BlazeMeter Reviews

Ability to generate heavy load (up to 5000 concurrent users)

Provide performance transactions summary & statistics

These features are valuable because, in my company, there is a requirement for the product to support up to 5000 concurrent users. As a performance engineer, it’s important to have a tool (like BlazeMeter) to generate heavy load and at the same time provide a report that shows how the system behaved under the load and provide performance statistics.

By using this tool, a performance engineer was able to identify performance bottlenecks, and after fixes was applied, overall product quality improved.

It would be very useful if there was a mechanism to schedule performance runs.

For example, a mechanism to automatically schedule performance tests execution, by using the calendar scheduler. This way, it would be possible to schedule multiple runs overnight, without the need to manually start each performance test.

I have used BlazeMeter with JMeter 3.0 and Java 1.8 for six months.

Stability was great; no issues.

Scalability was great; no issues.

I did not contact support.

We did not previously use a different solution.

I think prices are reasonable.

Before choosing this product, we did not evaluate other options.

It is an excellent and reliable tool. I liked it very much.

We use the solution for performance testing. We create the safe to upload to BlazeMeter. Also, we can do standalone and combined load tests depending on the requirements.

BlazeMeter is quite fast and can be accessed through the web browser.

We sometimes experience downtime, but not so frequently.

The product is stable.

I rate the solution’s stability a seven out of ten.

Customer support is fast.

Positive

We opted for BlazeMeter because it is accessible through the web browser.

The initial setup is straightforward.

Multiple people can focus on the same instance. If anyone wants to view the result, So it's quite easy. You don't need to share the GTL file. You can access the browser.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

• Easy to make small changes to the test without reconfiguration, so we could step increases in load and find the limits without risk in breaking the test scripts. Consistent testing allows for confidence in the results and ease of use by the team.
• Integration with New Relic - provides insight as to why the test had the results and how we can improve them. New Relic was already in our tool belt, so it was nice to not need to change to an unfamiliar tool.
  

Provided an easy to use tool to measure the performance of our most critical business application, along with the expertise of BlazeMeter to properly generate the test case.

It has allowed us to test the impact of vendor updates to their software on the performance of the web component, which we are now doing as updates get released (6 month release cycle, so only one retest thus far).

System Administrators are performing the testing, as the software isn't ours and we don't presently develop our own software this was a new need and we don't have anything to compare to other than anecdotal evidence from users. We were able to compare results post-testing by comparing Google Analytics data and found that the improvements we put into place as result of the testing did have positive effect on both pageload and generation timings along with improving the overall conversion rate for the tool as well.

It's a rather expensive tool for running just a few tests — which is our primary use case, if there was a pricing structure that met our use case price wouldn’t be of concern. Worth noting is that we requested they donate our use of the tool — and they did donate the tool for our use — so it did not cost us anything (which we are very thankful for as a nonprofit).

We encountered no stability issues in using it.

We encountered no scalability issues, though we were testing at relatively low volumes.

Any questions we had were addressed promptly by knowledgeable individuals.

We wanted a solution that was easy to interpret and wouldn't require custom tooling beyond building the test. JMeter was the right tool for the job, and BlazeMeter's expertise and easy to use interface allowed us to readily view and compare results without needing to build a custom workflow.

Creating the JMeter test case required some time on our part, partially due to JMeter not supporting JavaScript and the application we were testing requires JavaScript support. We were able to create a test to work around that limitation, but that's more due to BlazeMeter utilizing JMeter than it being a limitation of BlazeMeter as a platform.

Cost is critical as a non-profit, and they donated our access as noted prior. Functionality is also critical — and they had the function we needed, were easy to configure, and integrated with New Relic which saved us a lot of time.

The alternative was to use Open Source tools to analyze the results, this solution was selected as we felt it would be faster and easier than rolling a custom solution which just wasn't warranted for how simple our situation is.

It's free and easy to sign up and try, so give it a whirl and see if it meets your requirements. We found it met ours and more, helping us gain confidence from our customers and solve a nagging problem in the performance of a third-party application.

• The ability to quickly scale out a load test across the world, just to simulate realistic world traffic conditions.

For us in particular, we're a product that gets heavily used during the election season. We've always had trouble handling this burst in the past, so this past year, I've started using BlazeMeter at this company. We took from January to July using BlazeMeter to really model out what the traffic looked like in previous years and to be able to handle the load when November came and it went through just fine without a glitch.

At the moment, it's heavily based on putting a load on systems through API endpoints/HTTP endpoints. There is a lot of existing tooling out there in organizations that deal with a Selenium-based test and they only have a Selenium web driver option right now, which is not the nicest thing to use. Organizations currently have Selenium tests written and, like us for example, a huge suite in Java. It would be nice to be able to just throw them in there.

I’ve been using BlazeMeter for about four years.

This is a cloud-based solution. I've never really had any trouble with it.

We have not had scalability issues for our needs. We're talking about scaling stuff out to hundreds of thousands of requests per second and those in turn generate a lot more traffic internally. So with whatever we use, it's perfectly fine.

We did not use technical support.

We didn't have a previous solution. I personally came to this company in the past year and a half. I've always used BlazeMeter at my other companies and there was a big, gaping hole here. They were doing everything manually with running JMeter tests and this was just a natural fit.

For this audience, if you know JMeter, everything is pretty straightforward. You just sign up and upload your test. As far as support goes, if you do run into stuff, they have a little button on the side that lets you chat with them.

This is all in-house.

That's tough to calculate, but I can tell you that BlazeMeter helped increase quality-of-service (QoS) which in turn leads to customers having a positive experience with the product. That, of course, leads to less churn which is a good thing.

The pricing works. They're flexible. They work with you.

There was LoadStorm, loader.io, and blitz.io.

Definitely ask your engineering staff if they're familiar with JMeter. If they're not, it would be good to get a quick two-hour tutorial on it and then BlazeMeter will make a lot more sense.

The ability to push large numbers of simulated users at our applications and having access to detailed reports: This helps us to have peace of mind that our apps can stand up to production-level loads and beyond.

We no longer have to guess whether deploying new code will affect performance or not. This ensures we are ready to meet customer demand, even at peak traffic times.

I would like to have better insights when tests fail to run properly or when the load engines occasionally break. There have been times when a test fails to start, sometimes due to a bug in my script and other times due to a problem on BlazeMeter’s side, that have required contacting support. It would be better if the interface proved enough feedback via logs, etc., for me to determine the cause and possibly fix it without needing to wait for BlazeMeter support.

I have used BlazeMeter for three years.

Occasionally, we have long wait times or trouble starting tests.

One load engine was not sufficient to run the JMeter scripts that I’ve written. Scaling up to seven load engines largely eliminated these issues.

Support is adequate. Getting initial responses for support issues can sometimes be slow.

It was very straightforward to upload the JMeter scripts and supporting files, and start running tests.

It is somewhat expensive, but the amount of testing and peace of mind it gives us is well worth the cost.

We considered creating our own internal JMeter farm, but in the end decided BlazeMeter would do a better job of end-to-end testing.

If you are looking to improve your website performance and ensure maximum uptime by load testing your system from end to end, then there is no better solution that I have found. It is extremely simple to setup.

We were doing load testing. We were testing web servers, and we needed to confirm that our servers were performing as well as the old ones.

One example of what happened is that we noticed that there was a significant difference between our two sites. It turned out that there was a configuration on the network side so after we fixed that, the performance was much better.

It helped to identify where there were problems, and then we could go investigate and figure out what was going on. We didn't just do one test, but this was a one-time sanity check on the new environment. One time lasted three months, but during that time, I would say we did it once a week.

There was one feature that I wanted that they didn't have. The feature was starting two tests simultaneously, but keeping the data separate, and showing separate graphs from two different test instances on the same display.

What happened is that I was trying to run two tests at the same time so I would have to do one in one window, one in the other window, and there was a few seconds difference, which was okay. Then, I would have to take the tests in one browser, and compare them to the tests in another browser.

If they could combine functionality and put them side by side with the same scale for me, that would've been ideal. I was using one standard testing configuration.

We used it, I would say, for three months, to do performance testing on a very specific application.

We did not encounter any stability issues.

We didn't have any scalability issues. I can't remember how many users we had. We weren't doing incredible load testing. We were just using heavy load testing. There were no issues on the BlazeMeter side.

I would rate the technical support as 9/10, as I used it quite a few times. There was one instance where there was a timing mixup with a support engineer, which I was disappointed about, but the service was totally great. I would call them up with a question, they would answer it. It was fine.

I did not use any solution previously. I chose them because somebody else in my company had used them before, and had told me that they were very good.

The setup was straightforward. We had a very simple setup. We had a very simple testing scenario. After I watched the one-hour video, how the thing works, and then it showed up your URLs to test, I entered that, and there were two options we had to choose. Technically, it was very straightforward just for pure load testing.

The pricing was straightforward. That was no issue. To have the features, the special features that I wanted, realistically it could've been cheaper, but you get what you pay for. It was fair pricing, it was just a lot for our purchasing pipeline.

I did a small evaluation, not very intensive. I would say a very small evaluation. Nothing significant.

I would say use it, but people also have to know that they have to do their own due diligence and they have to make sure that their servers are okay. My advice would be to gather statistics on the servers as the tests are running, so that if the test indicates that there's something wrong, you can quickly look to the CPU, to the memory, to get an idea if it looks like it's an internal issue, or if it looks like it's an external issue.

We use BlazeMeter to run simple POST requests against our application to simulate heavy load. We can then monitor our application instances as well as our database to see where the bottlenecks are.

It has helped us simulate heavy load situations so we can fix performance issues ahead of time. This ensures that we are ready for real customer load.

The most valuable feature is simply the ability to have a basic POST request while simulating many users at one time. Being able to determine either a number of iterations or having all users hit the application for a duration, are both useful options.

My only complaint is about the technical support, see further details below regarding customer support.

It would improve the product if their Chrome extension allowed you to modify the JMeter settings.

So far I haven't encountered any issues so it seems very stable to me.

We have only used basic, but for one thousand users, it works great.

Their support is pretty good and normally gets back to me within one day. One time, instead of the support rep taking the time to understand the details of my inquiry and source of my confusion, they pointed me to documentation to assist me in finding the answer on my own.  On the documentation page, I had to go into a few links in order to find the answer. The rep could have easily said "here is the documentation where we have the information, and you'll need to go here and do this to fix your problem."

I appreciate when support makes it feel like they understand your exact issue and then tell you exactly how to fix it. I also prefer when support gives you exactly what you need as they know the product best.

BlazeMeter was the first tool that I used.

I found the initial setup to be pretty simple. I'm using JMeter, so I had to do a bit of research myself on how to change some of the JMeter settings that their Chrome add-on does not allow you to modify.

This solution was recommended by a colleague, and I did not evaluate other options.

We use BlazeMeter to perform load testing on our different web portals. Starting from JMeter scripts and based on users' behavior, we use the BlazeMeter workspace to adjust ramp-up. We study contemporary users and different scenarios in order to meet business expectations in terms of the required SLA.

BlazeMeter has allowed us to simplify and speed up our load testing process. Before BlazeMeter, we used to set up an ad-hoc infrastructure with no formal structure in terms of the scope, or how and when to provision it. This meant additional costs in terms of resources and time for managing the load-test infrastructure.

The reuse of JMeter scripts has allowed us to have continuity with the past, meaning that we didn't need to change the way we write scripts and collaborate with business users. Furthermore, it has given us a common way to modelize our campaigns with different technical partners, or different development teams.

A possible improvement could be the integration with APM tools. Different plugins for the most common APM tools could help to reconcile traffic charges with application behavior. For example, a root cause analysis of bottlenecks or analysis of non-linear behavior in applications.