The organizations that is in a position of reducing its overall cost always try to reduce their number of staffs other than any other resources (because by reducing staffs, they can save the staffing cost i.e : salary and other wages). Arrival of automated tools to do the tasks which can be done by human, also make the organizations to reduce their staffs and move ahead with their automated tools which can save their time, cost and quick enough and do not need to any human resource management. This is almost true with the organizations that are dealing with technical things like Software Development or any other applications/website development. Such organizations should always ensure their system (software, website or any other applications) meet the requirements under which the product is developed, stable with all environments (with desktop users, mobile users, different operating system users and so on), secured and etc. To do so, they want to perform TESTING. Even though there are firms which have dedicated testing teams, there may be firms which are in above mentioned situation and would like to go ahead with automated testing tools with less number of tester (for example, one tester to operate the automated tool and produce reports etc). If you are a firm and would like to go ahead with automated testing tool, there are two categories of tools to be considered; such as :
1.Open Source Automated Testing Tools
2.Proprietary automated testing tools
Open source tools are cost effective compare to proprietary tools as well as the source code of open source tools can be found easily that can be customized for different needs of testing, anyhow it may be an added job for existing developers/programmers. Also, open source tools may not cover all the important areas that should be tested, that may result in product faults and etc in future, with proprietary tools this may not be an issue as it can be customized by the people who developed the product and easily fit with special requirements. Open source tool may not work properly with all the environments (like different devices, different operating system etc), require some programming knowledge to operate, may not have proper online-help, user manual documents, online support community or forum and so on. Due to all these downsides of open source automated tools, it is wise to go ahead with proprietary testing tools, even though those are charged with comparatively high price the goals of testing can be reached without any troubles and always high possibilities to ensure bug-free (almost) product to end-users.
On the other hand, there are open-source tools which provide excellent customer support and enhanced features than proprietary automated tools. So, before selecting the best testing tool, it is recommended to consider below points :
1.The functionality of the product
2.Do the company do customization for the product to meet special/specific needs
3.Available customer support (by phone, e-mail, instant messengers, online forum, help-desk etc)
4.Your needs and requirements
5.Few reviews from previous users of the particular product.