OpenText LoadRunner Professional Reviews

My customers use it for performance testing. It is the ultimate tool for it.

It has features for recording. The best feature with Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional is that there is very little bottleneck or overhead issues. With LoadRunner, you can spawn 2000 contributions for one machine.

The pricing model, selling model, and business model need to be adjusted. For non-enterprise organizations, Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional is too expensive and not worth the cost.

Technical support also needs to be improved.

Everyone wants to make the testing phase easy, and so, the recording feature needs to be more stable for every app and every command application. Right now, the call language is C, and it would be better if it were changed to another language such as JavaScript.

I've been using this solution for almost 20 years.

It's stable, but in the newest version, it takes about six months till we can guarantee the stability.

My customers have turned to Micro Focus' technical support, but they have mostly not been able to solve the problems. When the case has to do with the setup, the technical support has been useless. So, I would give them a three out of ten.

Negative

I have used several tools, but Micro Focus is the best. We can get things done in a very short period of time. If we used an open source tool, then we would need more time.

The initial deployment is quite simple. It's not complex and can be done in one or two days.

LoadRunner Professional is easy to maintain.

The licensing model is complex. You have to pick up the protocol and the number of concurrent users, and then select the level of concurrent users. For example, there would be one price for 100 to 500 users and another for 500 to 2000 users. If you choose two protocols, then you will have to pay twice the amount depending on the number of concurrent users.

I recommend LoadRunner to everyone because they have a community with 50 concurrent users. Micro Focus has done standard testing and guarantees the use of LoadRunner in this case. With an open source tool, however, there is no guarantee, and you would be using it at your own risk.

The purpose of using a tool like this is to reduce application performance risk. So, using a tool at your own risk to reduce the risk is not reasonable. Therefore, I recommend using LoadRunner and rate it at eight on a scale from one to ten.

Grouping scripts based on IDs in LoadRunner Professional saved me a significant amount of time. Being able to record and manage scripts according to specific IDs streamlined the testing process. Using LoadRunner Professional's script grouping feature, I saved approximately 30 minutes on testing scheduling.

LoadRunner Professional's features, especially the script grouping, significantly contributed to improving product quality. The tool enabled efficient identification of issues during testing, fostering better collaboration within the team and facilitating quicker problem resolution.

LoadRunner Professional excels in simulating virtual users and assessing application performance. My favorite feature in LoadRunner Professional is its ability to group scripts under separate IDs. This allows for more organized and flexible testing scenarios. I appreciate the option to add and manage multiple scripts within these groups, providing a convenient way to handle diverse testing scenarios based on specific requirements.

In terms of improvement, it lacks mobile testing features present in some competitors, like GitMatters, which I find valuable. Adding this capability would enhance the tool's versatility, making it more convenient for testing mobile applications directly.

I have been working with LoadRunner Professional for a year.

We have not had any stability issues with the product so far.

The technical support for LoadRunner is generally responsive and helpful. I would rate them as a seven out of ten. While they address issues promptly, there is room for improvement when it involves collaboration with other technical support teams, which can sometimes extend resolution times.

Neutral

I have previously used JMeter.

Downloading LoadRunner Professional was straightforward via the portal, and the installation process was relatively easy, especially with a quick and standard setup. Overall, the initial deployment was user-friendly. It takes about 15 minutes to install it. LoadRunner Professional doesn't require much initial configuration. However, to test applications, it is necessary to open the firewall to accept traffic.

The pricing model, especially when involving partners, could use some improvement.

LoadRunner Professional greatly reduced my workload, I would say around an eight out of ten in an IT context. Its efficiency and helpful features made a substantial impact on the overall workload, streamlining processes and enhancing productivity.

Since using LoadRunner, my application or site has performed well under heavy loads, addressing errors originating from the server. The testing with LoadRunner helped identify and resolve issues, providing confidence in the application's performance even during peak loads.

I haven't had significant security issues since using LoadRunner for the past year. While I haven't explored its security features extensively, I haven't encountered any major problems. Contacting support has been helpful when needed.

Overall, I would rate LoadRunner Professional as an eight out of ten. It is user-friendly, the technical support is helpful, and the installation is straightforward.

We've been using Micro Focus LoadRunner for load testing to simulate the load and applications for microservices and Salesforce UI applications.

 We like LoadRunner's controller and analysis features.

Improvement wise, the pipeline should be enabled. It should be embedded as part of the tool itself rather than going with third-party tools.

Monitoring should be more effective as well.

I've been using this solution for the last 17 years.

I would rate Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional's stability at eight out of ten.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate the scalability at seven.

I would technical support at eight out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is not straightforward. It should be enabled with some APM tools so that we don't have to rely on third-party tools.

Our ROI is okay, considering that it is a one-time effort.

When you compare the cost of other tools such as NeoLoad and LoadNinja, the cost of LoadRunner is on the expensive side. As a result, we are currently considering going with NeoLoad.

We are evaluating Tricentis NeoLoad and will probably go with it because it has additional features and is less expensive.

Overall, I would rate LoadRunner at seven out of ten.

Scaling is definitely one of the best features of this solution. There are no issues scaling to 10,000 or 20,000 concurrent users.

This tool gives you a lot of options. It gives you hyper correlation, etc., requiring much lower programming scans. It's very user-friendly.

Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional supports other tools and protocols, such as SAP, Citrix, web services, etc.

Analyses are more in-depth and more detailed, and slicing and dicing is very easy. You can pinpoint load APIs at any point in time. You can know what was happening at a specific minute with regard to your requests, headers, response time, exceptions, etc. It has great reporting capabilities.

In terms of resource management, you need a lot of high capacity boxes if you need to generate a load of 1,000 or 2,000 users.

This solution has AJAX protocol or TruClient protocol, which gives you frontend stats and web vitals with very few details. This could be integrated further to exactly map any other leading tools for frontend analysis. That is, it needs further enhancements.

Easy maintenance would be good because now if you want to upgrade the version from X to Y, it takes a couple of days. There has to be downtime as well. Operation processes should be faster and should not have an impact for more than a couple of hours.

I've been using it for more than eight years.

Technical support is very good. We have a dedicated POC for Micro Focus. Although we have to follow the process of submitting tickets and waiting for a response, if it's a P zero issue, then we can directly connect with the technical person who has been allocated to us.

The SaaS version is quick and easy to set up. The on-premises version has a lot of challenges, especially related to the DB. You need to have a particular DB version to store the user data. Also, you have to depend on additional licensing from a database side. For instance, if you have Oracle, then you would need an additional license for the Oracle user.

The licensing is on a yearly basis and is relatively expensive.

If your team doesn't have much exposure to the development side, this is a good solution because you don't need much customization. You get a lot of automated features.

I would definitely recommend choosing the SaaS option rather than the on-premises option. The on-premises version has a lot of issues. For example, I'm dealing with version 12.63, and very soon, this particular version will be obsolete in terms of support. You will have to keep updating it in order to get the support for your version.

If you're looking for a tool which gives you more insight and you're ready to pay some extra dollars for it, then you should go for Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional. However, if you need a simple, aim-and-shoot tool for load testing and getting stats out, then you probably don't need this tool that has an expensive license.

Apart from the cost, Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional is one of the natural product choices in the industry. So, I would rate it at nine out of ten. If the cost were relatively lower, then I would've given it a ten.

My use case is for load testing and fine-tuning the system to prevent risks from going to production.

It helps save a lot of time compared to manual performance testing. It is like a robot that helps run the scripts. And other tools, such as free tools or IBM, are mostly programming-based. LoadRunner has more functions than other tools, and that also saves a lot of time compared to those tools.

The time savings mean it has reduced my workload. Using another tool, we could produce a script in about two days. But with LoadRunner, we can do it in one day or even less than one day. LoadRunner has also helped improve our product performance.

The most valuable feature depends on what we're doing at the time. In the past, the greatest feature was the ability to record and play back to produce a script. Another great feature is that we can monitor the system. They also support many protocols for performing load testing.

The monitoring technology in LoadRunner could be improved. It depends on another tool called SiteScope, but they only took a part of the features of SiteScope. They need to improve on that. If they don't do so, most of my customers will use another tool for monitoring instead of the LoadRunner package.

I have been working with OpenText LoadRunner Professional for about 20 years.

We haven't used their support much because we are better than them in some circumstances. When we have contacted them, it's to ask why a feature has been removed or something has been changed. That's when we have needed support.

The setup is not difficult. You just click, click, click, but there are prerequisites. They have a link to download it and get it installed. If someone is experienced with IT, they should be able to install it themselves.

But if an organization has a lot of hardening policies to block to execution, that makes it difficult for an admin to deliver.

The pricing model and the software licensing model could be better.

I have used other tools if our customer doesn't have the budget, including Jmeter, Silk Test, and many more. Sometimes we write programming to perform load tests ourselves. In terms of protocol support, LoadRunner is not much different than the other tools.

We used the solution's TruClient feature for browser-based testing about five years ago. It is quite good, but it consumes a lot of resources on the machine. It helped us a lot with scripting, but there are a lot of limitations as well when it comes to execution.

LoadRunner is not a tool for tuning, but it supports system tuning. Most of the time, once we use LoadRunner or whatever tools for performance testing, in the end, the system will have better performance. Most of the time, in the first run, the performance is not good. Then we tune it and everything is better and we can live-test the system.

If I rank LoadRunner without the pricing disadvantage and only on the technical functionality, I would rank it nine out of 10.

The main purpose is to simulate realistic scenarios to define and test the performance of different solutions or applications. For example, if there is a project to launch, a mobile app, and you want to see how it's going to perform when it is used by multiple users, OpenText LoadRunner will provide in-depth reports on potential performance bottlenecks and issues.

Its variety of testing tools for different applications is of great benefit, as well as its integration capabilities with other testing and monitoring solutions.

Compared to some other vendors, there is a lack of community support. It affects the response time when certain information is needed and not many resources are available. 

I have been utilizing OpenText LoadRunner Professional for four years. 

It demonstrates exceptional stability and reliability. I would rate it ten out of ten. 

It is a very scalable solution that supports a wide range of application types and can handle increasing load demands. I would rate it nine out of ten.

I would rate it six out of ten.

Neutral

I was using JMeter previously, it works on a similar basis. LoadRunner has an issue with its limited support, while JMeter has an open source, and it is easy to integrate with different solutions. The downside of the JMeter is that it is inefficient to detect threats in large-scale applications.

The initial setup was fairly easy. I would rate it eight out of ten.

The deployment of the solution was seamless and done very fast, as we only had to install the frame test server. 

It is a high-cost investment, particularly for companies with small budgets or limited testing needs. 

OpenText LoadRunner Professional aligns well with the specific requirements. I would rate it eight out of ten.

The solution is a performance-assessing tool. It supports a myriad of protocols. That is a big advantage of LoadRunner.

LoadRunner has helped in projects where we needed to use different protocols. It's also for clients who had already bought LoadRunner before and wanted to make use of it. 

It works on Citrix and desktop applications. There are a lot of protocols that LoadRunner will be able to handle. It is a great tool in that sense since it has a wide range of options.

The autocorrelation feature is quite helpful. With it, we can dynamically handle new sessions or non-new variables. 

It is a good and stable tool. 

The licensing is not cheap. However, it the client has specific requirements LoadRunner, will likely meet their application expectations very well.

The organizational aspects could be better.  

There should be more integration with more open-source platforms. It would be great if it could integrate with GitLab, for example. 

More features could be added to make it more robust. 

I've used the solution for around four years. I've used the solution on various projects.

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. It gets good support from Micro Focus teams. I'd rate the stability 8.5 to nine out of ten in terms of reliability. 

It's a highly scalable tool. There are processes that can be added and can scale vertically and horizontally. 

It's a fairly straightforward setup. I'd rate it seven out of ten. It's a plug-and-play tool. There is a bit of a learner curve, however. You could also do some workarounds if you need to, however, that might make it more complex to set up. 

ROI is on a case-by-case basis. Likely there would be an ROI if an organization is heavily into LoadRunner. For example, if they had 100,000 or 200,000 users accessing the application at once where peak performance would be important.  

There's an Enterprise Professional and Cloud option as well. The cloud option is maybe called StormRunner. However, most clients choose on-premises deployments. I use the professional version.

I'd rate the solution five out of ten as it is more expensive. 

There is a free trial for up to 50 users that companies should try.

I'm a consultant. 

I've used LoadRunner XP versions and the latest LoadRunner, the 2021 R1 version.

I would advise new users to start with the professional versions. Then, if you have a requirement for an Enterprise version, you can go ahead and go to the Enterprise version. There is a free trial for 50 users. It's a good idea to take advantage of that. That way, you can try it out and see if LoadRunner's the better tool for you, for your organization, and you can look at pricing to see if it is a good match. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

The product gives protocol support to our organization. It is the biggest benefit.

It's a good tool. The solution supports a lot of protocols. The interface is good.

The solution is complex. Integrating the tool into CI/CD pipelines, dockerizing, and containerization is a bit difficult. It is not as easy and user-friendly as doing it in Locust and Gatling. The solution must be more user-friendly. It should provide integrations with Jenkins or GitHub Actions.

Processes like docking and containerization must be made easy for a tester to do the process. If a process takes ten steps, it must be reduced to two to three steps. We should be able to integrate with Docker, Jenkins, or GitHub within two to three steps.

I have been working with the solution for six months.

The tool is stable.

The solution is scalable. We would need more machines based on our script complexity, based on which we need to assess how many load generators we need to run. We can support the cloud load generators if we have a cloud account. Otherwise, we can choose k6 or Gatling because they support more virtual users for a given hardware resource. It is a simple web application. We can choose open-source tools rather than using a paid load testing tool.

Support is very good. I rate the technical support around eight or nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is not complex. We will be able to install it, but it will take a lot of steps. Open-source tools take two to three steps, while paid tools take eight to ten steps for deployment. The implementation is user-friendly.

I have been using the paid version of the product.

Nowadays, most of the features supported by LoadRunner can be obtained in JMeter. Many development-driven tools like Locust are coming up in the market, which are easy to integrate with CI/CD tools. Dockerizing, containerization, and running the performance test through the CI/CD pipeline are pretty much easier with development-driven tools like Locust and Gatling.

LoadRunner and WebLOAD support a lot of protocols that other open-source tools are not able to support. However, most features supported by these tools are available in the latest tools. Correlation can be done within five to ten minutes in LoadRunner. Whereas, in JMeter, it would take half an hour. JMeter’s UI is simple compared to LoadRunner’s.

To start working on performance testing, we need to use LoadRunner to understand all the concepts. LoadRunner helps us understand how the actual user distribution happens. After using LoadRunner, we can work on JMeter. JMeter doesn't have any script writing so we can manage it with the elements in the tool. Later, we can shift to any of the developer version tools.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.