Are you thinking of doing eCommerce Load Testing and looking for free tools?
We got you covered.
In this article, I will tell you the best open source Load Testing Tools, that are absolutely free and work amazingly.
Why do Load Testing of eCommerce Store?
Doing regular Load Testing is a wise practice. It tells you about bottlenecks and shutdowns of your online store.
Such as at how many concurrent users your will site crash.
A few days back, an online book store added a few premium books to the sales. And they posted it on Instagram. And guess what?
After a few hours, they posted a story apologizing (and excited) for the site getting crashed due to so many customers trying to buy the books.
Though they were a little pumped about it, if your eCommerce store stopped working then you should not be proud of it. It means your site is not prepared for the offer you are providing.
Similarly, in festival season (black Friday sales, Cyber Monday, Halloween), the traffic increases.
A Load Testing will help you in preparing your store for the worst. And you do not have to pay a hefty amount for various tools to load test your site.
With the help of open-source load testing tools, you can do it for free.
9 Top Open Source eCommerce Load Testing Tools
Here are the best open-source eCommerce Load Testing Tools:
#1 Apache JMeter
Apache JMeter is the most popular among the open-source load testing tools. JMeter is a Java-based application, built to load test web applications. But gradually, the horizon has expanded, and the current version of JMeter does a lot more than measuring performance.
JMeter is an excellent alternative to LoadRunner, as it has lots of features that come under commercial load testing applications. That is another reason it is a favourite of professional load testers.
You can use Apache JMeter to measure the performance of static and dynamic applications. JMeter can simulate a heavy load on a server, or group of servers, network, or object to test the strength of application under traffic pressure.
JMeter is an excellent program to run load testing of the eCommerce store.
Apache JMeter features include:
- Load and performance test many different applications/server/protocol types such as SOAP / REST Webservices, LDAP, Database via JDBC etc.
- A complete and ready to present dynamic HTML report
- Portable and 100% Java purity
- Caching and offline analysis/replaying of test results
#2 Taurus
As popular JMeter is, it is not an easy tool to use. Writing a script with JMeter requires you know some level of jmx format.
It is powerful and full of features but does have a learning curve.
Enter the Taurus to make it all a lot easier.
Taurus is an open-source automation tool built by Blazemeter. It can work with JMeter, Grinder, Gatling and Selenium. It is an acronym for Test Automation Running Smoothly.
Taurus makes the load testing process smoother by providing language configuration scripts in a more user-friendly way.
Features of Taurus:
- Easy installation and setup
- Tests are written using JSON or YAML
- Ability to run existing scripts that are written in JMeter, Grinder, Gatling or Selenium
- Merge multiple test scripts easily into a single test run
- Real-time reporting
- Integration with Blazemeter reporting dashboard
#3 Gatling
Gatling is another powerful open source load testing application. It uses Akka factors to create a simulation of huge traffic. Gatling is mainly written in Scala and uses DSL, that allows users to write tests with a beginner knowledge of Scala.
Gatling is a relatively new software in the market, but its popularity is growing rapidly.
With Gatling, users can run a load test with concurrent users on a single computer, without the need for a complex distributed testing environment. One fantastic feature of Gatling is that you can analyze the bottlenecks and optimize it.
You can record the behaviour of the user on the site, and then create a script for the same behaviour and run it for many concurrent users. Such tests are critical for eCommerce testing before major festivals and shopping time.
Gatling has both open source and enterprise versions. Enterprise version will get you premium support; however, all the features are available in the community edition, which is free.
One drawback is not having a coherent GUI, but then, what open source load testing tools have except few.
Features of Gatling:
- Gatling test can handle a number of concurrent users per machine as compared to other tools
- Gatling consumes fewer resources, such as RAM and CPU.
- Scripts are highly readable and less prone to errors
- Supports a wide variety of protocols including HTTP, HTTPS, and Web sockets
- Creating detailed HTML reports for the executed events
- Easy to use graphical test recorder which can generate simulation script by recording user activity or user actions on a web browser.
#4 Locust
Locust is a fantastic yet straightforward load testing tool. As the name suggests, the idea behind Locust is that a pack of Locust will attack your site. You can configure and change the behaviour of each locust, and the user can monitor the process with the web UI in real-time.
Locust is written in python, and it is easy to install and use. With a pip command, you can use Locust to test the tolerance of the website, apps, and servers under heavy load.
It is event-based software, and that’s why it supports thousands of concurrent users from a single source. Other software uses callbacks, but Locust uses light-weight processes through gevent.
Features of Locust:
- Test scenarios can be written in Python
- Easily install with PIP
- Define user behaviour in code
- Supports running load tests distributed over multiple machines
- Web-based UI for easier testing
- Any system can be tested using this tool
#5 Tsung
Formerly IDX-Tsunami, Tsung is another open-source load testing tool. However, it is protocol independent and can work to monitor servers such as FTP, WebDAV, SOAP, PostgreSQL etc.
You can deploy Tsung on multiple computers, and harness the resources to simulate hundreds of thousands concurrent users. It is written in Erlang, an open-source language that focuses on building scalable fault-tolerant applications.
Although you can run Tsung from the computer itself, or join a few of the machines for more power, the main strength of the Tsung is its ability to run with a cluster. Once set up on the modest cluster, it can put an immense load on the server.
Running Tsung on the cloud server is the best option, as it will work at its full potential. You can check ServerGuy’s cloud server plan and contact us. We will make you a custom plan, as per your resources and timely needs.
Features of Tsung:
- Remote and distributed load testing
- High performance and can run millions of simultaneous users
- Functional for complex and complicated user sessions (dynamic data)
- Arrival rates and random thinktimes enabler
- Detailed report after testing, with all essential stats
- OS monitoring (CPU, memory and network traffic) using SNMP, Munin or Erlang agents on remote servers
- Live web user interface
- Can run on Cloud Servers
#6 Siege
Siege is a regression testing tool. If you have made changes in the code of your site, and want to test if the latest coding has affected the site, then Siege is for you.
It is made to test the code under vast amounts of stress, to evaluate how the code will respond on the internet. Siege is written on GNU/Linux and ported to AIX, BSD, HP-UX & Solaris. The program can run on most of the system, except Windows, as Siege relies on POSIX. Although, you can check a Windows server with Siege.
There are three operational models in Siege: Regression, Internet simulation and Brute Force. With it, you can analyse the amount of data transferred, the response time of the server, throughput, concurrency, consistency, etc.
However, don’t set the concurrency too high, or it will crash. Siege has few drawbacks like it has a vague set of metrics, and the time scale is in two decimal points only.
Features of Siege:
- Set the number of concurrent users
- Generates a log file to analyze
- Set the delay for each Siege user
- Simple and for a specific type of Load testing
#7 Artillery
Artillery became so popular in the open-source community that now there is a premium edition of the software too. It is written in Node.js, and it is pretty quick to write scripts on Artillery.
You can have thousands of concurrent users with Artillery, but there are no recording functions. However, there are reports at the end of the test.
Artillery is fast and lightweight and does not eat loads of local resources.
Features of Artillery:
- Easy installation with npm
- Simple CLI interface
- Support to HTTP, Socket.io, WebSockets, and AWS Kinesis out of the box
- It’s easy to learn, even for non-technical people
- Easily integrate Artillery’s CLI into other scripts
- Extend Artillery writing custom engines, plugins, or custom reporters using JS
#8 Goad
Goad is a Go-based load testing tool that harnesses the power of AWS lambda. With Goad, you can test the performance of your eCommerce store at low cost, while keeping the concurrent user number high.
Goad will configure the AWS resources required to execute the test. When the test is over, it will clean itself, so there will be no accidental AWS charges. You can run the test by the regions. You will be able to find the speed of the site in different parts of the World.
Although the test cost is small, you have to calculate the estimation manually.
Features of Goad:
- Allows HTTP load launch from four different AWS simultaneously
- Single lambda can handle hundreds of concurrent connections
- Peak load of up to 100,000 concurrent requests
- Clean itself after the test so no accidental charges
#9 The Grinder
The Grinder is a Java-based load testing tool. It is a freely available open-source tool under BSD style license.
You can efficiently run a distributed test using multiple load injector machines. The Grinder can function on any hardware and OS that supports J2SE 1.4 and above, including HTTP web servers, SOAP, REST, and other application servers.
The Grinder has console and agent processes that provide Grinder with the ability to scale the load test across multiple servers. The Grinder is a load test tool for developers to find the slowdown and deadlocks.
Features of The Grinder:
- Test scripts are written in the powerful Jython
- Graphical console allows multiple load injectors to be monitored
- Centralised script editing and distribution
- Management of client connections and cookies
- Dynamic display of current worker processes and threads
What after Load Testing?
You have to analyse the reports and findings from the Load Testing.
Page Load Time: The most critical information to know. A page can load fast if only one user is loading it. But what if there are 100 or 1000 or 10000 of people requesting that page, is the page still loading fast?
Load Testing results will give you detailed information about how your page loading speed fluctuates with the number of concurrent users.
Errors and Warning: You have to look for what errors and Warning server is throwing as the number of concurrent users increases. At high load, servers begin to return Server Error 500’s.
Third-Party: Your web page is made up of lots of third-party apps, all integrated to provide an ultimate user experience. What if the element of your site works fine, but the third-party apps crash.
Even a single performance testing run opens up a plethora of information for the analysts and marketers. After knowing the weaknesses, you can optimize your site for better performance.
eCommerce Hosting:
With load testing, you can test your eCommerce Hosting too. At ServerGuy, we provide load testing to our customers, so they know that our hosting will support their online business even if the huge traffic arrives.
Conclusion
Preparing your online store should be your priority if you are planning to run offers or sales, and expect a tremendous amount of traffic to your site.
Else page crashing will annoy the customers, and you will lose your credibility.
With these top 10 best open-source eCommerce load testing tools, you can quickly and freely do the testing of your eCommerce store.
However, these tools will work amazingly if you give them the fair resources, such as cloud servers. For that you contact us, we know exactly what you want.
