternative to Selenium is a full cross-platform test automation solution for testing Web, Mobile, API, and Desktop apps.

Katalon Studio, built on top of the Selenium and Appium frameworks, revolutionizes the usage of open-source test automation frameworks by removing technical difficulties, allowing testers to rapidly set up, design, execute, report, and manage automated tests.

These advantages makes Kobiton's Katalon Studio as a relevant alternative to Selenium:

• Katalon Studio offers a Quick Setup: This Test automation framework has a user-friendly interface that allows for quick and easy test environment setup. Katalon Studio's pre-built templates and test scripts make it simple for testers to use.
• Katalon Studio provides cross-platform testing on practically all operating systems, as well as several online and mobile platforms.
• Katalon Studio is Ease of Use: With a short learning curve, Katalon Studio is appropriate for testers with no coding experience. It comes with a pre-built framework, a built-in recorder, and specified test methods, allowing users to get started quickly.
• Katalon S. offers Flexible Modes: The recording and keyword capabilities are beneficial for non-technical testers when creating new test cases. It provides a productive IDE to develop tests with scripting techniques for experienced testers with complex demands.
• Seamless CI/CD Integration: Katalon enables native plugins for a variety of integrations, including SDLC and CI/CD management, team collaboration, and many others.

5- Protactor

Protractor is another open-source Selenium alternative designed primarily for testing Angular web applications. Protractor runs end-to-end tests in JavaScript by interacting with the application as a user. As a WebDriverJS wrapper, Protractor supports frameworks such as Cucumber, Mocha, and Jasmine for writing test suites.

Aside from being easier to use in terms of programming language, Protractor is also said to be easier to use than Selenium for Angular apps. It is also built on JavaScript Selenium WebDriver, so your team will gain all of Selenium WebDriver's features in addition to Protractor's other advantages.

• Protractor offers what it is called 'Automatic Waiting' functionality, which makes the test to automatically execute the next step without waiting for the webpage and test to sync. 
• Because Protractor is only available in one language, users should be familiar with JavaScript.
• Protractor can also run against your Selenium servers, so you can use it as a supplement to Selenium if you run a lot of Selenium tests.

6 - Watir

Watir is an abbreviation for Web Application Testing in Ruby. Watir is an open-source Ruby library for web browser automation.

Watir as an alternative to Selenium Test Automation framework operates a variety of browsers, including Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome, in the same manner as humans use. It offers a full-featured contemporary scripting language that makes building and maintaining test scripts simple.

In conclusion

As we have seen, there are several Selenium alternatives available for QA Testers and software developers. Each choice has advantages and disadvantages, and some can even be used in conjunction with Selenium.

Choosing the correct tool or framework for your company is dependent on the team's objectives, skill set, scope to test, and other product-specific concerns.

Some of these tools offers a Free Trial option that when making a decision, it's also a good idea to put these tools to the test along with a Test Management tool such as TestQuality. With end-to-end continuous testing support, TestQuality improves testing with Selenium and many Selenium alternatives and it keeps your testing status in sync with defects/issues in Jira and GitHub.

TestQuality can simplify test case creation and organization, it offers a very competitive price but it is free when used with GitHub free repositories providing Rich and flexible reporting that can help you to visualize and understand where you and your dev or QA Team are at in your project's quality lifecycle. But also look for analytics that can help identify the quality and effectiveness of your test cases and testing efforts to ensure you're building and executing the most effective tests for your efforts.