uality assurance – otherwise known as QA – is a key part of software development. It helps you to make sure that your product does what it’s supposed to before it reaches users.

And the way to do this? Through testing – but there are a lot of different things to test. And that means there are a lot of tools on the market. So how do you know which QA testing tools are worth it?

We’ve searched far and wide to bring you six of the very best QA tools on the market, narrowing down the choice for you to help you decide which tools suit your needs, team and budget.

Types of QA testing tools

When it comes to QA testing tools, it’s not one size fits all. Different types of tools test different things – so if you want to thoroughly check your software, you’ll probably need to get your hands on a few different tools.

There are three broad categories of QA tools for testing. These are:

• Test management tools
• Functional testing tools
• Performance testing tools

Test management tools

These are tools that help you to keep on top of the entire testing process. They can support you to do things like:

• Create and manage detailed test plans and scenarios
• Plan and schedule tests
• Execute tests
• Record results against expected outcomes
• Generates reports based on test outcomes
• Help to maintain traceability between test versions

In short, they ensure that tests are performed systematically and the results are captured for further analysis.

Functional testing tools

Functional testing tools make sure that software works according to your specified requirements. It’s a broad term, and functional testing could be broken down even further into different sub-categories of testing, such as:

• Unit testing : When you test the smallest functional unit of code to make sure it works as expected
• Integration testing: To make sure that different modules or components of the application work together correctly
• System testing: When you test the complete system as a whole to check that all components work together as expected
• Regression testing: If you update any code or fix a bug, you then need to test to make sure that nothing has broken due to the changes
• User interface (UI) testing: Checking that the UI behaves as expected across different browsers, devices and screen sizes
• API testing: Validating the functionality of APIs by sending requests and checking the responses to make sure that the backend functions as it should.

Functional testing, then, does what it says on the tin: makes sure that the features and functionalities of an application or software work as expected, and does the tasks it was designed to do.

Performance testing tools

Performance testing looks at how your software performs under different conditions, looking at things like speed, responsiveness and stability. This type of testing can help you to figure out if there are any bottlenecks and makes sure that your application or software can handle user demands.

The types of things performance testing tools look at includes:

• Load testing: To ensure that the software or application performs as expected under normal user loads
• Stress testing: To see what happens when there’s a higher load
• Spike testing: To understand how it deals with sudden increases in traffic

In a nutshell, performance testing is all about how well your software performs under different conditions, to help you make sure that it can handle expected traffic and usage as well as unexpected spikes in load.

Six great quality assurance testing tools

Now you know about some of the main types of QA testing, let’s dive right in and look at the best QA tools out there. To make it easier to find the type of software quality assurance testing tools you need, we’ve broken it down by the three categories outlined above: test management, functional testing, and performance testing tools.

Test management tools

There’s a huge range of test management tools out there – so it can be hard to know which ones are the best, especially when they all seem to do the same thing.

TestRail and Tuskr are among the most popular choices, offering a range of features like test case management, real-time reporting, and seamless integrations with other development tools.

Testrail

TestRail is a web-based test management tool that’s marketed as an end-to-end tool for the entire QA process, helping QA teams to test everything from test management to analytics. Some of the things you can do with TestRail include:

• Test case management: You can create and manage test cases in an organised way, using one centralized test repository to organize, manage and track manual and automated test cases.
• Real-time reporting and dashboard: TestRail offers customizable dashboards that display real-time data on the testing process.
• Integration: Integrates with other tools, such as bug tracking tools (including Jira, GitHub, and Bugzilla) and CI/CD tools (like Jenkins, and GitLab), allowing testers to link test results with bugs or tasks automatically.

There are several options, catering to all team sizes. Prices start from $35/month for one user.

Best features:

• User-friendly: TestRail has an intuitive layout and customizable views, meaning it’s easy for both technical and non-technical users to use.
• Version control: It tracks changes in test cases over time, making it easier to manage and update tests during the software development lifecycle.
• Reporting: TestRail generates real-time reports that track key testing metrics like pass/fail rates, test case execution status, and defect trends so users can see at a glance how things are progressing.

Limitations:

• Cost: Subscription costs are fairly high, particularly for enterprise teams.
• Missing features: No tool can do it all, but there are some features absent from TestRail, such as defect tracking and management.

Tuskr

Like TestRail, Tuskr pitches itself as a complete test management tool. It’s a cloud-based test management tool that aims to streamline the testing process with a simple-to-use interface. Some of the features include:

• Centralized hub: Tuskr offers a single platform from which you can manage both manual and automated tests from a single platform, helping teams to organize test cases and track progress without switching between tools or platforms.
• Test case writing: The tool tries to simplify test case creation, allowing Spreadsheet import of test cases including custom fields, bulk edits, and the addition of images.
• Visual progress monitoring: Tuskr includes visual charts and dashboards to to track progress at a glance.
• Resource optimization: The tool encourages transparency between team members, data on over- and under-utilized testers, and planned versus actual workload.

Best features:

• User friendly: The UI is intuitive and easy to use, even for the less technical members of your team.
• WYSIWYG editor: A test case editor with rich-text formatting, it’s quick and easy to use.
• Parallel testing: This feature allows the team to run different tests at the same time.

Limitations:

• Subscription restrictions: Tuskr offers a free version but some features are limited. And with the paid versions, there’s a minimum number of users, which could be a problem for small teams.
• Lack of customization: There are limitations in customizing the system to fit specific workflows.

Functional testing tools

The best QA tools when it comes to functional testing are easy to use and encourage collaboration between team members. Two popular choices are Selenium and Cucumber, detailed below. But if you have a good test management tool, you may not need a separate functional testing tool – many can support both kinds of testing.

Selenium

Selenium is one of the most widely used testing tools. It’s an open-source automation tool that automates browsers. It’s commonly used for testing web applications, such as user workflows, form submissions, and UI behaviors across different platforms.

There are three different options to choose from when it comes to Selenium:

• Selenium WebDriver: This is best for people who want to create scripts to test functions or make sure that old features still work (regression tests). These scripts can run on different operating systems and browsers, like Chrome and Firefox, making it easy for anyone to use.
• Selenium IDE: This is a browser plugin that makes it easy to create automated tests through a record and playback feature, helping users to record, edit and debug test cases without the need for coding skills.
• Selenium Grid: If you want to run tests across multiple machines and browsers at the same time, then Selenium Grid is the one for you.

Best features:

• Cross-browser compatibility: Supports multiple browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, etc.) for more comprehensive testing.
• Language flexibility: Supports multiple programming languages, including Java, Python, C#, and JavaScript.
• Open-source and free: Selenium is free to use, making it a cost-effective solution for automation.

Limitations:

• Steep learning curve: Other than Selenium IDE, it requires programming knowledge, making it less beginner-friendly.
• No built-in reporting: Selenium lacks integrated reporting features.

Cucumber

Cucumber is a popular tool for Behavior-Driven Development (BDD). We know, that’s a mouthful, but the whole point of BDD is to make things easier. It’s a software development methodology that improves collaboration between developers, testers and business stakeholders, and it encourages the use of simple, clear language to describe software behaviour. That means that everyone can understand and feed into the development process, no matter their level of technical knowledge.

So, back to Cucumber. It’s mostly used for checking that software behaves as expected from the user's perspective. That could include things like testing whether a user can successfully log in, or what happens when you use the search function on the site.

There are two versions available: Open Source and Pro. The open source version is the basic framework for Cucumber, while Cucumber Pro includes collaboration and reporting features, which can make it easier to track and visualise test results.

Best features:

• Improved collaboration: Encourages team-wide involvement in the development process.
• Anyone can write scripts: Cucumber uses its own simple language, Gherkin, which can be written by anyone, with any level of technical expertise.
• Supports various programming languages: However, it also supports multiple languages.
• Clear reporting: It’s easy to track test coverage and ensure that all requirements are met, particularly with the Pro version.

Limitations

• Given-When-Then framework: The specific framework Cucumber uses can be verbose, especially in large projects with many complex scenarios, making it hard to read.
• Can be slow: Cucumber tests can be slow to run – frustrating when you want to run tests and get results quickly.

Performance testing tools

Performance testing tools help evaluate how well applications, systems, and networks perform under various levels of user traffic. LoadRunner and Percy are two widely used tools, each designed to address different aspects of performance testing.

LoadRunner

LoadRunner is popular QA testing software that’s used to check how an application performs under load – in other words, it measures how well applications, systems, and networks perform when a lot of people use them at once.

It does that by simulating fake users (known as ‘virtual users’) to see how the system handles different levels of traffic. It’s usually used by developers and QA teams for load testing – which is when performance during normal traffic levels are checked – and stress testing, which is a test to see how the system behaves when there is a huge amount of traffic.

This type of testing using LoadRunners can help QA teams to spot problems like slow page load times, system lags and crashes. There are several different options available:

• LoadRunner Cloud: A cloud-based performance testing tool that allows teams to simulate millions of virtual users.
• LoadRunner Professional: An on-premises version, designed for businesses where the test team is in the same location as the application being tested.
• LoadRunner Enterprise: This can be deployed on both on-premises infrastructure or in the cloud, depending on your needs/

Best features:

• Comprehensive testing ability: It can test a wide variety of application types, including web, mobile, and enterprise applications.
• Real-time monitoring: This feature helps teams track the performance of their system during tests.
• Huge scalability: LoadRunner Cloud allows you to simulate up to 5,000,000 users to thoroughly test loads.

Limitations

• Cost: LoadRunner is an enterprise tool, so the cost isn’t insignificant, which may be prohibitive for smaller teams.
• Steep learning curve: The system can be difficult to learn, as users need scripting knowledge to create, update, and tune scripts.

Percy by BrowserStack

Percy is a visual testing and review platform that’s designed to help teams spot any visual changes in web applications, across different browsers and devices – helping QA teams to find and fix any visual bugs before their users.

Key features of Percy include:

• Automated visual testing: The tool captures screenshots of web pages and compares them to baseline images to highlight any differences between the two.
• Cross-browser and cross-device testing: You can test across different browsers and devices to ensure they’re all consistent and there’s no mistake when switching between screen sizes.
• Dynamic content testing: Percy tests for dynamic components as well as static elements.
• Automatic diff matching: Percy automatically matches and groups screenshots that have the same visual change, saving you time and effort while reviewing builds.

Best features:

• Improve collaboration: Percy can help improve collaboration between developers, designers, and QA teams.
• AI-powered: Percy uses advanced algorithms to detect even the smallest visual differences, improving the accuracy of tests.
• Fast feedback loops: Percy automatically tests your UI across browsers and screens, so you can work at pace to correct mistakes.

Limitations:

• Cost: Percy offers a free plan, but for larger teams or those with lots to test, the paid subscription can be pricey.
• Slower for complex pages: Percy can be slower when it comes to testing dynamic content or complex elements.
• Slow Processing for Complex Pages: For web applications that contain complex UI elements or extensive dynamic content (like SPAs), Percy can have slower rendering and processing times.

How to choose the QA testing tool for you

So that’s our QA tools list – now it’s over to you. How do you know which of the many tools out there are the right ones for you?

Consider your testing needs

First things first, what type of testing do you need to do? Do you need to organise and run test cases? Do you want to check how your software performs under heavy traffic? Getting clear on your testing requirements is the first step to choosing a tool that’s right for the job.

Think about your team’s skills

Some tools are easier to use than others. Are your team good at coding – or do you need a tool that’s designed with non-technical team members in mind?

Integration with other tools

Many QA tools integrate with other software such as Jira, GitHub, or CI/CD pipelines. If that’s something you need, make sure the tool you choose will easily connect with your existing tools to make everything more efficient.

Scalability

Is your team going to grow in the future, or do you need to be able to run large-scale tests? Look at how much each tool can handle before making a decision.

Budget

What can you afford? Testing tools can be expensive, so you may want to look for free subscriptions as well as lower-cost options if you’re working with a small budget.

Manual or automated

Do you want to run manual tests only, or do your tools need to be able to handle automated tests? That’ll affect your decision as to whether you go for QA manual testing tools or ones that can run automated tests too.

Community and support

Does the tool come with robust support? This is especially important if your team is non-technical, as you may need more help and support.

Customization and flexibility

Some tools offer more flexibility in how they can be adapted to your specific workflows. Think about whether you need to be able to tailor your experience or if you’re happy to use an out-of-the-box package.

Collaboration features

Many modern testing platforms allow for easier communication between different roles. This can lead to faster problem-solving and more efficient workflows so it’s worth considering whether it’s something you need.

Trial periods and demos

Many tools offer free trials or product demos. Don’t buy blind – test out different tools to get a feel for how they work before you commit.

Testpad for speedy test management and functional testing

There are a lot of different QA testing tools out there, doing every type of testing under the sun. But there is one more QA testing tool we haven’t mentioned yet: our tool, Testpad. It’s a modern functional testing and test management tool that uses a simple checklist approach – perfect for teams who want to test, and test quickly.

Key features include:

• Intuitive interface: Testpad uses a checklist-based system that’s easy to learn – even for non-technical users.
• Guest users: You can invite guests to run tests without a login – and without the need to pay for extra licenses.
• Fast reporting: Instant reports that are easy to read and understand at a glance.

You may need a suite of other QA tools depending on your testing needs, but if you want to make your test case management and functional testing quick and easy, Testpad could be the tool for you. Why not try the 30-day free trial to see if it fits your test case needs?

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