WebSurge – Free Performance Testing Tool

Are you looking free performance testing tool for your testing needs. Also, if you don’t have the experienced/experts in Apache Jmeter or SOAPUI or LoadUI. Then definitely you need to check this tool called WebSurge from West Wind.

What is WebSurge – Free Performance Testing Tool?

WebSurge is an open source but licensed product from West Wind. It captures/records HTTP requests and sessions for load testing. It also supports command line operations like Jmeter.

Licensing

There are three types of licenses available: Free, Professional, and Organizational License.

Where to download WebSurge?

You can download WebSurge from https://websurge.west-wind.com/download.aspx for free. File size is just 2258 KB. You need to extract the zip contents and install WebSurge by clicking on the exe file.

To launch WebSurge, double click on West Wind WebSurge shortcut from your desktop. Below is the IDE of WebSurge.

IDE
IDE

WebSurge has clean and minimal UI just like Jmeter. To the left there will be two tabs: Session and Results. To the right pane, you can see four tabs: Output, Preview, Request, Session Options.

Just beneath File menu, you can see the options to Open Session, Start/Stop run, Export Results, and Charts. Just below to it, you can customize the Time and the Thread Counts. There will be console icon as well to show/hide.

How to create test manually?

To add HTTP request manually, click on New button in the Session tab. Once you click on New button, enter the HTTP request in the Request tab which is at the right pane.

Create New Request
Create New Request

I have hosted a sample application locally. To open the homepage, select the request type as GET, enter the URL as shown below and optionally enter its logical name. If you want to customized headers, you can add it in the Headers text box. Once the details are entered, click on Test button to test it and then Save button to save the request.

Adding Request Details
Adding Request Details

Once you click on Save, Preview tab will become active automatically which will display the Request and Response Headers’ and Response Body as shown below.

Preview
Preview

When the request is saved, you can see the request has been added in the Session tab.

Session
Session

To save the whole test, go to File > Save Session File. All the tests will be saved with the extension *.websurge

How to execute the test?

Before you execute the test, you need to validate the session options. Click on Session Options and validate the settings. E.g. if you want to add any delay, edit the DelayTimeMs.

Session Options
Session Options

Once the session options configured, next step is to configure the duration and the number of threads. In this example, I am going to run my test for 1 minute with 2 threads/Vusers. Edit the value accordingly as shown below.

Time and Thread
Time and Thread

To execute the test, click on Start button. Once the test is started, the progress can be seen in the Output tab as well as in the Status bar as shown below.

Output Console
Output Console

When the execution is completed, Output tab displays the results as shown below.

Output
Output

How to export the results?

WebSurge allows you to export the results in three different formats: WebSurge, JSON, and XML. You can open WebSurge file in any text editor. It stores all the request and response of each request. If your test duration is long, the file size grows proportionally.

Export Result
Export Result

How to capture requests by recording?

Click on Capture button to record business actions.

Capture Button
Capture Button

Once you clicked on Capture, you will get WebSurge URL Capture window as shown below. Click on Capture again and then open your favorite browser to record the actions. If you want to record only specific website, enter the URL in the Domain box. If it is a Windows based application, select the Process Id.

Capture Window
Capture Window

There are various options available such as adding SSL Certificates, Filtering/Ignoring extra resources while recording etc.

Pros:

  • Free
  • Light weighted
  • Easy to learn
  • Minimal UI design
  • Works great for Web Services testing as well

Cons:

  • Advance features such as parameterization, transactions, correlations, advanced runtime settings are missing
  • Limited user community
  • Limited result generation features
  • Supports only HTTP protocol
  • Not sure how to record the applications which are hosted in Internet
  • No support custom functions

WebSurge is a great tool if you your performance testing needs are minimal. It is quick and easy to learn. You can complete the test creation process quickly. But it lacks in advance features, custom functions, and result analysis. It is worth to give a try if you want to showcase your performance testing tool skill set in your resume.

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