Top 15 Free Software Testing Tools Which Make Tester’s Life Easier
Software testing tools help to manage testing processes and make bugs and failures gathering more efficient and optimized. At TestFort, we use different QA tools for automated testing and manual testing more than 18 years and prove that the free ones can be as efficient as the paid ones. In this mini-overview, we want to go deeper to explore most effective free QA tools. We use them often and can truly say, these ones make our work easier and increase overall team productivity. This list contains only free and open-source tools which are useful for testing processes depending on the tasks, platforms, and test cases.
1. Xenu’s Link Sleuth
Xenu’s link Sleuth is a great free testing tool for checking links, identifying the broken ones. It was named the fastest link-checking software by industry authorities and QA engineers. Apart from checking for broken links, the tool provides a much broader functionality, which is useful primarily for website optimization. At the moment, Xenu provides the sitemap, detects and reports redirected URLs, finds non-unique page titles, finds images with missing ‘alt’ attribute, etc.
For testers is also available one more useful Xenu’s feature – searching for pages with a long response. Of course, this does not in any way replace load and performance testing, but can provide some useful information about the response optimization. Xenu has a simple and accurate interface. It increases testers productivity and allows them to make the work faster.
2. Clip2net
Clip2net is a must-have free testing tool for testers. It allows them to make quick and easy capturing as well as storing and sharing screenshots which is a useful feature during Skype calls or when it is necessary to show some detected bug to coworkers. The simple image editor with arrows and notes is really essential when you need to highlight some points. Available for Android and iPad. Lite and Pro versions provide greater possibilities, such as bigger storage space, longer storage time and others.
3. PicPick
PicPick is a multifunction free QA tool that allows QA engineers capturing screenshots, editing images, picking colors, and provides a broad range of graphic design accessories. This is a useful tool when testers work with UI/UX elements. It allows for quick checking pixel color instead of applying to code and digging in .css file.
4. Firebug
Firebug is integrated to Mozilla Firefox free testing tool which provides great debugging, editing, and many other possibilities. This is especially helpful for beginners, who want to look through the code and explore what the server returns. When writing test cases, Firebug can name elements if needed, allows testers to identify elements id, and provide the opportunity to easily describe bugs and system crashes.
5. Android SDK: DDMS (Dalvik Debug Monitor Server)
This is a powerful free QA tool for Android debugging. DDMS is integrated to Android SDK and ships in the tools/directory of the SDK. Designed primarily for programmers, this tool is also useful for QA engineers. It allows testers to collect logs and capturing screenshots on Android devices, this way increases their productivity and bug returns.
6. Selenium IDE
At TestFort, we use this free testing tool to generate locators of web elements fast and without additional efforts. This powerful Firefox extension is really helpful in test automation. You can use this tool also for finding and testing already generated locators, which you use in your automated tests, for checking XPath existence on the page, testing the work of Selenium methods with them.
7. Sikuli
Sikuli is an image-based free automation testing tool, which takes a visual approach to elements on your desktop. Identifying how buttons, shortcuts, or links look like, the tool recognizes it and captures some part of the screen for active area. Sikuli is great for testing desktop applications and when you cannot easily access GUI’s source code.
8. Apache JMeter
JMeter is a load free testing tool designed initially for web applications. It allows QAs measuring software performance both on static and dynamic resources. Furthermore, this tool can be used for writing scripts for continuous integration which is helpful while applying such kind of testing.
9. Jenkins
Jenkins is a perfect free QA tool for continuous integration. We use it all the time: when some build is released, the tests start running automatically. What we like about Jenkins is the active community support and a great number of plugins which empower the development and testing processes.
10. Appium
We’ve chosen Appium among several analogs for mobile automation mostly. This free testing tool supports both iOS and Android native and hybrid apps. The thing we’ve appreciated the most is its dynamic development and continuous improvement. New features appear frequently. This includes as management features improvement and its debugging possibilities.
11. Robotium
Another free testing tool for mobile automation Robotium is targeting Android only. It is a simple and stable framework, which requires minimal time and knowledge. Its smooth integration with Maven, Gradle, or Ant allows testers run tests as part of continuous integration.
12. Testlink
The tool is designed for test documentation management, such as test cases, and test suits. It provides a big detailed report data, which can be managed without additional efforts. It has an intuitive and friendly interface and allows testers sort the reports by sections, which is really useful on big and complicated projects.
13. iTools
This free QA tool is a great analog to iTunes, which simplifies the work with iOS devices significantly. It has a simple interface and all the necessary features to make the work with iOS devices more efficient and productive for both testers and their managers.
14. Github
This is a public cloud repository, which provides convenient code management. Multiple users can make changes to the code, comment on lines, or report bugs. When a development team includes a lot of coworkers, Github helps to optimize the work processes, code integration, and synchronization.
15. Maven
Maven is a project management free QA tool which makes it easy to work with Java projects. Maven has its own repository where the libraries are stored. It decreases the project size significantly when developers pass it to testers and vice versa. The libraries are downloaded locally and testers don’t need to look for new versions through the Internet to update them.
At TestFort, we use only proven QA testing tools both free and paid. First of all, we apply all their capabilities to cover our main goal – to ensure the highest quality of every software we test. We have 250 physical devices at our disposal and then we can cover even the most sophisticated test cases. Contact our team, we are here to provide you with the supreme testing services at all stages of application development.
