4 Load Testing Types: Which One Should You Choose?

Some things work together to ensure the overall success of every application and system deployed in the market.

Nobody enjoys using software or systems that crash quickly and too often, and when this happens with any application, we see users leave for a better alternative.

This is why ensuring that a system performs optimally is a very crucial step in product development. And one way to do this is to run load testing repeatedly and regularly.

Load testing lets you test out an application and confirm its performance with simulated events and scenarios before deploying it to the general public.

And while there are several types of load testing, it is important to know how to choose the best one for you. In the next few sections, we provide more info about the different types of load testing to help you understand how to choose the best one.

What Is Load Testing?

To perform load testing is to create criteria and scenarios, then generate traffic and load those onto a system to see how well it handles those simulated traffic loads.

The simulation is done to resemble actual life events to help determine the system’s capacity before it is launched.

This will then help identify bottlenecks that would be promptly fixed to ensure stability and smooth functioning of the application or system.

When Is Load Testing Used?

Load testing is used in several instances during the development of an application, and below are some of the most common stages where it is used.

  1. Testing System Confidence

When it comes to increasing confidence in an application or software, the most effective way is to run repeated load tests. The better the product performs under various conditions, the higher the confidence.

Once the confidence is high enough, the product can be deployed without fear or doubt.

  1. Determining Performance

To understand how well a product will perform when exposed to regular traffic by so many users, the product first needs to be tested with simulated traffic.

Load testing is used to see the maximum capacity of the product and how well it performs different tasks while accommodating users from different locations and tools.

  1. Measuring Scalability

Every business wants to grow with time, and this growth should be reflected in all their products and services.

As the business grows, the number of users on their products will also increase. This is why every product sent into the market must embody the ability also to scale up to handle more users.

Running a load test can help you see if the product is scalable or not and what can be done to improve this important feature.

4 Types of Load Testing

There are several types of load testing, but we will look at the most important four, which are:

  1. Manual Load Testing

This is the simplest form of load testing that involves simply creating traffic load without the help of any tool or software and sending that manually generated traffic repeatedly onto the system.

Then the results are also manually collated and measured to confirm performance.

While this is simple and affordable, it has so many demerits that the process is almost considered ineffective.

For instance, it does not produce any repeatable results, and even measuring results is almost overwhelming.

It is also tough to coordinate repeatedly.

  1. In-House Testing Tools

The best type of load testing is an automated one that uses tools and sophisticated software from start to finish.

One type of automated load testing is where an organization builds, owns, and manages its tool within the company.

The tool is held within the organization, and the experts who operate it are members of the company.

This has the advantage of being easily accessible by the company, but it may cost extra if you need to hire more hands to handle the tools or spend more on maintaining the tools.

  1. Open Source Testing Tools

This is another type of automated testing, and the tools are still built and held within the organization as in the type above.

But here, the tools are free and open-sourced, which means you can use them without breaching any copyright rules.

The downside here is that the tools may not be as sophisticated as other automated tools. Yet you can use it if yours is small, simple, basic, needs.

  1. Licensed Load Testing Tools

The last type of automated testing we will be considering is the testing done with sophisticated and licensed tools built, owned, and managed by a third-party company. Like all automated testing, this works automatically to generate and simulate an enormous amount of virtual users, but it differs in that another company manages it.

The advantage of this is that it takes the need for maintenance and hiring experts out of your hands.

And can be used when you want all the perks of using automated tools without spending money on maintaining the tools.

Conclusion

Using load testing will help you determine a system’s performance under various conditions; identify bottlenecks, scalability, stability, and maximum capacity.

But to properly do it, you must understand the different types of load testing to decide which to choose.