Appium With Perfecto: The Benefits of Going Beyond Open-Source Appium

Appium is a great open-source framework to simplify automated testing. But it can’t do everything.

On the other hand, testing with Appium and Perfecto together offers many benefits while addressing the challenges of testing with open-source Appium alone.

This blog will delve into the common gaps found within open-source Appium testing, and how combining Appium with Perfecto helps fill these gaps and scale your existing testing to new levels.

Related Reading >> Start Appium testing today with this comprehensive Appium tutorial 

Limitations of Open-Source Appium

The Appium framework is a great option for testing mobile applications. 
More significant Appium benefits include:

• A strong, active open-source community. Appium is known as the leading open-source test framework for cross-platform mobile test automation. This reputation means that Appium is consistently supported by a large and dynamic user community. 
• Support for multiple languages. Appium provides support for multiple development languages through Remote WebDriver language bindings. mMany Perfecto customers standardize on a Java or JavaScript stack, with C# as another popular option.
• End-to-end test coverage. Open-source Appium can cover black box end-to-end test flows including scenarios outside of the app, such as initiating a call or sending a text message.

While Appium is a popular choice for mobile application testing, there are three important limitations to using open-source Appium on its own. 

1. Mastering test creation and maintenance.
2. Maintaining a standard lab infrastructure. 
3. Automating complicated scenarios.

Let’s explore each of these limitations in depth. 

Mastering Test Creation & Maintenance

According to a recent survey, SDETs working with open-source Appium spend 15% of their day-to-day activity on test maintenance and 20% on test failure analysis, taking away the capacity to create new tests. 

Additionally, it is  difficult to find SDETs with the right skill set to create tests. Open-source Appium only appeals to those who already have extensive coding experience. 

These limitations cause QA leaders using Appium to ask the following questions:

• How do we improve automation creation throughput and reduce maintenance?
• How can we create trust in automation?
• How do I make an existing team more productive?

Maintaining a Standard Lab Infrastructure

When starting with open-source Appium automation, testers will usually connect a phone to the framework via USB. The Appium framework will then drive the automated tests to the device. 

For teams just starting out with mobile test automation, connecting one device to the Appium framework is a great starting point, especially during the proof-of-concept phase. 

Once teams can feel assured that they are meeting their MVP goals with one device, such as smoke tests or high-value test cases, the next stage is scaling these tests across multiple devices and platforms.

There are many stakeholders involved in maintaining an in-house lab infrastructure: infrastructure engineers, DevOps engineers, SDETs, and QA managers. With so many personas involved in the lab upkeep, it is difficult to ascertain what matters most in terms of team focus.

From a cost standpoint, maintaining an in-house lab can run as much as $6,000 per device, plus the additional costs of the personnel maintaining the lab itself. These costs can quickly add up as teams are looking to expand their device labs to meet their users’ needs.

Automating Complex Test Scenarios

Lastly, teams using open-source Appium struggle with the limitations on what they can automate. As high-quality mobile apps become increasingly critical to business success, teams need to be able to test a wide range of scenarios with one platform. 

Some important, yet complex scenarios not supported by open-source Appium include:

• Biometric authentication.
• Image injection.
• Voice recognition.
• Network virtualization.

How Appium + Perfecto Helps Teams Scale

Perfecto offers many solutions to meet the challenges of open-source Appium. 

Test Creation & Maintenance for Every Team

In terms of the challenges presented by test creation and maintenance, Perfecto supports code-based, low-code, and codeless frameworks. This makes Appium test automation accessible to everyone involved in testing, regardless of coding experience.

Cloud-Based Lab 

As a SaaS-based platform with a device lab in the cloud, Perfecto hosts Appium servers in the cloud, maintains its own lab, and generates insights and reports. Therefore, there is no need to hire additional DevOps and infrastructure engineers that are dedicated to maintaining your device lab. 

Perfecto users can also test from anywhere and simulate any location, with same-day support of new devices and OSs. Users can also benefit from Perfecto’s AI-driven analytics, which eliminates noise to quickly identify the root causes of issues and speed up test cycles. 

Other important Perfecto reporting features that allow users to accelerate their Appium testing include:

• Identifying problems early with the CI dashboard.
• Understanding quality in production with Livestream.
• Eliminating false positives with Heatmap.
• Correlating error sources across builds and time with Report Library.

Support for Advanced, Complex Test Scenarios

Lastly, Perfecto complements Appium by allowing teams to add complex scenarios to their testing suites. Perfecto supports many advanced use cases, including biometric authentication, network virtualization, two-factor authentication, and voice recognition. 

Perfecto’s support for these cases offers a much better ROI in terms of what you can do with test automation. Instead of testing more complex use cases manually or with a different platform, Appium testers can validate everything they need in the same place. 

Next-Level Testing: Appium 2.0 + Perfecto 

Appium 2.0 is a major update to the Appium framework that opens the door to all sorts of new features that you can leverage to build apps better, faster, and more seamlessly.  

With Perfecto’s support of Appium 2.0, Perfecto customers can continue to take their Appium testing to the next level with its most current version.  

Bottom Line

Combining Appium and Perfecto helps accelerate Appium testing and gives teams a path to scale. From streamlining lab maintenance to supporting advanced automation use cases, Perfecto both expands and deepens Appium’s testing capabilities when used on its own. 

Experience Appium Testing With Perfecto in Action

Try out Appium testing with Perfecto on your own or watch a product demo to explore Appium testing with Perfecto more in-depth. 

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