ReadyAPI Reviews

Our web application is completely dependent on backend APIs. Instead of automating all the clients' use cases, we make sure that all the backend APIs are automated and are false-proof so that any issues can be tackled upfront. 

On the client side, we have a UI where a user will interact with the application. On that end, it's simply the API that is being called and is fished through the UI that is getting rendered. We capture all those APIs and connect them using ReadyAPI.

We use ReadyAPI to automate our APIs and make sure that all the individual APIs are automated with different possible positive cases and negative cases. Then, we use an end-to-end test where we used to have multiple APIs. In the past, we used to combine all the APIs for a scenario, whereby a particular API would get a value that we would pass to other APIs. In the final result, we have assertions, the Groovy script, which is in ReadyAPI.

For anyone who does not have experience with automation, ReadyAPI provides a sense of comfort, especially for testers who find it hard to go directly into coding. It is a good solution to start with.

ReadyAPI has a cool feature called Smart Assertion. This feature lets you add different values to your response which can be asserted, and you'll be able to modify that. It requires a click of a button and the assertion will get added. 

The assertion which is currently built into the tool would be more than enough in 95% of the scenarios. In less than 5% of the scenarios would you need to write a code to make sure something needs to be really asserted. 

ReadyAPI has been around for a while, it's stable, and it's from a strong brand, SmartBear.

The solution is not user-friendly. It is a difficult tool to use. ReadyAPI is slow, taking two to three minutes to start and launch. As your project gets bigger, the time to load takes even longer.

ReadyAPI is not lightweight, it is a heavy tool. There are lots of options within the solution, however, they are not upfront or user-friendly. 

The solution's UI has a clumsy setup. On the left side, you have a list of all the test sites, followed by the test cases and the test steps. On the right side, there are two levels of division. Shown at the top is everything and at the bottom, the values you are passing will be shown. The variables that are getting passed globally within the test suite level will hide somewhere. Even after using the tool for a while, you need to click on a specific button to know that the value is being passed. I would like a UI that shows everything that is important upfront to avoid unnecessary clicks.

If performance improved with the UI changes, I would prefer this solution, as it achieves everything other products and tools offer.

I have been using ReadyAPI for two years.

The solution is stable. I have not faced a situation where ReadyAPI was down. It is always running. It runs slow, but it is always running.

ReadyAPI is scalable. At one point in time, we had eight people working with the product. Each of us would add our test and add to our repository. We also added it to our nightly run, on the weekly and daily runs.

We had to connect with technical support at ReadyAPI one time. We could not get the Bitbucket repository to ReadyAPI. The installation was correct and successful, but we were not able to import the repository to ReadyAPI even after providing the GitHub key. We sent customer service an email and got a response with steps on how to resolve the issue. 

Most of our concerns are dealt with in the online community. SmartBear has been around for a while, so many issues are already answered online in the frequently asked questions section.

Overall, I would rate their customer service and support a four out of five.

Positive

Prior to using ReadyAPI we used Jira. The decision to switch was made at the leadership level.

The initial setup of ReadyAPI is not too tough. It is important to make sure that the executable file has all the correct options. 

After installing ReadyAPI, you need to point it to your repository, either GitHub or Bitbucket, where your code resides. Then it will take about two hours  to initialize and to get the test loaded.

If somebody really wants to use ReadyAPI to implement API automation, I would suggest different tools rather than ReadyAPI. 

If they have already chosen to implement ReadyAPI, I would recommend that they have a mentor and a proper training plan in place. Even someone who has experience working with API automation will not be able to start immediately and use the solution. My advice is to learn the tool perfectly because there is a good chance that they will miss some of the key features which will definitely ease their work. Once they know all the small tricks and tips, it's really an easy tool.

Overall, I would rate this product a six out of ten.

ReadyAPI is predominantly used for functional testing of the APIs. Our company has a lot of micro strategy concepts, and we are building a lot of APIs. The focus is on more validations around the APIs for faster or quicker testing rather than the frontend. 

When you are working in sprints, you need to have continuous feedback. ReadyAPI definitely helps in automating very fast and rapidly. We have less coding, and we can more easily define our assertions. 

We don't use it for full-blown performance testing, but normally if you are doing your functional testing, it gives you the request and response time. Anybody who is doing functional testing can see what the request and response times are and raise a flag based upon their business affiliates, that is, whether it is meeting their affiliates. You can identify this during functional testing.

It doesn't have connectors to the NoSQL database. This is one of the things where they do not have a very solid strategy today. Other solutions have an in-built mechanism where I can directly and easily connect. An API is more around a user submitting a request on the frontend. It then hits the backend, puts the data, and responds back. If I am hitting MongoDB or NoSQL databases, I do not have ready-made inbuilt solutions in ReadyAPI that can easily help me in automating it faster. In our organization, we deal with NoSQL databases, and therefore, we need Groovy. We just cannot have a connector from ReadyAPI to do that. I have to write Groovy scripts. If you have themes that are predominantly using MongoDB, it leads to more maintenance and support activity because we are introducing more code into our commission.

In terms of additional features, it can have cloud support. This is one of the things where we are getting into cloud support. We'll see how it works, but it is one of the doubts that we still have.

I have been using this solution for almost four years now.

It's pretty good. I haven't seen any issue or ReadyAPI crash in the last four years.

It is scalable. For example, if I'm running a UI test case, it can take me a minimum of 1 or 2 minutes or 45 seconds to 2 to 3 hours, depending upon the complexity of the workflow. If I want to test the same in API and I have defined my framework and everything, I could do it in 30 seconds or 40 seconds.

Technical support is pretty helpful. They are pretty responsive. They come back to you to find out if you want some training on ReadyAPI. If you want to schedule, they will schedule one. They will also help your team to grow or scale up.

When I came in, we were only using SmartBear. Before that, maybe there were normal functional automation testing tools, where you can define your API frameworks and do API testing. With such tools, you write more code for defining the API framework, which already comes inbuilt with ReadyAPI.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. Its deployment is pretty simple as well. It doesn't take too long to deploy it.

The cost of a license is probably around $1,000 to $2,000. Accounting is done by my leadership. I am more into implementations and making sure all things and processes are taken care of and the frameworks are maintained and managed. 

I would say go for it. It is a really great tool. It is a game-changer because you can automate faster and quicker. It also doesn't take much time for any person to pick up the tool. It is pretty lightweight. Any person who has a little bit of technical background or 1% JavaScript knowledge can quickly use it and write code in Groovy.

I would rate ReadyAPI an eight out of ten.

We use the solution for performance testing tools.

I am satisfied with the product. Importing documentation is easy. It is also easy to import Postman collections and create an environment in the API. It is easy to work with the tool and get started with testing. The performance testing capabilities are very good. We can catch potential problems with the APIs. The tool has scaled up its performance testing and reporting. It provides comprehensive and detailed reports. We can see at which point the system starts to deteriorate under the load.

The vendor conducts webinars. They must do it more, though. The solution must update SmartBear Academy. The content on ReadyAPI in SmartBear Academy is outdated.

I have been using the solution for around eight months.

The product is stable.

The product is scalable.

The support team provides comprehensive support. The support persons are always willing to jump on a call to assist us.

Positive

We used Postman before. We switched to ReadyAPI because of its loop-testing features.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The pricing is very competitive. It has a good impact on our time-to-market metrics. We have the complete SmartBear environment. The single cost for all the services makes it easier.

ReadyAPI enables users to import Postman collections easily. The load testing capabilities, ability to integrate with Azure DevOps quicker, and ability to predefine SLA to test the suite based on the predefined SLAs are valuable. The tool enables us to find bugs and defects faster.

We have mostly tested REST APIs. We haven't tested SOAP-based APIs. I have more than 100 Microservices automated with ReadyAPI. They are integrated into CI/CD and are running on Azure DevOps on a daily basis. We get a comprehensive report on it. It is also faster to integrate and create a pipeline for ReadyAPI. We just have to point Azure DevOps to the XML file we generate when the project runs locally. It's quite fast. I will recommend the tool to others. Overall, I rate the product a ten out of ten.

I use ReadyAPI for API testing. We have microservices, and we are using it for the API testing on them.

We are using it for testing. We test all the API calls. Without it, we cannot release anything. It helps us find issues with the implemented APIs. 

It can create stress tests very fast, and some features help you do it fast. 

It has nice things, like making data-driven testing that is fairly quick and easy to do.

The solution is stable.

Its basic pricing is fair.

It's scalable. 

I don't like how they don't have a clear way to manage tests between multiple projects. You cannot have a massive project with all the tests. With multiple projects, you have to get the API created all over again, and I'm not aware of any other solution in case you're using an APIX where you have to define that in all the projects that you are using. That's kind of a pain. You have to keep defining it, and only then can you use it. I like to break up the projects into something that's manageable. However, it makes that a little challenging. 

Sometimes, in trying to make creating tests faster, there are issues. It makes it easier to search and replace variables or anything if I'm writing it and using, say, any of the programming languages. However, with this one, it is very hard. You cannot search for a specific test. Any of those things are impossible. That is one of the big issues that I don't like. I'd often wish I could transition to something like Python or things like that.

In the next release, I would like to see a way by which we can share the code between multiple projects. Each project is an XML file. I cannot use code more than once unless I go and manually copy the code I create in one project into a different one. I'm not aware of any better way to do that.

The solution can be a little pricey.

I've used the solution for over six years. 

The stability is very good. There are no bugs or glitches. We haven't seen it crash or freeze. 

Our system is quite scalable. We have many things that handle auto-scaling groups, which scales quite well. We have quite a bit of devices, millions of devices, and each time it scales very well. There's no problem with it. We have never had problems due to an area that didn't allow us to scale. 

There may be 50 million devices talking to our cloud. It's quite sizeable. 

I'm not sure if there are plans to increase usage. 

We are currently servicing ourselves and our customers well. I'm not aware of any plans to increase. I'm not aware of any growth plans.

We are supporting the solution. Our engineers are supporting everything, so there is no separate support group or outside assistance. 

If our team needs help, we get it through SMartBear. It's proper. You have to write to them and wait for a reply. It's not bad. With support, we have gone for a single-user license, so given that this is the best they can do, it could be better in that we could pay more and get more service. I wish I could have someone to talk with just to figure out how I can solve some of the problems I've had.

I haven't had any user group meetings or anything like that. They don't do any of those things. Occasionally they will have a webinar that might cover an aspect of the solution. Sometimes you're so busy you don't have time to go to those things.

We've always used this solution. We started by using this product.

Everything is deployed on AWS. There is a deployment engineer who's doing the deployment. I don't know too much about it. We don't use anything like CD, CI/CD, or anything like that since we don't have the people to do those things. It's all manual. We have just one person (that's an architect) that handles deployment and maintenance. 

Each deployment could take anywhere from 15 minutes to a half hour.

In terms of ROI, in our situation, I'm the only one using it. It helps me for my purposes and this is precisely what we are using it for, for API testing, which actually helps us find issues. I'm not sure what the ROI would be.

Desktop licensing is not bad. However, if you go higher than that, they're a little pricey, I would say. 

For each license, they charge the same amount, which is less than $1,000 for each desktop license.

I'm a customer and end-user. 

I'm using an installed version. It's installed on my desktop. We're using the most up-to-date version. 

I'd advise potential new users to look at many other tools. Do some detailed analysis of things like Postman and those other tools too, and then if you have more technical experts, try Python or others, including JavaScript-based ones. See which would be best. Consider how you would use it as well. That way, you'll be picking the right tool. 

I'd rate it five out of ten.

Our primary use case for this solution is for testing APIs, which is very basic. Additionally, we use it for tier-driven automation. For example, if we want a file-based operation for test automation, we can use ReadyAPI as a Groovy scripting tool. So we have some external jars and use Groovy code to invoke mainframe environments, retrieve the data from the mainframe environments into our file, and read the file data. We deploy this solution on the customer's device.

We have found the flexibility of ReadyAPI very valuable. For example, messaging queue frameworks like JMS are required when playing with the APIs because we usually work on data migration projects. It gives us leverage to use utility and things we cannot do with other tools. Additionally, it provides DB connectivity and a good coding standard, but it's not a typical coding base. So understanding coding is necessary, and you must also know the tool's capabilities. Hence, it is a blend of both being a professional, tool-based, and language-driven person.

Additionally, no UI is involved when designing a solution for a customer. So we can do the automation using ReadyAPI, DV, file creation or file deletion. Every operation can be done because it provides Groovy's coding platform, which is nothing like Java. If you have a working Java code, remove the class and other steps, like the primary method, and you can easily create the Groovy code, which is the same code written in Java. Then, the pending status can be updated and available. This allows for easy integration with various databases, even MongoDB and code databases can easily be integrated. With the test management tools and JIRA, it is effortless to integrate. Additionally, it is open and easily configurable with the database tools. Hence, it's one of my first choices whenever we do API testing.

The product could be improved by including an inherent feature for UI automation. This will allow us to require mobile UI automation testing.

We have been using this solution for five years and are currently using version 3.40.

The solution is stable. Initially, there was a huge problem, but currently, we're only facing a challenge with integrating test cases with databases because it hangs for a minute.

The solution is scalable. Approximately 50 people use this solution in our company.

We have had a good experience with customer service and support. I rate them an eight out of ten.

The initial setup is straightforward. You only need a license file from the customer, then download EXE and install the ReadyAPI. If the software support center is not providing us with the EXE., we usually download it from the internet. The customers provide a paid license file, or a license variety, in the model they are configuring. The setup takes approximately five to ten minutes.

We have seen a return on investment because our organization is large and we can easily afford it.

The licensing fee is charged annually, and we currently charge 10,000 Swedish Krona per user.

We chose this solution because it is a good test case. In addition, it allows us to speed up manual processes through automation.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. I recommend this solution to new users because it is the best solution you can get across the globe for API, test automation, and API penetration testing. My primary advice to new users will be to understand the risks and the fundamentals of API testing.

We are service providers, so a customer will come to us and ask us to build a service. We'll build it, and then we'll use ReadyAPI to test the services before we publish it.

The solution got us more into automated testing, as far as web services go, so now we're able to mass-test.

The two most valuable features we use are the functional test and the security test.

I would say if anything needs to be improved, maybe it's some aspects of the user interface.

The solution is made up of multiple tools, and the one additional feature we'd like to have is load testing.

I've been using this solution for about six years now. 

I think the solution is pretty stable. I haven't had any crashing issues. It's actually been pretty solid lately. When we started using it, it wasn't very solid at all, but that was many years ago.

It is a scalable solution. There are currently about six users in our organization. 

I would rate the technical support as a five out of five. They're phenomenal. 

Positive

The complexity depends on your skill level. For somebody who doesn't know a whole lot about web services and how they're structured, it's kind of complex to set up.

The deployment was done in-house. I manage updates when the solution pushes them out; other than that, it's pretty easy. 

We definitely see an ROI with this solution. 

We use fixed licenses, and the last time I checked, I want to say it's around $680 per seat per year.

My advice is that based on the flexibility of the application, the ease of use, and the price, it's definitely worth it. There's no other product out there comparable to the price we found.

I would rate this solution as a ten out of ten. 

We mainly use this solution for testing APIs, and we also use it for load testing. SmartBear has a free version as well, which is called SoapAPI, but it does not include all of the features we wanted, so we got the paid version. The pro version has many benefits, including the load testing and more features for the API testing as well. Since we are mainly focused on backend testing, we thought it would be useful for us to have this license.

We had been using Postman, but Postman only has a couple of solutions to automate the API tests, and with ReadyAPI we can do both the API testing and the load testing. I haven't seen any other tool that offers both types of tests in a single tool. This is very helpful for us, and it's one of the main reasons why we chose this service.

We have an older version of ReadyAPI and it's not supporting our whole tests, so we have had to migrate some or we've had difficulties running them because they're very old script. Better compatibility or more support for the older versions would be helpful. 

Also, I've been seeing the same UI for many years, since I was using the free version, and the paid version looks the same. I think the UI could be a little bit better.

I have had experience with this solution for about five years.

The solution is stable almost all of the time. I'm not exactly sure if any other users are getting hang or not, but I have never faced an issue with hanging.

The scalability of the solution is good. I think about 150 testers in our organization use ReadyAPI. About 250 to 300 of our developers use the free version, SoapUI, to do basic API testing.

I think the support is good, but it's not immediate because we have many layers. If I have a question, I take it to a person in my organization, and then they contact tech support. It doesn't take too long, maybe one or two days, but I usually go to the SmartBear community online and look for an answer there. 

I used Postman to test the APIs, but with Postman it's just the basic testing, like unit testing. To do an intensive level of regression testing or load testing, Postman doesn't help much. It is still good to use for the manual part, but for automation, I feel like ReadyAPI is better.

This tool is very easy to set up and install because you can download ReadyAPI and you just need the product key. It was done in a matter of minutes.

We have an employee who deals directly with the access keys and maintenance. I think I have been on this specific project for about a year and a half, and I have only seen a maintenance window two times, and they typically don't last long or they do it in the off-times so they don't really affect my work.

I would say they should know exactly what they're looking for because if they're looking for API testing, this is a perfect tool. If they want to automate the process, then go ahead and use ReadyAPI. It is the best tool that I have ever seen for API testing. However, if you're just using it for manual API testing, I would say get the trial version or use Postman. We also use JMeter for performance or load testing, but ReadyAPI gives both API and load testing. If you want to do both, this is a good tool.

I would rate this solution as a seven out of ten because we haven't integrated it yet with any deployment tools, so I don't know how difficult that process will be. 

We were using ReadyAPI for performance testing and creating mocks but there were some issues in terms of scaling, so we are no longer using this solution.

The most valuable feature of ReadyAPI is that it is user-friendly.

We stopped using this solution because of issues with scalability. Performance and memory management both need to be improved because other solutions use less memory for the same amount of data.

I think that there was an open-source version, with a lower cost, then this would be a recipe to get into bigger markets.

I used ReadyAPI for about one year.

I think that this is a stable product.

ReadyAPI is not as scalable as other solutions, such as Karate. More resources, especially in terms of memory, are required for the same amount of data.

The scale does not only refer to the number of users. It concerns the applications and how often they make calls to different servers or mocks. 

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

The implementation was done by my team.

It took about a week to deploy because it involved more than just an installation. There was connectivity to configure and it had to be integrated with existing testing frameworks.

We migrated back to Karate about six months ago. It is more scalable and has more plugin features. There is also the point of cost because ReadyAPI requires licensing and Karate is open-source.

I would recommend this solution to people who need official support. For companies who have experts in open-source technology, they can avoid using ReadyAPI. I think that it would come down to the specific client, or project.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.