Load testing for websites and applications is performance testing used to determine how a system performs under a particular load. It tests the system’s performance by increasing the load beyond standard usage patterns and measuring its response.

I have recently been hitting new goals with this project, reaching audience heights of magnitude that I perhaps, initially, had not thought of. But, it’s all a learning experience, and I was quickly able to recover – and balance my server to withstand the ‘occasional’ traffic spikes.

I’m taking this approach because I believe that not everyone is familiar with Linux systems, even though the majority of websites are slowly starting to switch to a cloud VPS type of hosting platform. It’s cheaper, and it’s twice as effective.

How It Works

Let’s see how load testing is effective for applications and websites.

  1. Load testing ensures the website or app can handle the expected user load.
  2. It identifies and fixes performance bottlenecks before they become an issue.
  3. It ensures that the website or app is stable and reliable.
  4. It notes the maximum capacity of the website or app.
  5. It allows developers to test the website or app’s performance under different scenarios.
  6. It reveals if the architecture of the website or app is scalable and robust.
  7. It uncovers potential security issues that a tool may not have discovered in other tests.
  8. Load testing measures the website or app’s performance in real-world usage scenarios.
  9. It ensures that the website or app meets users’ performance expectations.

I myself use services that DigitalOcean provides. I use the $20/month plan, which so far has proven to be just perfect for the amount of traffic I receive. But, came the day when I got somewhere around 250~ visitors on at the same time, and the memory of the server collapsed.

DigitalOcean Logo Transparent

I was not prepared, and I had to upgrade my plan to 4GB of ram for the sake of being able to access the server and modify my configuration files a little bit, tweak them up so that I may withstand such big traffic hits in the future. I did all that, and happily reverted back to 2GB ram.

I’d like to show you a couple of platforms that I used to determine how much load my new configuration could handle, and what I think are the most important features of these particular platforms. Remember, this is a list of ways to load test your website, not speed test – those are two completely different things.

Load Impact

On Demand Load Testing for Developers Testers Load Impact
You just have to enter the URL and your test begins. It takes roughly five minutes for it to complete, and there are around 3,000-5,000 requests being made during that time. It all adds up to a number of active connections that the server is able to handle.

I recommend keeping a close eye on the amount of memory it starts to use on your server, and cut it out once it’s starting to reach the limit. You get detailed statistics on which type of files take the most time to load, and how long it takes for an average connection to form.

You’ll see that half the time, it’s 3rd party stuff taking nearly 20s to load.

Akamai

Top Tools For Load Testing Your Website & Apps

Akamai is a cloud service provider offering load testing services for websites and applications. Akamai load testing services are designed to simulate the load that a website or application would experience in a live environment, allowing you to test the performance of your website or application before it goes live.

The Akamai load testing service ensures that your website or application can quickly handle high traffic volumes and respond to user requests. It helps you detect performance issues before they impact your customers, allowing you to take corrective measures and ensure your website or application always provides a great end-user experience. In short, Akamai teaches you how to load test your website.

Blitz

Blitz Load and Performance Testing from the Cloud
I like Blitz, because it provides a huge amount of resources, and explanations of the test results that are being generated from your websites. You can signup for free to get 10 free credits, which should enable you to run 10 different tests.

The typical test run is 1 to 1000 users, with a 1000ms timeout. This will put enough load on your server/website to show you how many concurrent users you can handle, before users start to randomly time out. Based on the end results, Blitz will suggest action steps to consider in order to improve the performance of your website.

LoadNinja

Top Tools For Load Testing Your Website & Apps

LoadNinja is a cloud-based load testing tool that lets users easily create, manage and run load tests on websites, APIs and web applications. It provides an intuitive, manageable interface and a powerful scripting language that makes it easy to create realistic and repeatable load tests.

It also offers advanced features, such as distributed load generation, automated testing, reporting and analytics. With LoadNinja, you can easily simulate real-world traffic and performance to identify and fix problems before they impact your users.

WebLoad

Top Tools For Load Testing Your Website & Apps

WebLoad is a powerful and versatile load testing tool for web applications, mobile applications and APIs. It is used to identify hindrances in performance and ensure the reliability of web applications under heavy load. WebLoad supports multiple protocols, including HTTP/S, WebSockets, MQTT and JDBC.

It enables users to quickly create highly realistic and accurate load tests with its easy-to-use graphical user interface. Additionally, it offers advanced features such as parameterised requests, random data generation and distributed load testing.

Loader

Application Load Testing Tools for API Endpoints with loader.io
SendGrid by itself is a company that deals with helping businesses and individuals to send timely emails. Loader is their byproduct that was born through their ‘labs’ project. Loader stands out with the simplicity of the dashboard, and also the ability to conclude load tests using an API.

You actually get quite a bit of resources attached to this platform (which may not seem evident at first), and so I highly encourage you to see the official documentation, plenty of integration examples in there to get you excited.

Loadmill

Top Tools For Load Testing Your Website & Apps

Loadmill is an advanced cloud-based testing tool that allows you to easily create and run robust performance tests on websites and web applications. It offers a wide range of features to test the performance of your web applications and services under different conditions, including load tests, stability tests, stress tests and cut-off tests.

It has many features, such as automated test creation, test result visualisation and reports. Loadmill supports multiple scripting languages, including JavaScript, Python and Groovy, and a proprietary language called LMScript.

BlazeMeter

JMeter Load Testing Cloud
BlazeMeter allows you to run massive load tests in the cloud. Cloud computing is an ideal solution for load testing. It allows creating massive loads within minutes, but only requires you to pay for what you use. And BlazeMeter’s technology lets you create massive-scale load tests previously only possible with expensive testing environments.

BlazeMeter is 100% compatible with Apache JMeter; it is unique in that it allows developers and operations teams to select the global locations in which they want to test the load and response times of their applications without having to stand up a data center in each location. Mobile performance testing is also easy to setup and use from any place at any time utilizing real mobile devices (e.g iPhone, Galaxy) and more importantly, real mobile networks (e.g AT&T, Verizon).

BlazeMeter is an enterprise-level platform and the free version of the plan will yield you up to 50 concurrent connections, but its other plans can test up to 1,000,000 concurrent users. The company recently launched a program (http://go.blazemeter.com/startups/) that offers startups a free, six-month package of its cloud-based load testing services. Startups receive up to 20 free performance tests a month for up to 1,000 users per two-load server and two weeks of data retention – that’s a saving of more than $2,000 a year. This allows startups to maximize their time to market for more agile iterations by gathering valuable capacity and load-testing metrics.

I recommend BlazeMeter for both developers and big businesses that need solid cloud services for load testing their projects. It’s a top quality platform, used by some well recognized names in the industry, including Citi, Nike, Walmart, Thomson Reuters, Adobe and Disney, among many others.

OctoPerf

Top Tools For Load Testing Your Website & Apps

OctoPerf is a commercial load testing tool that allows you to run performance tests on web applications and mobile apps. It uses JMeter as its underlying engine and provides a user-friendly interface for creating, configuring and running load tests.

With OctoPerf, you can design and monitor complex load tests from the cloud without installing and configuring servers. It has various tools and features that help you make the most out of your load tests, such as real-time results, detailed reports and advanced analytics. OctoPerf offers a wide range of support options, including tutorials, a knowledge base and a customer service team.

BoomQ

Top Tools For Load Testing Your Website & Apps

BoomQ offers a cloud-based performance testing tool that helps users test their applications and websites for scale, speed and stability. The tool simulates user activity and analyses performance under heavy loads. It can generate thousands of virtual users and measure the response time of web applications and websites.

The performance testing tool has features such as test scripting, real-time performance analysis and interactive reports. It also allows users to customise the virtual user load and scenarios to simulate realistic user behaviour.

Neoload

Top Tools For Load Testing Your Website & Apps

NeoLoad is a load testing performance testing tool designed to ensure the scalability and reliability of applications. It can test web applications, mobile applications, APIs and microservices.

It allows users to simulate virtual users, generate load and measure performance. It can also simulate different types of users and user scenarios, such as heavy and light users, geographic locations and transactions.

NeoLoad offers an intuitive user interface, powerful scripting capabilities and robust analytics to help users analyse performance data and pinpoint areas of improvement. It supports various protocols, including HTTP/HTTPS, Websockets and SOAP.

Loader

Top Tools For Load Testing Your Website & Apps

Loader is a load testing tool that allows users to test the performance of their websites, APIs, and web services. It helps users to analyze how their applications respond when subjected to various load levels and to identify potential bottlenecks.

Loader provides many features, including real-time reporting, custom test scenarios, and easy integration with existing systems. It offers a variety of pricing plans, so users can choose the one that best fits their needs.

Loader also provides detailed reporting on test results, providing metrics such as response time, request throughput, number of requests, error rate and latency. It also allows users to replay tests, comparing the results of different test runs and tuning their applications accordingly.

LoadStorm

Load Testing Tools Performance Testing In The Cloud
LoadStorm is a load testing tool. It is on-demand performance testing, load testing, and stress testing for web applications and websites. It’s cloud based and has been operating since early 2008, so they’ve got plenty of experience to take good care of you.

You get a free trial account to experiment with, but those who’re interested for more advanced features – can apply for a premium account, which start at $39 for 1,000 concurrent connections. I think that’s quite reasonable, especially for smaller businesses.

Loadium

Top Tools For Load Testing Your Website & Apps

Loadium is a cloud-based load testing tool that helps businesses test websites, web and mobile apps. It provides a comprehensive suite of features that enable users to quickly analyse and evaluate their applications’ performance. It includes real-time monitoring, automated load testing, scalability testing and more.

Loadium allows users to create custom scenarios and test cases, generate load tests in various formats and analyse and export results. It also includes a powerful dashboard that provides detailed performance metrics and data visualisations.

LoadFocus

Top Tools For Load Testing Your Website & Apps

LoadFocus is a cloud-based load testing tool that allows users to quickly and easily test their applications for scalability and performance. It is designed to help users identify performance issues and capacity bottlenecks before they go live.

The tool boasts a simple user interface that lets users quickly set up their test scenarios and launch their tests. It also has an intuitive dashboard that provides real-time results and allows users to adjust their tests.

You can find detailed performance metrics, such as latency and response time, to help users identify and address any issues. Overall, LoadFocus provides an effective and reliable load testing solution.

Free Online Load Testing for Your Apps & Websites

I think that’s a pretty solid list. I have focused on tools that provide online load testing capabilities, but here are a couple more that you can use to work with on your own server, under your own set of rules:

it takes longer to get used to them, but they’re free to use and can provide a much greater depth of information about the performance of your websites and applications. I’ve used ‘ab’ quite a bit during the recent stress tests I’ve been concluding, it’s great.

What do you use to conclude a load test on your apps and websites?

photo by siempre889