Interested in pros and cons of the toolset?
What to watch for (gothcas)?
How to make the most of it?
Looking at introducing it into our wider test tools, how does it scale?
What other tools compliment it well?
Interested in pros and cons of the toolset?
What to watch for (gothcas)?
How to make the most of it?
Looking at introducing it into our wider test tools, how does it scale?
What other tools compliment it well?
I’ve worked for a company that used browserstack for its cross-browser tests. It’s likely to have changed over the years, but I can only speak to when I used it.
What to watch for (gothcas)?
The main drawback I found at the time is the control that you have over the environments - installed tools mainly. You get what you get, whereas locally or on VMs I could have a lot more control of tools. I don’t mean automation tools here, I mean other things I use to help me to test on the system itself, e.g. if I want to test with limited system resources or expose some of the internals for visibility or whatever. You would get a link to a pre-configured system, like you’d asked Chef for a new machine.
You may have problems with response time, which is a concern for spotting performance issues or if you’re developing something where reaction time is important, like gaming. It was sometimes a little frustratingly slow - could be connection speed. I was also never totally sure that I wasn’t using a re-used machine, but I think that was just a fear of mine and a little security paranoia.
How to make the most of it?
A solid, informed, risk-aware test strategy. It’d likely be enormously helpful to have a breakdown of your users by the browser they use and which versions they, and a list of every browser you claim to support and how far back in versions you support it. This obviously goes for mobile use too.
Looking at introducing it into our wider test tools, how does it scale?
Not sure I can help much here. I worked only with the user end of browserstack, and rarely enough that I didn’t think it worth looking behind the curtain, but we never did anything too complex with it. It was mainly just to have access to a wider variety of systems, browsers and versions, and we still used VMs to do other testing on our main.
I’d consider what you think you’re going to do with it and ask browserstack if that’s all possible in a traceable form. That way ,if it isn’t, you have a record of paying for something you’re not getting.
What other tools compliment it well?
My understanding of this, which may be wrong, is that if you want to use things like Selenium you have to pay a lot - proportionally more the smaller your task. And I’ve never worked on the setup end of BS but I understand that it can be complicated to integrate. I also never had to pay for it.
The many other tools I use in testing were unavailable because they’re simply not installed on those machines, and even if I had them there they get wiped when the session ends or times out.
So that’s my limited experience, hope that’s of some use.
We use BrowserStack and we like it. In the past we ordered and maintained our own mobile devices. This was way too much work for how often we needed them and we were never up to date. We have a license for browser testing and one for app testing.
Good:
Not so good: