Apache JMeter Reviews and Pricing

Consultant at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees

Feb 25, 2015

JMeter is great as a stand-alone load generator, however when you need a distributed load you'll require high server use

Over the past year I have spent a lot of time in close collaboration with Apache JMeter. I used JMeter as a standalone platform, in collaboration with several tools out there and with my own servers. Over the next few posts I will elaborate a bit more on what I have learned from working with tools like BlazeMeter, Loadosophia as well as working with your own remote servers and Jmeter. On top of that I will share some things I consider good practices to use when working with JMeter and building elaborate test scenarios in it.

JMeter and remote servers

Meter is great as a stand-alone load generator, however the moment you need to generate a substantial load or a distributed load, you will require the use of more servers. There are several possibilities to add external servers to JMeter. You can use a load generation platform such as BlazeMeter and Flood.io or you can choose to use your own machines (Disclaimer: I have only worked with Flood and BlazeMeter as services, so I only mention these two. There may very well be other services out there I am not (yet) aware of).

Why use your own remote servers?

Although there are several commercial options to run JMeter tests from a cloud-platform, it might be useful to have your own servers running. Your own machines, for example Virtual Private Servers, will give you at least the following advantages, please bear in mind these are the main reasons for me to run private servers. It may very well be that you have different reasons for doing the same (I’d be happy to hear them btw!):

Availability within firewalls: Not all applications are available outside of firewalls. For quite a lot of companies it is not an option to allow external addresses, especially cloud services, within their firewalled environment. When this is the case in your organisation it can be very useful to have your own load generator hosted inside the firewall.
Geographical location: not each and every country has platforms available for load generation. Although platforms like Blazemeter have a lot of different locations available, it may very well be that your particular country is not available through a service provider. However getting your own, hosted, machines within a country is generally not too difficult to do. Keep in mind though whenever you want to use something like a Virtual Private Server to verify with the hosting company whether they allow load generation from within their network!
Control: a fairly straightforward reason is in order for you to have full, unlimited control over the load generating servers. If you have your own (virtual) servers running you can easily adjust settings, properties and other things in order to make it fully match your (customers) needs.

Why use a service?

Even though there are quite some reasons for using your own machines, the advantages of using a service like BlazeMeter or Flood.io are plenty, I will just highlight the few that for me have tipped the scales several times in favor of a service.

Maintenance: Setting up your own servers is time consuming and therefore not cheap. These servers need maintenance even though you quite likely do not constantly need them. A Service is just there. You buy a subscription, be it with a time constraint (monthly) or a load constraint (max amount of concurrent users) or something like that, but the service is simply at your fingertips. The moment you need it, you have it.
Multiple locations: the JMeter based services generally make use of the Amazon AWS cloud, thus giving you, the user, an immense amount of servers at your disposal. With this comes a huge worldwide distribution, which can be very advantageous for big world-wide used applications.
Support: both mentioned platforms have a very solid support base for their customers. If you have questions, if your tests seem to not run properly or you simply have issues getting something done, there generally is a good support platform available. You can use forums or the actual helpdesk, but either way, there is a good, solid, commercial support-base to help resolve your issues.

In the end, I choose per assignment what best fits my needs. Sometimes I use the VPS, sometimes I use a service. It is important you at least think about what best suits your needs for the test you are about to build and execute.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user278154Works

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Jul 24, 2015

Hi Martin,

Thanks for your input, very useful to know. I am working as a consultant on a relatively new client site, and am preparing to head up the team to write an RFP proposal for a new performance testing tool to be used across the company.

Getting all the technical / protocol details for the various systems is proving to be more challening than it should - they seem to be all Web based (although only support old versions of IE like 8 and 9... I know). I am very tempted to strongly recommend JMeter as the tool (probably with BlazeMeter or Flood as the cloud based service), but I am concerned that a couple of months down the line some legacy system will come out of the woodwork that JMeter would not be able to support.

Hope that all makes sense. Would be interested in any other feedback that you had.

Cheers,

James

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it_user110658

Senior Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

May 7, 2014

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JMeter helps me in measuring performance of my product very effectively

What is most valuable?

I think CSV data config, regular expressions extractor, reporting and distribution testing are the strengths of JMeter.

How has it helped my organization?

It makes life easier by simulating production scenario to check the performance under heavy load. We are able to find out the bottleneck in our system with the results.

What needs improvement?

Better way to handle dynamic elements, to handle session id, browser cookie and cache manager.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used JMeter for around 6-8 months.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No, distributed testing was helpful for scaling the users in JMeter.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service: 3 out of 5Technical Support: 3 out of 5

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I never used any performance tool before.

How was the initial setup?

Yes, the initial setup IS easy after following the blogs or Apache JMeter page.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user254718Principal QA Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees

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Jun 14, 2015

I have started using JMeter recently, I am confused with the sampler number, I ran a simple Login test of 50 threads for 10 min, I see sampler numbers around 3000. Does that mean 3000 users are doing logins or 50 threads have done 3000 requests so far?

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it_user100902

Head of Performance with 51-200 employees

Mar 28, 2014

Good for vanilla web testing, less so for more complex requirements.

A mature opensource toolset that has been available for many years. Good for vanilla web testing, less so for more complex requirements. Like most opensource offerings it has relatively poor analytics and limited integration with analytics tools like APM although it is relatively easy to extend with plug-ins and there are quite of these available for free download. A good choice where budget is tight and the tech-stack requirement is straight-forward.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user100902Head of Performance with 51-200 employees

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May 5, 2015

Hi Kobi,

JMeter is not well suited for this sort of requirement as you are likely to have to deal with some sort of API. If however the API is web service based then should be ok. Something more proprietary would be better dealt with scripting in C# in my experience so some other tool choice would be better suited.

KR
Ian

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it_user5646

QA Expert at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Apr 3, 2013

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User friendly Java tool, but doesn't support SSL recording or non-web apps

Valuable Features:

1. GUI is very user friendly 2. It's a pure Java tool, which enables me to run it on any platform (i.e. platform independent) 3. Free tool & easy to get.

Room for Improvement:

1. It does not support recording SSL 2. Supports only web based applications 3. Cannot change the recorded scripts

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user77718QA Expert at a tech company with 51-200 employees

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Jan 5, 2014

JMeter DOES support SSL
JMeter DOES support LDAP, Database, Mail, FTP, etc. and can be easily extended with any protocol as plugin or as built-in extension like Beanshell - blazemeter.com
JMeter scripts can be correlated with pre and post processors, variables, properties.

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it_user1428

Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Aug 8, 2012

Powerful open source with wide community support. Needs experience to match commercial alternatives.

Pros:
Open source, powerful, wide community of support - it works.

Cons:
Experience needed to build custom tools around Jmeter in order to match capabilities of most commercial alternatives.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Vasim Ansare

Test Engineer at mPHATEK System

Mar 21, 2023

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Open-source solution with great RegEx extractor

Pros and Cons

"JMeter's most valuable feature is the RegEx Extractor."

"Running JMeter in GUI mode uses a lot of memory, which means we need to switch to a non-GUI mode when using a heavy load."

What is our primary use case?

I mainly use JMeter to check network capacity.

What is most valuable?

JMeter's most valuable feature is the RegEx Extractor.

What needs improvement?

Running JMeter in GUI mode uses a lot of memory, which means we need to switch to a non-GUI mode when using a heavy load. There's also a steep learning curve for how to use regular expressions.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using JMeter for over three months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate JMeter's stability seven out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I would rate JMeter's scalability as six out of ten.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very easy and took around five minutes.

What about the implementation team?

I implemented JMeter myself.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

JMeter is open source and available free of charge.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend JMeter to other users as it's easy to use and open source, and overall, I'd rate it eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

SridharVangapandu

Sr Manager - Quality Engineering at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

Dec 31, 2022

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Great performance testing for applications with a valuable load testing feature

Pros and Cons

"We find the load testing feature valuable."

"The reporting section of the solution can be better."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case for the solution is performance testing for applications, and we deploy it on the cloud and on-premises.

What is most valuable?

We find the load testing feature valuable.

What needs improvement?

The reporting section of the solution can be better. Additionally, more plugins can be included in the next release.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the solution for approximately 15 years and are currently using version 5.3.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable, but it all depends on the application. However, it is usually scalable by up to 2500 users. However, if you want to use it for any number of users, you can use JMeter as long as your machine supports it.

How are customer service and support?

We do not have experience with customer service and support because everything is stable.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used LoadRunner.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward. I rate it a nine out of ten.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The tool is open source, so we do not pay for licensing.

What other advice do I have?

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. I advise new users to enhance their understanding of the solution via Youtube.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.