Selenium HQ Reviews

We primarily use the solution as a functional testing tool.

Selenium is a freeware tool, through which I am using Java for automating our project testing and with its feature grid and a different browser, I can do the functional testing. We can automate our functional testing through a browser. It supports all types of browsers including Firefox and Chrome.

We can run multiple projects at the same time and we can design both types of framework, including data-driven or hybrid. We have got a lot of flexibility here.

It's easy to customize according to our needs. 

Now we are getting lots of extensions such as BlazeMeter, where you can record and generate the script and modify, et cetera.

The initial setup is easy.

The parallel testing in Selenium is lacking.

The latest versions are often unstable. 

There's no UI in Selenium. Beginners who want to start using it must have knowledge of Java, Python, or any programming language. If you are using a Chrome extension, that is a BlazeMeter extension, you can record and make the script, however, that is not very helpful for beginners.

The editor is based on Eclipse. It would be nice if there was some in-built UI for this.

I am leading a 20 person team where I have some junior staff and we have to set up lots of demos and training for them to be comfortable with Selenium.

Occasionally, if someone is downloading the latest version of Java, it might not align with the Selenium version. There needs to be a way for Selenium to alert you if there will be a conflict between versions. 

I've been using the solution for four years. 

The level of stability depends on the version you are referencing. For example, Version 3.1.46 is very stable, however, Version 4.0.0, the latest version, is not.

There is no technical support available for Selenium, as it is an open-source product. There is a blog where you can find answers to questions, however, there's no one to actually reach out to. 

Previously, I was using VSTS Ultimate.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward and simple.

You first have to install Java, JDK, in your system. Then you can install an editor such as Eclipse. In Eclipse, you can incorporate all the Selenium jar files.

The solution is free to use.

The reason we are using version 3.14.1 and not the latest version is that this version is the latest most stable option. The most recent versions are often not the most stable. 

I'd rate the solution at a six out of ten.

There are lots of tools in the market that are paid versions, such as QTP. Those have got lots of features. While Selenium has some good features, due to the fact that it's free, you cannot get support, which is why I have reduced my rating by a few points. 

We primarily use the solution for browser compatibility testing and web-based applications.

The most valuable aspect of Selenium is that it gives you the flexibility to customize or write your own code, your own features, etc. It's not restricted by licensing.

The solution is an open-source tool. They should also build other features and tools to assist in further capabilities. 

A drawback of Selenium is that it only focuses on web applications. If it could be integrated into one application together with APM, it would be in peer competition with other players. Developers tend to bundle both in one, but Selenium is just in a silo.

The solution's UI path needs to be modernized.

The solution needs to offer a mobile platform.

Considering that a lot of corporations are using it, it has obviously gained quite a lot of trust from a lot of Fortune 500 companies that use it. It's considered very stable.

It depends on the server you place the solution on, but the application itself is quite scalable.

The technical support is good in the sense that, although is more of an open-source community, there's quite a lot of resources online that are available for troubleshooting issues.

The initial set up requires a bit of research because it's not straightforward. You need to be a developer to be aware of how to set it up. As an open-source tool, you do need to have some kind of background knowledge on how to implement it. Basic deployment takes about a week or two.

Selenium is open-source so it is free to use the solution. You only pay for whoever is implementing and/or the server that you are deploying on.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

I'd recommend Selenium, but it depends on the client's use case. As it is a free solution, users are able to cut a lot of costs. They can bring in developers that are experienced with Selenium, and those developers can build it up, scale it up and then, later on, you just need a few people to maintain it. It's a great option that allows companies to refrain from paying all sorts of license subscriptions that are quite exorbitant.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

• Automate test across several browsers such as IE, Chrome, Firefox and Safari
• Write automation scripts in any language of your choice Java, C#, PHP, Python and many more
• Ability to execute tests in parallel which provide time saving for testing
• Ability to take screenshots of every tests
• An open API that can be extended based on our needs
• A Recorder Tool to record tests and execute them for non-developers

We provide IT services and solutions, and this solution helped our clients reduce their manual testing efforts to greater level. Our clients have realized benefits by reducing their testing cycle from three days to three hours through Selenium.

They can improve test reporting, and more importantly on test scripts, by providing less constructs to automate more complex testing scenarios.

I've used it for the past nine years. We use it alongside Appium.

Deployment is little tricky but with good help from external vendors organizations, can implement a Selenium based test automation solution in a short period of time.

There have been no issues with the stability.

There have been no issues with the scalability.

There is great on-line support from the users community. External vendors have innovative solutions build using these tools where they provide tremendous support.

It was difficult to some extent, but with good documentation from the on-line community we where able to implement the tool.

We did it in-house. If you are implementing it for enterprise level its better to seek external vendor help.

We have seen ROI of more than 60%. It's open source.

I would say start lean, gain small wins and incrementally add more. Example: Start automating test cases for one browser and slow expand to multiple browsers.

• Open source
• Ability to run tests across multiple browsers and OS
• Using Java as programming language

1. There are important projects in my organization which require a lot of cross browser testing to make sure that the application functions across different types of browsers eg. Internet Explorer, Chrome, FireFox, and Safari along with different versions eg IE9,10,11 etc. Hence we needed a tool which can run our tests across all these browsers in different machines to ensure defect free application. We have been able to fix many browser related issues in the application before deployment. Thus our efficiency of delivering a higher quality product has been increased a lot.
   This is important because our end users may use any kind of browser to use the application and we don’t want to get into issues where our applications crashes in 1 browser and works well in other.
   
2. A lot of time & cost has been saved by using Selenium automation because now we don’t need all browsers to be tested by manual testers. Just 1 automation script is required which can be run across different browsers. We only need 1 person to kick off the script execution

We have seen latency issues with Internet Explorer. I would like to see better support for Internet Explorer.

I've used it for one year and one month.

I've seen latency issues in IE while executing scripts. The same script runs faster in Chrome and FireFox. Sometimes, the same xpath may not identify an object in Internet Explorer, but will identify it in Chrome/FireFox. So we have to write a different code in that case. This is not a very common scenario though.

Although there is no customer service for this, the code documentation and online resources make it easy to work with.

We used IBM Rational Functional Tester v8.5. The reason we switched over this product was because Selenium WebDriver:

• Is Open source
• Supports execution in multiple browsers
• Has the ability to run multiple tests across browsers and OS at the same time using Selenium Grid

It was straightforward. All we needed was an editor like Eclipse and all the required JAR files and driver executables. All these are available online.

We did it in-house. You should have JRE up to date, and make sure your IDE is configured properly. All driver executables should be downloaded and all JAR files should be applied to the project.

We have saved overs 400 hours of effort in our regression testing.

There is no license cost.

In my current project, we are working with an online pharmacy system, and for this system we maintain prescription details for patients. For example, patient names and other details such as where the patients live, what medications they need, and other types of information for various scenarios.

Then there is information for the doctors, such as what prescriptions there are in the system, and from which doctors they have been prescribed. These are the types of scenarios and test cases that we are automating with Selenium.

Specifically, I have been using Eggplant Functional and the Java Selenium pack, and Selenium WebDriver is the driver we use for developing the automation and scripts for the different test cases we use. This is our main testing tool for the online pharmacy system project and it is deployed on the cloud on a virtual machine because we are working from home now.

Selenium HQ has helped us through its automation capabilities, because testing manually takes a lot of time and money. For instance, we have now automated an end-to-end application for the test cases. So now it's really easy for the testers, and it reduces the time and effort taken to do their work.

There are many phases that must be completed while delivering the product to the client, and in the system integration testing phase we can easily execute our automation and scripts, which saves us a lot of time and enhances the testing process dramatically.

There are many useful features in Selenium that I like, and of the new features I particularly enjoy the Selenium Grid. With this, we can run many test cases in one go, and in one suite we can extract multiple results.

Because Selenium also supports parallel test execution, I believe it is one of the best testing applications out there.

Beyond the many advantages that Selenium HQ brings, there are also several disadvantages. For example, there are some complex scripts which can make Selenium unreliable in some cases.

For email-based applications, we can't automate as we would like to, making it necessary to bring in a third-party product to do so. Eggplant, for example, offers email-based processing, like with the OCR engine, and for automation testing and reporting I would like to see a similar feature in Selenium.

I've been using Selenium HQ for at least one year now. 

I find it a reliable solution for the most part. But in some cases it is only as reliable as the third-party code it works alongside with. For example, Selenium doesn't have automated generation code, so we are dependent on other tools for this. And as I have mentioned, we also need to use third-party tools for things like email-based applications.

Selenium HQ can be scaled with the use of parallel test execution, and when it comes to expanding its use more generally, it's possible to add on to its automation functionality with third-party tools as well.

For our work with Selenium, we have a support team that helps us so we can go through them when we have problems. But for the small things, we generally solve problems ourselves. We are able to do self-study when it comes to support, and we also have a tech support architect who is able to help when needed.

The initial deployment was simple, as we are not doing anything too complex with it. We're using Azure DevOps for the deployment, so we test for that with a test plan and build up the pipeline accordingly, so we can execute and get the test execution report in order to find out what other test cases were impacted, and what other test cases we need to resolve. Doing it this way, we can easily find and fix any bugs in the deployment.

We have built up some custom implementation strategies when it comes to our daily use in Selenium HQ. For the test cases, we first verify which test cases we need to automate by coding some common functions, like logins and other common functions that are present in the application. After that, we look at the locators we will need to select using XPath, and then we start building the test cases according to the specific application, using code from all the common functions.

In the implementation team, we have six people who are using Selenium HQ for our current project. There are more people in other projects that I have running, but for this one there are only six of us. One or two are technical leads and the others are project engineers.

When it comes to maintenance of Selenium, we leave that up to others. We are mainly responsible for automating all the scripts that we deliver to the client.

Selenium HQ is open source and our use of it in our company is provided for free.

I would surely recommend others to use Selenium as we do, especially because while using Selenium we can use Java concepts as well. It's great that, through Java, anybody can use Selenium; even novice programmers. In today's market, automation is a big part of every organization, and Java programming skills can hugely enhance the use of tools like Selenium.

One of the biggest lessons I learned was during my time as part of the development team. I didn't want to work in the manual testing team and so when my development project was completed, I moved to the automation department because I wanted to carry on being productive. With this move, I realized that I could easily learn other tools and technologies that are useful in the market, by adapting my programming skills in Java, Python, or any other programming language, to working with tools such as Selenium. In addition to my Selenium work, I also now do Rapid Automation as an automation engineer.

I would rate Selenium HQ an eight out of ten.

We have a lot of information that we are putting on different websites and social media platforms because we need to inform our social network users about what we are doing, what we are planning to do, and what was done. Sometimes, it's information which is the same, or it's the same on different websites, in different web software, and so on. I am using Selenium mostly for this purpose.

I like its simplicity.

It would be better if it accommodated non-techy end-users. I think it's still a product for developers. That's why it's not common for end-users, and especially for RPA activities or tasks. It's hard to automate tasks for end-users. If it will be easier, more user-friendly, and so on, perhaps it can be more interesting for this kind of user. 

The second thing, when you are working in IT, you know about such tools. But if you are on the business side, you don't have much information at all.

I would like to see easy onboarding with training for end-users. Because there is a lot of stuff for developers, but for end-users, I would say none or approximately none.

I've been using Selenium HQ for five years.

I didn't have problems with stability.

I didn't have problems with scalability.

The initial setup is complex. I think some changes were done, but it's still too complicated for end-users. 

I would advise potential users to contact their IT guys because they will have a problem setting up the first automation. Of course, if there are people like me who want to develop their own knowledge, I would say they need time to get to know how to use it, optimize the process, etc. 

But if not, it will be easier for end-users to start with some kind of RPA offering by different vendors because they have their tools prepared for the end-users, for onboarding, and so on.
Because these open-source tools are still tools made for developers and IT guys, not for end-user.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Selenium HQ a six.

SeleniumHQ is WebDriver-related. It is a package that we can use with any language such as Java or Python.

We use Selenium for automation purposes. For example, if we need data from a website, we write code that will extract the data automatically. If there are logins or pop-ups, the code will close them, so we can extract the data. 

When we are testing a website, we use SeleniumHQ automation testing to determine if there are any bugs.  

The most valuable feature of Selenium is how easy it is to automate. For example, often when data is needed, someone will sit and copy and paste it. What we can do with SeleniumHQ is automate it so that the data is directly extracted from the tools and libraries that we use. This saves time and is much better than copying and pasting.

There are some tiny issues with SeleniumHQ. For example, with respect to the scraping tests. Sometimes, a website will have some hidden items or blockages that inhibit us from extracting data directly. It would be beneficial if Selenium could extract that information.

The other issue is browser-related. There are small bugs causing it to break automatically. Sometimes it will close automatically. 

I have been using SeleniumHQ for a year and a half.

Stability depends on how you write the code. If you handle all conditions, there will be some surprises. Suddenly, you will have pop-ups and other conditions. 

SeleniumHQ is scalable. Anyone can use it. We have approximately 30 users of the solution. 

Customer service and support with Selenium are good. If any bugs are found and brought to their attention, they will immediately help. They provide lots of documentation as well as answers on the internet. The technical support team, themselves, will answer questions within 24 hours.

We use Python, so the initial setup of SeleniumHQ was quick and simple. You can use any browser or tools like, Chrome, Firefox, or Edge to run the automation testing. 

We are using Selenium open-source, so there is no need to purchase anything.

We evaluated other options. 

For mobile scraping, non-mobile scraping, or to test anything mobile there are more applications available on the internet, like Appium for Android, which is like Selenium for browsers, or TestComplete for iOS drivers. 

However, Selenium is particularly the best for browsers or PC, operating systems.

I would recommend this solution to anyone considering implementing it into their organization. Overall, I would rate SeleniumHQ an eight out of ten.

In my company, I use the tool for testing web browsers.

We basically use the product for two things. The first is for testing for a website. The other thing is for repeating actions so that you can repeat the same action over and over with ease and without having to repeat the original steps. 

The solution is free to use. It's open-source, and you can modify the source. 

You can use it on different platforms, including Windows, Linux, or macOS.

It's easy to find and receive help from other developers. There is a good community that surrounds it.

The solution has been very stable so far.

Sometimes it's difficult to understand the solution. It's a good solution, however, it has many specific things you need to know, or you need to learn about. For people that don't know about technology, maybe it's difficult to use. You have to know how to program. You need to be a developer.

The tool has two steps: first, when you record, and second when you play back. However, in the middle, you need to look at a file. You need to save a file and after that look at them. It would be ideal if the solution allowed for the process to be one step and more automatic. 

The initial setup is quite complex.

I've been using the solution for maybe two years or so at this point. It's been a while.

The stability of the solution is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

I've never tried to scale the solution, however, it's my understanding that it is possible. On a scale from one to ten, I'd rate the potential to scale at a six or seven.

The tool is open source. Typically, when something is a commercial solution, there is more of a possibility of being scalable. We depend on other developers to grow the tool. 

Last year, we only had two people on the tool. However, this year, I want to grow that number to about ten. They are all engineers. Of the team, 80% would be quality engineers and 20% would be developers.

I don't use Selenium technical support. As an open-source tool, you need to go to the community and the forums.

Typically, you can find your answers pretty quickly. You can ask the community as well, and usually, someone gets back to you pretty fast.

I also use SmartBear. Selenium only works for web browsers, and sometimes I need to check an application. When that is the case, I cannot use Selenium, and I instead use SmartBear.

The initial setup is not straightforward. It's pretty complex.

It's complex due to the fact that you need to download a complement for the web browser and you need to recall the tests and you have to load the files. When you do a recall, the tools create a file with the steps. Before you need to playback, you need to load the file. It's not easy. You need to know some things about the tool. 

The deployment took maybe six months to possibly 10 months.

You only need one person for deployment and maintenance.

The solution is open-source and free to use. There are no licensing costs.

We did look at Katalon Studio before ultimately choosing Selenium HQ.

The principle difference is Katalon is one solution. You can't change the functionalities in the solution. It's also complex to use and demands a lot of memory. You need a lot of RAM or a big processor. It just takes up too many resources. 

We are just a customer and end-user.

I'm not sure which version number we're using. However, it is a version from 2020, from the last year or so.

I'd advise those considering the solution, if you want use SeleniumHQ, it's a good option if you have good developers that understand the tool and can make changes in the tool. If you have the right people on hand, it works very, very well.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. If it didn't need such technical expertise, I might rate it higher.