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HeadSpin vs Sauce Labs comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

HeadSpin
Ranking in Functional Testing Tools
29th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Mobile APM (8th), Mobile App Testing Tools (9th)
Sauce Labs
Ranking in Functional Testing Tools
10th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Test Automation Tools (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Functional Testing Tools category, the mindshare of HeadSpin is 0.6%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sauce Labs is 6.7%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Functional Testing Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Saorabh Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
It fulfills everything from automation to manual performance
The most valuable features of the product are the performance parameters it gives us, as well as the seamless connectivity with our automation suites. I am also pleased with the continuous enhancements made to HeadSpin. There have been many features added since we started using the product, and all of them are useful.
Savio De Souza - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables us to have a fully functional CI/CD process while saving time and cutting down on the training required for individual testers
When we were in development, it was a bit of a pain because we have onshore and offshore development. One of our development shops is in India, and we were running tests over there. When some of the users tried to log in, it was slow for them or we didn't have enough licenses. That was during the core development before we even launched. We got around that by purchasing more seats, tinkering with some of the virtualization pieces, and scaling. Now we don't have that issue, because we scaled back the offshore team significantly, so when we run it overnight, there's really no effect. We come in the next morning and review the results. It doesn't affect the overall business or the offshore team. There were also some bottlenecks because of the amount of time testing takes, so we started using more tunnels and running it in parallel. That was the main issue that we faced initially, but now that it's all set up, we're good to go. We were struggling with the volume of tests, and Sauce Labs suggested we run everything in parallel. Sauce Labs isn't lacking any features that we want, and it has several we're not using, like mobile and API testing. They've also introduced a ton more features since we launched, so I don't see anything missing on their end.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It has an interesting feature called AV box testing. A lot of companies that are in the OTT segment don't really understand what their streaming is like. They can't test for streaming quality. There are restrictions where you cannot simulate live streaming. For example, on Netflix, you can't simulate how a movie is being streamed on a remote device. That's why HeadSpin has got this AV box testing feature. It is a patented feature. They send an AV box to your location, and you can test live streaming, which is something that no other company does."
"The most valuable features of the product are the performance parameters it gives us."
"The most valuable feature of HeadSpin it's the integration with other solutions. It is great. I can search for an element or do a quick debugging on the application right on HeadSpin. It's very useful."
"The initial setup of HeadSpin was very easy and user-friendly. It was easy to configure and write a script."
"The most valuable feature is that this is the first connected intelligence all-in-one platform."
"The technical support is really helpful because we can set up direct calls with them if we want to. We can use Zoom or Google Meet to interact with them directly, and if there is an issue in our system, they will help us by reproducing the issue in their machines and trying to figure out a solution. The support is really smooth, and we like that they're very supportive."
"The insights section provides a great overall state of the automation suite and can identify trends relatively quickly. If we see a dip in our passing rate over time, we can look at what changed when the test started failing to find the root cause rather than doing a quick fix to find that the test fails a short time later."
"Running tests in parallel."
"The solution they provide is very robust. We can quickly connect to their environment with the hub URL. They have a URL that has the entire grid of desktops, web browsers, and mobile devices. They also provide real devices, so you just provide the URL and test your application."
"Sauce Labs provides us with more combinations to test, so we can keep adding platforms and devices to our network. That's been a very seamless experience. Let's say there's an iOS or a private device we need. Sauce Labs has helped get all those set up when needed."
"I have found the live test section with Sauce Labs to be extremely valuable. When you can't quite figure out why a test is failing, you can go to the live test results section within their tool and launch your test (specifying a given OS/browser, or device) manually and step through the test to see the issue more clearly, usually opening up the developer's tool console and watching the network calls and console (within Chrome) to usually find the underlying issue."
"Live device testing. As we all know, It's really hard and challenging to find/purchase many real devices to test because it will be costly and not all the team can be able to purchase all of the devices out there. We used to have a lot of real devices under our labs. However, it is really time-consuming to maintain those devices and make sure they are up to date with the testing requirements."
"Supplying devices to a testing team of possibly close to one thousand testers and developers is a great undertaking but Sauce Labs has made this very easy and a welcomed solution."
"Testing my app on cloud has really helped us with save time and resources to procure various hardware and software, and set those up."
 

Cons

"If you want to do some testing or check the devices manually or check the application in a particular device manually, it is really laggy. That's a disappointment because sometimes we would like to do manual testing when our local devices are not available."
"Support and pricing could be improved."
"HeadSpin could improve on the user interface because it is very poor. The checks that are done on the iOS devices are very difficult, but for Android, it runs great. For all iOS devices, the user interface and how it interacts with the device are very poor."
"HeadSpin needs to improve the hardware. With the mobile, the battery life reduces and must be continuously charged."
"Sometimes, devices go offline and some features are not functioning on some devices, specifically on iOS."
"They should automate their onboarding. A lot of things are still manual. They can create a video assistant or something like that to completely automate the entire process."
"It should provide more examples of script code."
"We have faced challenges with the availability of mobile devices. There was once or twice where there were no mobile devices available."
"We have found that during automated testing this can be very slow. This causes inconsistencies with the tests. It's very difficult to rely on a service when you can't be sure if a test will pass or fail the next time it runs. This means building in a lot of sync time into the tests which in turn slows them down. If this speed could be improved then the service would be much better."
"The ability to install profiles on iOS real mobile devices should be included."
"I would like to see improved network connectivity and it should allow playback for native apps."
"Running tests in the SauceCloud can take longer than running in a local environment."
"This product is not super scalable, because you have a very specific number of VMs that you can use."
"They should provide a JIRA integration plugin so that we can easily log issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a yearly license for 16 devices."
"It has a yearly license. There is no other option. It is expensive. There are a lot of other cheaper players in the market, but it is like a Mercedes. You pay an extra premium for it, but you get the benefits. I would love to see them come up with project-based costing. Companies that are low on funds or new-age can do with pricing that is easily digestible. They can give them a pricing model for three months. They can provide a startup package."
"I believe the licensing cost is cheap because it's a total solution, hardware, license and software."
"It's not cheap, but there are a few different packages and different prices for enterprises with different product versions."
"It is an expensive tool."
"Trial the product and see if it suits your needs."
"With respect to pricing, they did a bundled discount because we went with Sauce Labs for both mobile and browser. They were very competitive on pricing and provided a bundle discount for us as a larger customer."
"Try the free trial and work with a Sauce Labs representative to see what package works best for your application(s)."
"It could be less like pay-per-use with a lower rate."
"They could improve on the pricing because it seems pretty expensive. I'm sure it's justified, but it's expensive."
"Their pricing is incredibly competitive."
"The pricing is reasonable due to the amount of diversity that they provide. However, I feel they might be more flexible to bargain based on their relationship with our organization."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Legal Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about Sauce Labs?
It has significantly enhanced our testing accuracy by approximately 50%.
What needs improvement with Sauce Labs?
Sauce Labs can include new technologies like generative AI, which can reduce the human effort in writing test cases. For example, in my current project, we reduced the time it took to complete user...
What is your primary use case for Sauce Labs?
I work as an automation engineer using Selenium WebDriver with Java, and API automation using Rest Assured with Java. I have also worked with Docker integration on AWS. Additionally, I have experie...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Zynga, Tinder, Pinterest, Akamai, Microsoft, Airbnb, Jam City, TMobile, Mozilla, CNN, Cognizant, Yahoo!, ebay, Quora, Walmart, Kohls, Telstra
Salesforce.com, Mozilla, Zendesk, Puppet Labs, Twitter, Bank of America, Eventbrite, Bleacher Report, Okta, Intuit, Travelocity, Sharecare, CapitalOne.
Find out what your peers are saying about HeadSpin vs. Sauce Labs and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.