Advantages and disadvantages of Selenium

Many organizations in the web application development industry prefer Selenium as their primary tool for automated testing. The main reason is that Selenium is an efficient and useful tool. And today we will talk about the advantages and disadvantages of Selenium.

Advantages of Selenium Testing

• Mobile Testing Option. In the age of cell phones and mobile devices, Selenium has met the needs of the market. This open-source Software offers automated testing for mobile devices through Appium and Selendroid. And most importantly, both of these open-source tools have great community support similar to Selenium’s other products.

• Selenium prides itself on being an open-source software. Anyone can download and learn how to use Selenium. As a result, this aspect has attracted many companies and testers to Selenium. In addition, a community of expert automation testers has developed around Selenium. This is undoubtedly a large component of its continued success.

• Language, browser, and OS support. Selenium’s most popular features are its language, browser, and OS support. They have attracted many testers who must work between languages, browsers and operating systems. Automation testers can be sure that their software is compatible with Selenium. Regardless of what language it is written in or what browser and OS it is intended for.

Disadvantages of Selenium Testing

• No Tech Support. Though Selenium has a huge community of automation engineers, it does not offer any support from its team. This mean that If you have a question on how to use Selenium or need to do a unique and difficult test, you get a list of companies that can help you work through that process. By contacting a consulting company instead of the Selenium community, any help you receive is third-party and not as direct as a consultation from the product creators.

• No Test Results. This means that reports are not provided automatically after the test is completed. But testers, developers, and project managers need to know the test results. Selenium requires you to take a screenshot of a test when it fails, instead of providing visual results on how and why a test has failed. While many of Selenium’s competitors offer clear results which provide information about the functionality of a software. In other words, to stay competitive in the tech industry, Selenium should add auto-generated test results to its portfolio.

• No Codeless Testing. Becoming a skilled Selenium automation engineer requires dedication. This is due to the fact that unlike other tools such as Ranorex or TestComplete, it does not provide codeless testing. Without codeless testing, programmers need to know a computer language to use Selenium. This feature is a drawback to many tech startups but does not inhibit larger companies from using Selenium.

• Limited Browser Functionality. Though Selenium is compatible with multiple browsers, it work best with Firefox. Testers who have tried to use other browsers have reported technical difficulties. Therefore, the cross-browser compatibility, that Selenium boasts, does not always function as perfectly as would be expected.