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Selenium vs Testcomplete: A Quick Comparison
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Test automation is one of the most cost-effective and time-saving methods to test software products with long maintenance cycles. TestComplete and Selenium are the two most important automation testing tools which provide an open platform for you to easily build continuous testing frameworks to test non-stop with a lightweight execution engine and distributed testing.
Let’s dive deeper and understand these popular automated testing toolsets with their differences.
1. TestComplete
TestComplete is an Automated UI Testing Tool developed by SmartBear Software. TestComplete has the ability to create automated functional tests for desktop, web, and mobile applications. It also has native support for Behavioral Driven Development (BDD).
This tool is said to be very easy to use with Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is fast and easy to create, maintain, and execute functional tests which will increase test coverage and ensure you ship high-quality, battle-tested software.
It has unmatched hybrid object recognition engine with artificial intelligence. Its object recognition combines property-based and AI-powered visual recognition to find dynamic UI elements quickly, easily, and accurately.
It is also called a Script or Scriptless tool. The reason behind this is that if you want to script, you can presently do so in seven different languages (JavaScript, Python, VBScript, Jscript, DelphiScript, C#, and C+). If you do not want to script, then you can use its record and play feature.
It is a paid tool by SmartBear. You can bundle options or customize your order. You can view its price here.
Brief History:-
TestComplete was developed in 1999 by AutomatedQA which is currently based in Somerville, Massachusetts. The current stable version of TestComplete is 14.0 which was launched in January 2019. SmartBear Software is one of the subsidiary companies of AutomatedQA corp.
Career Aspects:-
It is a highly paid tool which makes it difficult for many organisations to use it. They provide a 30 days free trial. Some good product-based companies use this tool. There are fewer job openings on this tool currently. It is always difficult to learn a paid tool on your own. Although it is a very powerful tool, it is not widely used. TestComplete resources are paid more. It will have less career growth as this tool has everything inbuilt in it and can drastically reduce the number of resources needed to write automated tests.
If you are planning to start your career in TestComplete then taking up Automation Testing using Testcomplete Training will be an added advantage.
Cons of TestComplete:-
- License cost is high.
- Only supports Windows.
- No much help available through open communities.
- Not easy to start with official documentation
- The tool has stability issues
- Cheaper than QTP but not as powerful and stable as QTP
2. Selenium:
Selenium is a suite of tools to automate web browsers which means it can be used to automate an only web-based application. The more precisely only front end of a web application across different browsers and platforms. It can be used with many programming languages and testing frameworks.
Different tools in Selenium:-
Selenium consists of four tools:-
- Selenium IDE
- Selenium RC
- Selenium WebDriver
- Selenium Grid.
Currently, Selenium 4 is about to launch and the alpha version is already launched as of this article is being written.
History of Selenium:-
Selenium was developed by Jason Huggins in 2004 at ThoughtWorks in Chicago. Later it was made open source and it has become a more powerful and popular tool for web application automation.
Career Aspects:-
Selenium is an open source tool which increases its popularity in organisations which are mainly service based. Its flexibility of integration with major programming language makes it more adaptable.
Selenium has more future growth and a higher number of job openings. You can easily learn and practice as so many free online tutorials and help communities are available. Also, you can take up Selenium training to advance your career.
Let’s Compare TestComplete and Selenium :-
As we have seen a basic introduction about TestComplete and Selenium, you must be confused about which of these tools is the best and how you can select a tool which properly suits your requirements. Don’t worry, we will compare both tools here so that it could solve your problem.
| Comparison Basis | TestComplete | Selenium |
|---|---|---|
| Software Type | It is a Windows-based tool. TestComplete is essentially Windows-based application and thus cannot run on Linux/Unix systems. | It is a set of APIs which can be used on at least three major operating systems:- Windows, Linux, and Mac. |
| Cost | It is a highly paid tool. You can bundle options or customize your order. You can view its price here. | Open Source/Free tool. You can download and use it for free. You can download it from here. |
| Developed By | SmartBear Software (A subsidiary of AutomatedQA) | Initially developed by ThoughtWorks later made as open source. |
| Application Type | It supports desktop, web, and mobile application | Selenium can be used only for Web-based applications. However, WebDriver based tool called Appium can be used for mobile applications. |
| Application Layer | TestComplete can be used to automate front end and API of the application. | Selenium can be used to test only the front end or interface layer of a Web Application. |
| Supported Languages | It supports seven different languages including JavaScript, Python, VBScript, Jscript, DelphiScript, C#, and C+ | Java, C#, Ruby, Python, Perl Javascript, R, etc. |
| Supported Browsers | Chrome, Firefox, IE, Edge | IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, Headless browsers |
| Supported Operating Systems | Only Microsoft Windows | It supports Microsoft Windows, Apple OS X, Linux |
| Supported IDE | Supports only inbuilt TestComplete IDE | Eclipse, Intellij and any other IDE which supports Java |
| Supported Technology | You can test web applications developed with any programming language, server-side technology, and frameworks including HTML, DHTML, CSS, JavaScript, HTML5, Web Components (Shadow DOM and Custom Elements), AngularJS, ASP, ASP.NET (including Web Pages, Web Forms and MVC), Ajax, Backbone.js, CGI, JavaServer Pages (JSP), PHP Ruby on Rails. | Selenium struggles while automating SAP, Salesforce, mainframe applications. |
| Supported Testing Types | Functional (or GUI) Testing, Regression testing, Unit testing, Keyword testing, Web Testing, Mobile application testing, Distributed Testing, Functional and load testing of web services, Coverage Testing, Data-Driven Testing, Manual Testing | Functional (or GUI) Testing, Regression testing, Unit testing, Keyword testing, Web Testing, Data-Driven Testing |
| Object Recognition Engine | It has an unmatched Object Recognition Engine now including Artificial Intelligence. | There is no such feature provided by Selenium. |
| Record and Play Feature | You can easily build automated GUI tests using the script-free record-and-replay function in TestComplete. | Selenium IDE provides Record and Play GUI tests only for Web-based applications on Chrome and Firefox browsers only. |
| Built-In Framework | TestComplete has several built-in sample projects for desktop, web, and mobile test automation, to help you get up and running quicker than ever before. | Selenium has no built-in framework ready to use. |
| Test Report | With TestComplete, you can get real-time information on the progress and status of your desktop, mobile, or web functional GUI tests from a single interface. The tool enables you to share images, videos, or detailed logs that you captured during test execution, or even export your logs in multiple formats such as JUnit, HTML or MHT, to easily share details with other team members. | Selenium needs to be integrated reporting tools to generate test reports. |
| Integration | Selenium can be easily integrated with TestComplete which can be integrated with many third-party tools. | Selenium needs to be integrated with many other tools to make a powerful framework. |
| Technical Skills | TestComplete is best suited for both Technical and Non-technical resources. | You must be good in the programming language to start working with Selenium. |
| Test Development and Execution Time | It saves a lot of test execution time as it has a powerful record and playback feature, AI-based object recognition, scriptless test creation, etc. | You need to spend a lot of time in creating test scripts. Chances of creating faly test cases are more. You need good programming skills to write better tests using Selenium. |
| Test Script Maintenance | Maintenance is easier compared to Selenium. | Maintenance becomes challenging with growing test scripts. |
| Support | Since it is a paid tool, so SmartBear provides good and proper support. | Since it is an open source tool, no professional support is provided. But Selenium has a larger community volunteer. |
| Career Growth | Fewer jobs, limited scope | More jobs, more growth |
| Official Website | https://smartbear.com/product/testcomplete/overview/ | https://www.selenium.dev/ |
Conclusion:-
TestComplete is a script-less tool which does not require mandatory programming skills to start with. It is very easy to use and helps in creating robust scripts. It is much more powerful and feature-rich compared to Selenium. But the cost of TestComplete is higher and companies go for open-source tools like Selenium. Selenium has more career growth and learning opportunities as you need to be good at programming. TestComplete has fewer job openings as like Selenium, you do not need more resources in a project.
So TestComplete is best suited for an average-skilled team and restrict timeline projects for faster creation of test scripts. Project budget can be adjusted by reducing the number of resources needed.
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