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HeadSpin vs Sauce Labs comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

HeadSpin
Ranking in Functional Testing Tools
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Mobile APM (6th), Mobile App Testing Tools (7th)
Sauce Labs
Ranking in Functional Testing Tools
12th
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Test Automation Tools (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Functional Testing Tools category, the mindshare of HeadSpin is 0.7%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sauce Labs is 6.7%, down from 7.9% 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 feature is that this is the first connected intelligence all-in-one platform."
"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 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 most valuable features of the product are the performance parameters it gives us."
"The initial setup of HeadSpin was very easy and user-friendly. It was easy to configure and write a script."
"It offers the single best solution for integrating deep automated browser testing in a CI/CD pipeline."
"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."
"Sauce Labs helps us identify the root causes of bugs. The solution offers a lot of flexibility by providing the latest iOS and Android emulator versions, and even the Appium updates when it comes out in the market."
"It has a wide assortment of platforms."
"APPIUM for mobile testing has improved our organization by allowing us to test our website on more devices and browsers than we currently possess."
"Sauce Lab analytics helped us to get detailed knowledge on test cases execution and logs."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to run concurrent automated tests up to a specified value, depending on what we are currently paying for."
"I like the dashboard and seeing the test results. As a manager, I like to see the insights of the people using it, understanding the total path and run. I can see all of that as a manager. I also know team members love seeing the dashboard and seeing the test results in real-time."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, devices go offline and some features are not functioning on some devices, specifically on iOS."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"HeadSpin needs to improve the hardware. With the mobile, the battery life reduces and must be continuously charged."
"The one issue I have is the 14-day trial that a new user gets for free. I understand the concept of the trial period; however, I think this could be revamped to a free 30-minute run time every few months or after a significant update once the trial period has ended."
"On a rare occasion, I will come into a ticket where a customer will have reached out to me after reaching out to Sauce Labs, saying, "Sauce Labs doesn't understand what I am going through. They are not being very helpful." So, I try to do clean up there. Outside of those extremely rare occasions, I have only had one or two of those support issues."
"If I had to speak of an area that could be improved it would probably have to be the speed of interaction with the devices. There is at times a considerable amount of lag while using some of the virtual and at times even physical device farm"
"There have been various times throughout the last month or so where the service has gone down during business hours."
"I can't remove team members that have left the organization. I can only set them as inactive. It would be really nice to clean up my data and delete them from the team management."
"The testing process is difficult. I need to prove the complete competency of the tool, and I am finding that challenging."
"Lacks the ability to start multiple tests simultaneously."
"Every time that we run scenarios where we need to discover the geolocation of our customers, by default it shows as Palo Alto, California. That's a problem for us and we need a workaround for those cases... It would be helpful if we could enter a latitude and longitude into Sauce Labs configuration and say, "When you run a virtual Chrome device or an iPhone, make this your default location. Then, provide me that device so I can run my scenarios," because we have stores in different regions across the United States."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."
"We have a yearly license for 16 devices."
"We pay for a specific number of VMs."
"Go ahead please. Try it at a smaller scale."
"They could improve on the pricing because it seems pretty expensive. I'm sure it's justified, but it's expensive."
"It could be less like pay-per-use with a lower rate."
"Trial the product and see if it suits your needs."
"The pricing is definitely on the higher end, and there are other options that are more cost-effective."
"Try the free trial and work with a Sauce Labs representative to see what package works best for your application(s)."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Legal Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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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: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.