Top Reasons to Choose Ranorex over Selenium

Technology has advanced at such a rapid pace, and the speed of releases is so fast that teams often are struggling to keep up. Every release feels like a storm that hits you hard, and before you realize the impact, it has already passed. Success requires finding bugs fast, fixing them, and releasing new features and patches as soon as possible. But because our testing time remains limited, we have to maximize it using automation.

Whether to go with open-source or vendor-based automated solutions is a hugely debated topic. One of the widely used open-source frameworks is Selenium. Numerous resources highlight the pros and cons of Selenium but this article is focused on why teams should use Ranorex over Selenium to help address different teams’ pain points and speed up the overall delivery process.

Here are several reasons that lead teams to choose Ranorex instead of Selenium to accelerate their release cycles.

1. Flatter learning curve

Teams, processes, and tools are continually changing. There is so much fluidity in agile teams, but there is not enough time to do robust training amid rapid releases. This is where Ranroex can help.

Ranorex is an integrated solution that spans different aspects of the software development process. Any individual can quickly adapt to the tool and start using the built-in features right away. Whereas, with Selenium, teams have to figure out how to build the framework from scratch and write more code to perform actions that could otherwise be achieved through a point-and-click action using Ranorex. This is a huge value proposition for teams looking to author, execute and maintain tests quickly to ensure most defects are found before the production release.

Also, there is no worrying about having the technical skills to use the tool. Ranorex caters to both technical and non-technical people. A person with programming knowledge can build robust scripts from scratch, while a business person with less technical knowledge can start using the built-in features to create tests on the fly with just a few clicks. This is not the case with Selenium wherein automation progress is heavily dependent on the availability of skilled resources with programming knowledge.

This is the true power of Ranorex: the freedom to be flexible when used by team members with different roles.

2. CI/CD integration

In this day and age, most companies either already have continuous integration and delivery implementation or are gradually moving toward it. The tool teams use has to support this effort. However, this can get cumbersome when there are lots of manual configurations, setup time, and resources involved like in the case of Selenium.

Ranorex helps ease this process by giving teams an easy way to integrate with various CI/CD tools without requiring in-depth knowledge about them. One of the most popular CI/CD tools, Travis CI, is part of the Ranorex family, and it takes only a couple of minutes to get teams up and running with your CI/CD pipeline.

3. Frequent updates

One of the biggest concerns with automation tools is how quickly the tool’s bugs are fixed and how frequently they get updated with better features. This is one of the glaring limitations of Selenium because the open-source community maintains them: Issues with the libraries and frameworks may not be addressed immediately.

Ranorex has a dedicated team to fix bugs within the tool quickly. They push patches and updates as fast as possible, so teams can be guaranteed that they are using the latest and best features of the tool at any given time.

4. Professional customer support

If a tool has no customer support, when you face a problem, you feel helpless, as there is no one who can authoritatively help you work it out. Teams have been in this situation many times when using different tools, particularly Selenium, and it is a huge bottleneck for releasing features on time.

With Ranorex, you get high-quality customer support. This team has the technical knowledge to troubleshoot most of the problems you may face when using the tool or when integrating it with other tools. This is the biggest reason companies prefer vendor-based solutions over open-source; they need timely support to remove obstacles quickly.

5. Integrations with other tools

Automation tools are just one set of tools used as part of the development process. In a CI/CD pipeline, teams use tools for defect management, test management, builds and releases, test data management, test infrastructure, and monitoring, and version control, as well as Docker containers and other frameworks. The automated tool or framework teams use should seamlessly integrate with all existing tools in their workflow.

When teams use Selenium, they have to do a lot of manual configurations and write scripts to integrate with various tools consuming significant time and resources. With Ranorex there are various built-in integrations that enable teams to connect to them with a few clicks.

As the times have changed, the debate between open-source and vendor-based solutions has shifted to how teams can test faster and keep up with rapid release cycles. To meet exponentially growing customer demands, organizations have to rethink their testing efforts and focus on what brings them more value in terms of time, cost, and effort. Adopting a tool that can make your life easier in any of these regards can go a long way toward helping you get quality products to your customers.