OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional) Reviews

We've been using Micro Focus LoadRunner for load testing to simulate the load and applications for microservices and Salesforce UI applications.

 We like LoadRunner's controller and analysis features.

Improvement wise, the pipeline should be enabled. It should be embedded as part of the tool itself rather than going with third-party tools.

Monitoring should be more effective as well.

I've been using this solution for the last 17 years.

I would rate Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional's stability at eight out of ten.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate the scalability at seven.

I would technical support at eight out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is not straightforward. It should be enabled with some APM tools so that we don't have to rely on third-party tools.

Our ROI is okay, considering that it is a one-time effort.

When you compare the cost of other tools such as NeoLoad and LoadNinja, the cost of LoadRunner is on the expensive side. As a result, we are currently considering going with NeoLoad.

We are evaluating Tricentis NeoLoad and will probably go with it because it has additional features and is less expensive.

Overall, I would rate LoadRunner at seven out of ten.

Scaling is definitely one of the best features of this solution. There are no issues scaling to 10,000 or 20,000 concurrent users.

This tool gives you a lot of options. It gives you hyper correlation, etc., requiring much lower programming scans. It's very user-friendly.

Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional supports other tools and protocols, such as SAP, Citrix, web services, etc.

Analyses are more in-depth and more detailed, and slicing and dicing is very easy. You can pinpoint load APIs at any point in time. You can know what was happening at a specific minute with regard to your requests, headers, response time, exceptions, etc. It has great reporting capabilities.

In terms of resource management, you need a lot of high capacity boxes if you need to generate a load of 1,000 or 2,000 users.

This solution has AJAX protocol or TruClient protocol, which gives you frontend stats and web vitals with very few details. This could be integrated further to exactly map any other leading tools for frontend analysis. That is, it needs further enhancements.

Easy maintenance would be good because now if you want to upgrade the version from X to Y, it takes a couple of days. There has to be downtime as well. Operation processes should be faster and should not have an impact for more than a couple of hours.

I've been using it for more than eight years.

Technical support is very good. We have a dedicated POC for Micro Focus. Although we have to follow the process of submitting tickets and waiting for a response, if it's a P zero issue, then we can directly connect with the technical person who has been allocated to us.

The SaaS version is quick and easy to set up. The on-premises version has a lot of challenges, especially related to the DB. You need to have a particular DB version to store the user data. Also, you have to depend on additional licensing from a database side. For instance, if you have Oracle, then you would need an additional license for the Oracle user.

The licensing is on a yearly basis and is relatively expensive.

If your team doesn't have much exposure to the development side, this is a good solution because you don't need much customization. You get a lot of automated features.

I would definitely recommend choosing the SaaS option rather than the on-premises option. The on-premises version has a lot of issues. For example, I'm dealing with version 12.63, and very soon, this particular version will be obsolete in terms of support. You will have to keep updating it in order to get the support for your version.

If you're looking for a tool which gives you more insight and you're ready to pay some extra dollars for it, then you should go for Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional. However, if you need a simple, aim-and-shoot tool for load testing and getting stats out, then you probably don't need this tool that has an expensive license.

Apart from the cost, Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional is one of the natural product choices in the industry. So, I would rate it at nine out of ten. If the cost were relatively lower, then I would've given it a ten.

My customers use it for performance testing. It is the ultimate tool for it.

It has features for recording. The best feature with Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional is that there is very little bottleneck or overhead issues. With LoadRunner, you can spawn 2000 contributions for one machine.

The pricing model, selling model, and business model need to be adjusted. For non-enterprise organizations, Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional is too expensive and not worth the cost.

Technical support also needs to be improved.

Everyone wants to make the testing phase easy, and so, the recording feature needs to be more stable for every app and every command application. Right now, the call language is C, and it would be better if it were changed to another language such as JavaScript.

I've been using this solution for almost 20 years.

It's stable, but in the newest version, it takes about six months till we can guarantee the stability.

My customers have turned to Micro Focus' technical support, but they have mostly not been able to solve the problems. When the case has to do with the setup, the technical support has been useless. So, I would give them a three out of ten.

Negative

I have used several tools, but Micro Focus is the best. We can get things done in a very short period of time. If we used an open source tool, then we would need more time.

The initial deployment is quite simple. It's not complex and can be done in one or two days.

LoadRunner Professional is easy to maintain.

The licensing model is complex. You have to pick up the protocol and the number of concurrent users, and then select the level of concurrent users. For example, there would be one price for 100 to 500 users and another for 500 to 2000 users. If you choose two protocols, then you will have to pay twice the amount depending on the number of concurrent users.

I recommend LoadRunner to everyone because they have a community with 50 concurrent users. Micro Focus has done standard testing and guarantees the use of LoadRunner in this case. With an open source tool, however, there is no guarantee, and you would be using it at your own risk.

The purpose of using a tool like this is to reduce application performance risk. So, using a tool at your own risk to reduce the risk is not reasonable. Therefore, I recommend using LoadRunner and rate it at eight on a scale from one to ten.

We use OpenText LoadRunner Professional in demand every time there is a requirement for notice, and that's when we use it.

The ability to have a load testing tool and conduct your load testing maybe before some major implementations leads to some cost saving in the long run because it avoids a lot of related issues.

OpenText LoadRunner Professional covers a number of protocols. It uses high-level languages like Java, CVC, and CCL. The main feature that is quite impressive is its ability to install however you want and just use that or whenever you want the availability of load generators.

The pricing could be lower. Moreover, there could be improvements in the auto-generated support reports, such as making it easier to work on the Word format reports if you want to add your customizations.

I have been working with OpenText LoadRunner Professional for more than ten years.

The stability of OpenText LoadRunner Professional is excellent. I would rate it a nine out of ten as it is a rock-solid solution with no issues.

OpenText LoadRunner Professional is very scalable. I would rate its scalability an eight out of ten because it allows for flexible installation and use of load generators.

OpenText technical support is very helpful, depending on the structure of how you get your support, whether directly from OpenText or via other suppliers. So far, the support has been good, and we have built some nice relationships with the support team. I would rate their support an eight out of ten.

Positive

Before OpenText LoadRunner Professional, I did some comparisons between LoadRunner, JMeter, and Free Performer. In terms of ease of use, support, and overall functionality, LoadRunner became the better solution.

The initial setup of OpenText LoadRunner Professional was quite easy and not difficult at all. It took us at most one hour to deploy it.

I am the one who does the installation and any troubleshooting or maintenance related to OpenText LoadRunner Professional. When I have issues, I log a call with the OpenText support team.

The long-term use of LoadRunner Professional has led to some cost savings by avoiding a lot of load-related issues.

After purchasing OpenText LoadRunner, you only pay for the specific protocols you want to use. There are extra expenses depending on the licenses or specific protocols you need.

We evaluated LoadRunner, JMeter, and Free Performer before choosing OpenText LoadRunner Professional.

I would recommend OpenText LoadRunner Professional for performance testing needs because it is easy to implement, covers a wide range of protocols, and integrates well with other tools. The pricing, however, could be improved.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

LoadRunner handles the testing of complex multi-user scenarios. It was not complex. It's pretty easy. 

The reports have been effective in identifying system bottlenecks. It offers very good reports.

Sometimes when we were migrating from one version to another, some of our scripts started failing. And configuration-wise, we used to get support since we had the license with us. We used to just connect with Micro Focus, and the turnaround time was very less. It was very fast.

With my understanding and experience, for future releases, I suggest some correlation features that had to be tuned from the tool because, for SAP applications, capturing dynamic values from the responses and other technical things still had to be done manually.

In my previous job, I worked with OpenText LoadRunner Professional.

I used it for almost 14 years. 

Around 14 people used it. 

There were some technical challenges, but the support was pretty good.

They could work on some more things because there are some more complex applications, like SAP applications, wherein some of the challenges were capturing dynamic values and other things that had to be done manually.

Positive

I already put forth the proposal for LoadRunner Professional in my current company. 

The implementation was very straightforward and not an issue. To get comfortable with LoadRunner, it was just three to four months for me. 

Within four to five months, I was totally comfortable with it and started doing all the activities.

The license was a bit expensive. That was the reason we used to depend on the customer to fund it.  

I would recommend it to other users. I recommend LoadRunner for every company where performance testing is considered a key value.

Because I have some experiences wherein some companies will not consider performance itself as their key thing. So wherever performance is being concentrated, I'll propose LoadRunner as the first thing.

Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

We use the solution for load testing. 

The executive management is more confident when they go for production. They know that the performance issues are already addressed. 

The tool's most valuable features are scripting and automation. 

The tool should consider releasing a SaaS version since it makes more sense nowadays. 

I have been using the product for three to four years. 

The solution is stable. 

OpenText LoadRunner Enterprise's pricing is reasonable. 

OpenText LoadRunner Enterprise has helped us save time by five to ten percent. The tool has helped us improve product quality. 

We use the TruClient feature, and it has helped us reduce scripting. 

I rate the product an eight out of ten. 

We use the solution to help customers test web applications. 

I am impressed with the tool's correlation function. 

I would like the solution to include monitoring capacity. 

I have been working with the product for more than 10 years. 

I would rate the solution's stability a nine out of ten.

I would rate the solution's scalability a nine out of ten. We have around 1000 virtual users for the product. 

I would rate the product's setup a nine out of ten. It's easy and straightforward. The tool's deployment took one hour to complete. 

I would rate the solution's pricing a nine out of ten. 

I would rate the product a nine out of ten. 

I primarily use LoadRunner Professional to load test applications in a manufacturing environment. 

LoadRunner Professional allowed us to load test potential new payroll solutions that would be implemented throughout the entire organization so that we knew which was best suited to performing well under pressure. 

LoadRunner Professional's most valuable features are the easy setup, the auto-correlation feature, the high number of protocols, the analysis, and the reporting.

Micro Focus has two separate products for web and mobile applications, which means you have to invest in both. LoadRunner Professional does have a mobile protocol, but it works on very few applications. Merging the two products would be a big improvement, especially if Micro Focus also ensures the on-prem and cloud solutions have the same features. They're also not great with communication, including about important things like new rollouts. 

I've been using LoadRunner Professional for five to six years.

LoadRunner Professional's performance has been good, and we've had no issues with stability.

LoadRunner Professional's technical support is really good - they respond promptly and give super support. They also have a nice, robust knowledge bank, so if there are any issues, you can usually find help on the support site or via the community.

The ease of LoadRunner Professional's setup process is one of its strengths - it's straightforward and takes a day or two to deploy.

We used a vendor team.

We've got quite a good ROI from LoadRunner Professional, as it has reduced our downtime, raised our response time, and allowed us to test the new payroll system for the entire organization. However, the ROI is lower than it could be as we only use LoadRunner sparingly to avoid higher costs.

LoadRunner Professional's licensing costs are on the higher side, apart from the Community Edition. The Community Edition is free but limited to fifty users; after that, you have to pay for extra users.

I would recommend LoadRunner Professional as a helpful, user-friendly tool with a huge knowledge base. The only thing to bear in mind is the higher cost. I would give LoadRunner Professional a rating of eight out of ten.