ReadyAPI Reviews

We have a product, a financial application, that uses a lot of services to connect to our backend systems, so we use ReadyAPI to test those services. Primarily, we use it to build out or mimic the exact services that the development team uses. Second, we use it to build out scripts in Groovy to automate certain scenarios and verify without any manual intervention.

The feature that allows you to import an API collection or a project is valuable. It reduces a lot of manual effort to give the endpoint and the parameters, etc. If the development team gives me the collection, I can directly import it into  ReadyAPI and it maps the entire project so that I can start hitting the APIs directly.

There is a lot of room for improvement, mainly from the point of view of integrating ReadyAPI into the CI pipelines, and also the scripting aspect into Bitbucket. ReadyAPI is an extremely good and efficient standalone tool, but if you're collaborating on a project, it kind of becomes like a bottleneck. For use as a tool for group collaboration, there is some room for improvement.

I would like to see two new features. Number one is version control with Bitbucket or Git, where we can actually see the scripts and have meaningful pull requests. Right now, everything sits inside an XML file, so it's very hard to review the code that anybody writes. If I have a ReadyAPI project, I want to not only have it on my local machine, but also in a version control system like Git or Bitbucket. At this time I can put the project there, but it's very hard to decipher the files that ReadyAPI exposes. It would be nice for them to have it more like a .gui file where the formatting of the file and the readability of the code is easier for other individuals.

Second, is integration into a continuous integration pipeline, like a CI pipeline, where we can easily trigger, via Bamboo or Jenkins, and execute the scripts and maybe get the response of the results via an email or notification. Maybe it also needs integration into tools like Microsoft Teams or Slack, to get immediate feedback about the results of our execution. Those would be the new improvements I would like to see in their upcoming versions.

I have been using ReadyAPI for the past four and a half years.

I think ReadyAPI is very stable as a standalone tool. I haven't had much experience with using it with cloud or CI, but overall, my impressions are that it is a very solid and stable tool. There's no flakiness in it. As long as you have the right licenses and internet, it's pretty solid. It doesn't hang or crash. The time it takes to hit the API responses and process data is pretty much seamless.

I think there is a lot of improvement required from the scalability point of view. 

Anywhere between 20-50 people use the solution at the moment, but that can go up to around 100 users. 

One time I got help from the technical support team, and they were good. They were able to understand my issue and resolve it within a couple of days. 

As long as you have access to the right licenses, it's a very straightforward setup. 

I deployed the solution in-house and it was up and ready within a few hours. ReadyAPI already has documentation, so I made use of that to set up the project on my machine. Installation was pretty easy and straightforward since I had the right licenses and followed along with the documentation.

We have a team who handles the maintenance. We have at least three people on that team who work in DevOps, but their time is not required every single day. I would say minimal time and effort is needed for maintenance. It's mainly to check to see if a new version of ReadyAPI is out there, and see if it works with our internal company systems. Are there any restrictions? Are there any firewall rules that need to be opened or any IT support required? Maintenance is needed just to check those things. I've never heard anybody complaining or having any issues with it.

I don't have a quantification metric, but I would say there is a lot of return on investment. That's the reason we keep on renewing the licenses even though it's maybe slightly on the expensive side. It allows us to identify a lot of issues by just using the tool, and as long as we use the tool appropriately, there is a lot of value in it for us. 

I'm not familiar with the pricing specifics, but I would say it's somewhere in the middle. I don't think it's too expensive. I would give the pricing a three out of five. 

The thing with ReadyAPI is that you have to buy different licenses for different purposes. The license that we have is mainly for functional testing, but if you want to run security tests or scans, you need to purchase a separate license. If you want to run performance tests, you need a separate license. I am not aware of one single license available for all the features of ReadyAPI, but it would be nice for them to have one license for everything rather than having individual separate licenses.

We didn't switch from another tool, but the other solution or alternative that we use is called Postman. Postman doesn't entirely replace ReadyAPI because ReadyAPI has many other features that make it stand out on its own merit. It has options to perform load testing and security testing, not just functional API services testing.

At the moment, we are mainly focused on functional API services testing, so there are some teams who use Postman, but I think it's mainly due to convenience and the level of comfort that each engineer has with ReadyAPI. Many prefer to use ReadyAPI as compared to Postman.

I would say that it's a very strong tool by itself. I haven't seen any other tool that matches the capabilities from a standalone point of view. If your goal is, "Hey, I have a bunch of services I want to test and play around with and even automate some testing around on a standalone machine," ReadyAPI is very powerful and capable and has a lot of benefits. 

It saves a lot of time for future testing, so if I want to repeat a test over and over again every single day, it saves time. It has good source connections, such as a database or an Excel or adjacent file. It can take the source input in various formats, and it can give the output in various formats, like Excel, or it can also write it into a database. It has that integration available with other technologies.

I think it is trying to improve itself by having integrations into Bamboo, Jenkins and Jira, but it's bit late in the game there. I think there's still a lot of work to do on the CI.

I would rate this solution as a seven out of ten. 

Our web application is completely dependent on backend APIs. Instead of automating all the clients' use cases, we make sure that all the backend APIs are automated and are false-proof so that any issues can be tackled upfront. 

On the client side, we have a UI where a user will interact with the application. On that end, it's simply the API that is being called and is fished through the UI that is getting rendered. We capture all those APIs and connect them using ReadyAPI.

We use ReadyAPI to automate our APIs and make sure that all the individual APIs are automated with different possible positive cases and negative cases. Then, we use an end-to-end test where we used to have multiple APIs. In the past, we used to combine all the APIs for a scenario, whereby a particular API would get a value that we would pass to other APIs. In the final result, we have assertions, the Groovy script, which is in ReadyAPI.

For anyone who does not have experience with automation, ReadyAPI provides a sense of comfort, especially for testers who find it hard to go directly into coding. It is a good solution to start with.

ReadyAPI has a cool feature called Smart Assertion. This feature lets you add different values to your response which can be asserted, and you'll be able to modify that. It requires a click of a button and the assertion will get added. 

The assertion which is currently built into the tool would be more than enough in 95% of the scenarios. In less than 5% of the scenarios would you need to write a code to make sure something needs to be really asserted. 

ReadyAPI has been around for a while, it's stable, and it's from a strong brand, SmartBear.

The solution is not user-friendly. It is a difficult tool to use. ReadyAPI is slow, taking two to three minutes to start and launch. As your project gets bigger, the time to load takes even longer.

ReadyAPI is not lightweight, it is a heavy tool. There are lots of options within the solution, however, they are not upfront or user-friendly. 

The solution's UI has a clumsy setup. On the left side, you have a list of all the test sites, followed by the test cases and the test steps. On the right side, there are two levels of division. Shown at the top is everything and at the bottom, the values you are passing will be shown. The variables that are getting passed globally within the test suite level will hide somewhere. Even after using the tool for a while, you need to click on a specific button to know that the value is being passed. I would like a UI that shows everything that is important upfront to avoid unnecessary clicks.

If performance improved with the UI changes, I would prefer this solution, as it achieves everything other products and tools offer.

I have been using ReadyAPI for two years.

The solution is stable. I have not faced a situation where ReadyAPI was down. It is always running. It runs slow, but it is always running.

ReadyAPI is scalable. At one point in time, we had eight people working with the product. Each of us would add our test and add to our repository. We also added it to our nightly run, on the weekly and daily runs.

We had to connect with technical support at ReadyAPI one time. We could not get the Bitbucket repository to ReadyAPI. The installation was correct and successful, but we were not able to import the repository to ReadyAPI even after providing the GitHub key. We sent customer service an email and got a response with steps on how to resolve the issue. 

Most of our concerns are dealt with in the online community. SmartBear has been around for a while, so many issues are already answered online in the frequently asked questions section.

Overall, I would rate their customer service and support a four out of five.

Positive

Prior to using ReadyAPI we used Jira. The decision to switch was made at the leadership level.

The initial setup of ReadyAPI is not too tough. It is important to make sure that the executable file has all the correct options. 

After installing ReadyAPI, you need to point it to your repository, either GitHub or Bitbucket, where your code resides. Then it will take about two hours  to initialize and to get the test loaded.

If somebody really wants to use ReadyAPI to implement API automation, I would suggest different tools rather than ReadyAPI. 

If they have already chosen to implement ReadyAPI, I would recommend that they have a mentor and a proper training plan in place. Even someone who has experience working with API automation will not be able to start immediately and use the solution. My advice is to learn the tool perfectly because there is a good chance that they will miss some of the key features which will definitely ease their work. Once they know all the small tricks and tips, it's really an easy tool.

Overall, I would rate this product a six out of ten.

ReadyAPI can be used on the cloud and on-premise, and we are using both methods. We are using the solution locally as a server for test automation. It is local but we are also using Service Pro which is for virtualization and is on the cloud. The integration of the script happens on the dedicated test automation server on the cloud.

We use the solution for coverage of database response validation and service support validation.

ReadyAPI has benefited our organization. I will give a comparison between the open source and the commercial version of ReadyAPI. On average we used to automate five to seven scenarios using the open source version. However, we have seen that we can automate more than 25 to 30 scenarios using the commercial version.

The most valuable features of ReadyAPI are the ready-to-use assertions and filters which can perform the validation. If we want to filter out any value, the filters are available. Apart from that database integration, if you want to go ahead and perform validation in the database layer it is possible with the ready-to-use feature available. The execution and reporting are rich features.

The Jenkins plugin integration is good when we are running it in a headless mode.

ReadyAPI can improve because it is limited to only SOAP and REST services. They should update the solution to include more protocols so that other people are not limited to SOAP and REST services. Other than would be able to utilize it.

We should be given control over some of the customization of the reports, such as what things are to be included, and what are not to be included.

I have been using ReadyAPI for more than 10 years.

ReadyAPI is a commercial tool and stability is one of the expectations that it does fulfill.

The solution is scalable. Whatever scripts are created, it is pretty easy to upgrade them based on any schema changes. If there are any scenarios that are to be updated, it is easy when compared to other solutions that are skill-based tools.

We have 12 people who are using ReadyAPI and we do not plan to add any more to the team.

The support from ReadyAPI is very good. They offer support through different avenues, such as email, and Skype. The level of quality depends on the license you have. Additionally, if you do not have support as part of the license, there are lots of forums, blogs, and many for help available. We will not get stuck in any of the issues that arise.

I have used other tools prior to ReadyAPI.

The initial setup of ReadyAPI was straightforward, which included the local installation and having a dedicated test automation server for the executions.

If the entire access and everything are in place with the licenses the whole process of deployment should not take more than five minutes.

We have one person for the deployment of the solution

We have received a return on investment using ReadyAPI. If we were using another tool we would have to have more team members for the automation.

We have approximately 12 licenses in place. There are other solutions that are more expensive than ReadyAPI that have more features, but if the scope of the project is limited to SOAP and REST service, then this is the best option.

If I compare the price of ReadyAPI with DevTest, DevTest is a lot less expensive. We have approximately 19 DevTest licenses, five ServiceV Pro licenses, and two web servers. The total cost is approximately $19,000 USD using ReadyAPI and a similar setup with DevTest would be at least $50,000 USD.

All the features are included with the license with ReadyAPI.

I have evaluated other solutions.

Whatever scripts we have created, we have to maintain them, but the solution itself does not require maintenance.

This solution is limited to only SOAP and REST services. There can be one free month license available if there is proof of concept to be conducted, then go ahead. It is easily available.

I rate ReadyAPI a nine out of ten.

I use ReadyAPI for API testing. We have microservices, and we are using it for the API testing on them.

We are using it for testing. We test all the API calls. Without it, we cannot release anything. It helps us find issues with the implemented APIs. 

It can create stress tests very fast, and some features help you do it fast. 

It has nice things, like making data-driven testing that is fairly quick and easy to do.

The solution is stable.

Its basic pricing is fair.

It's scalable. 

I don't like how they don't have a clear way to manage tests between multiple projects. You cannot have a massive project with all the tests. With multiple projects, you have to get the API created all over again, and I'm not aware of any other solution in case you're using an APIX where you have to define that in all the projects that you are using. That's kind of a pain. You have to keep defining it, and only then can you use it. I like to break up the projects into something that's manageable. However, it makes that a little challenging. 

Sometimes, in trying to make creating tests faster, there are issues. It makes it easier to search and replace variables or anything if I'm writing it and using, say, any of the programming languages. However, with this one, it is very hard. You cannot search for a specific test. Any of those things are impossible. That is one of the big issues that I don't like. I'd often wish I could transition to something like Python or things like that.

In the next release, I would like to see a way by which we can share the code between multiple projects. Each project is an XML file. I cannot use code more than once unless I go and manually copy the code I create in one project into a different one. I'm not aware of any better way to do that.

The solution can be a little pricey.

I've used the solution for over six years. 

The stability is very good. There are no bugs or glitches. We haven't seen it crash or freeze. 

Our system is quite scalable. We have many things that handle auto-scaling groups, which scales quite well. We have quite a bit of devices, millions of devices, and each time it scales very well. There's no problem with it. We have never had problems due to an area that didn't allow us to scale. 

There may be 50 million devices talking to our cloud. It's quite sizeable. 

I'm not sure if there are plans to increase usage. 

We are currently servicing ourselves and our customers well. I'm not aware of any plans to increase. I'm not aware of any growth plans.

We are supporting the solution. Our engineers are supporting everything, so there is no separate support group or outside assistance. 

If our team needs help, we get it through SMartBear. It's proper. You have to write to them and wait for a reply. It's not bad. With support, we have gone for a single-user license, so given that this is the best they can do, it could be better in that we could pay more and get more service. I wish I could have someone to talk with just to figure out how I can solve some of the problems I've had.

I haven't had any user group meetings or anything like that. They don't do any of those things. Occasionally they will have a webinar that might cover an aspect of the solution. Sometimes you're so busy you don't have time to go to those things.

We've always used this solution. We started by using this product.

Everything is deployed on AWS. There is a deployment engineer who's doing the deployment. I don't know too much about it. We don't use anything like CD, CI/CD, or anything like that since we don't have the people to do those things. It's all manual. We have just one person (that's an architect) that handles deployment and maintenance. 

Each deployment could take anywhere from 15 minutes to a half hour.

In terms of ROI, in our situation, I'm the only one using it. It helps me for my purposes and this is precisely what we are using it for, for API testing, which actually helps us find issues. I'm not sure what the ROI would be.

Desktop licensing is not bad. However, if you go higher than that, they're a little pricey, I would say. 

For each license, they charge the same amount, which is less than $1,000 for each desktop license.

I'm a customer and end-user. 

I'm using an installed version. It's installed on my desktop. We're using the most up-to-date version. 

I'd advise potential new users to look at many other tools. Do some detailed analysis of things like Postman and those other tools too, and then if you have more technical experts, try Python or others, including JavaScript-based ones. See which would be best. Consider how you would use it as well. That way, you'll be picking the right tool. 

I'd rate it five out of ten.

We are service providers, so a customer will come to us and ask us to build a service. We'll build it, and then we'll use ReadyAPI to test the services before we publish it.

The solution got us more into automated testing, as far as web services go, so now we're able to mass-test.

The two most valuable features we use are the functional test and the security test.

I would say if anything needs to be improved, maybe it's some aspects of the user interface.

The solution is made up of multiple tools, and the one additional feature we'd like to have is load testing.

I've been using this solution for about six years now. 

I think the solution is pretty stable. I haven't had any crashing issues. It's actually been pretty solid lately. When we started using it, it wasn't very solid at all, but that was many years ago.

It is a scalable solution. There are currently about six users in our organization. 

I would rate the technical support as a five out of five. They're phenomenal. 

Positive

The complexity depends on your skill level. For somebody who doesn't know a whole lot about web services and how they're structured, it's kind of complex to set up.

The deployment was done in-house. I manage updates when the solution pushes them out; other than that, it's pretty easy. 

We definitely see an ROI with this solution. 

We use fixed licenses, and the last time I checked, I want to say it's around $680 per seat per year.

My advice is that based on the flexibility of the application, the ease of use, and the price, it's definitely worth it. There's no other product out there comparable to the price we found.

I would rate this solution as a ten out of ten. 

I'm using the solution for API testing. My developer developed their APIs in Postman, so ReadyAPI has this integration factor, and from there, I exported my APIs and imported them into ReadyAPI. Every API I convert into a functional test. 

The conversion of the testing and the conversion of those APIs into a functional test is a great aspect of the solution. 

It's priced well. When I compared it with the Tosca, Eggplant, or other tools that offer API testing open source, this came out on top. 

This is a scriptless, codeless tool. 

It's easy to implement.

This is a stable product.

In general, they just need to be better. They have performance testing also. However, it's not that great. It's costly when it comes to a small company, and the features are not that smooth. While the application testing is fine, the API performance testing needs work.

Maintaining your scripts does take work. 

I've been using the solution for one year.

It's stable and reliable. We haven't had issues with bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The performance is pretty good. 

Right now, I'm the only person using the solution. I'm not sure how scalable it is.

I purchased the license from a vendor based in India, and when I have any issues, I reach out to them directly. I create an incident ticket, and they help resolve the issue. Usually, it takes two or three working days to sort a problem out. It's a bit delayed. However, it's not bad.

Neutral

The solution is simple to implement and very straightforward. 

You have a license manager that you have to install in your license server or machine, and then you just have to install the instance of ReadyAPI.

The pricing was well within our budget. It's reasonable and not too expensive. 

We pay $3,000 annually for a floating license. actually. That allows another person from my company to use it as well. It's a cloud-based license. 

I'm an end-user.

I'd advise new users that this is not a free tool. If you don't have a budget, you can go try Postman. However, if you have $4,000 or $5,000 a year, ReadyAPI is one of the best tools to use. It is easy to learn, and it is easy to work with. The features are very good.

In general, I would recommend this tool to others. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We mainly use this solution for testing APIs, and we also use it for load testing. SmartBear has a free version as well, which is called SoapAPI, but it does not include all of the features we wanted, so we got the paid version. The pro version has many benefits, including the load testing and more features for the API testing as well. Since we are mainly focused on backend testing, we thought it would be useful for us to have this license.

We had been using Postman, but Postman only has a couple of solutions to automate the API tests, and with ReadyAPI we can do both the API testing and the load testing. I haven't seen any other tool that offers both types of tests in a single tool. This is very helpful for us, and it's one of the main reasons why we chose this service.

We have an older version of ReadyAPI and it's not supporting our whole tests, so we have had to migrate some or we've had difficulties running them because they're very old script. Better compatibility or more support for the older versions would be helpful. 

Also, I've been seeing the same UI for many years, since I was using the free version, and the paid version looks the same. I think the UI could be a little bit better.

I have had experience with this solution for about five years.

The solution is stable almost all of the time. I'm not exactly sure if any other users are getting hang or not, but I have never faced an issue with hanging.

The scalability of the solution is good. I think about 150 testers in our organization use ReadyAPI. About 250 to 300 of our developers use the free version, SoapUI, to do basic API testing.

I think the support is good, but it's not immediate because we have many layers. If I have a question, I take it to a person in my organization, and then they contact tech support. It doesn't take too long, maybe one or two days, but I usually go to the SmartBear community online and look for an answer there. 

I used Postman to test the APIs, but with Postman it's just the basic testing, like unit testing. To do an intensive level of regression testing or load testing, Postman doesn't help much. It is still good to use for the manual part, but for automation, I feel like ReadyAPI is better.

This tool is very easy to set up and install because you can download ReadyAPI and you just need the product key. It was done in a matter of minutes.

We have an employee who deals directly with the access keys and maintenance. I think I have been on this specific project for about a year and a half, and I have only seen a maintenance window two times, and they typically don't last long or they do it in the off-times so they don't really affect my work.

I would say they should know exactly what they're looking for because if they're looking for API testing, this is a perfect tool. If they want to automate the process, then go ahead and use ReadyAPI. It is the best tool that I have ever seen for API testing. However, if you're just using it for manual API testing, I would say get the trial version or use Postman. We also use JMeter for performance or load testing, but ReadyAPI gives both API and load testing. If you want to do both, this is a good tool.

I would rate this solution as a seven out of ten because we haven't integrated it yet with any deployment tools, so I don't know how difficult that process will be. 

Our primary use case for this solution is for testing APIs, which is very basic. Additionally, we use it for tier-driven automation. For example, if we want a file-based operation for test automation, we can use ReadyAPI as a Groovy scripting tool. So we have some external jars and use Groovy code to invoke mainframe environments, retrieve the data from the mainframe environments into our file, and read the file data. We deploy this solution on the customer's device.

We have found the flexibility of ReadyAPI very valuable. For example, messaging queue frameworks like JMS are required when playing with the APIs because we usually work on data migration projects. It gives us leverage to use utility and things we cannot do with other tools. Additionally, it provides DB connectivity and a good coding standard, but it's not a typical coding base. So understanding coding is necessary, and you must also know the tool's capabilities. Hence, it is a blend of both being a professional, tool-based, and language-driven person.

Additionally, no UI is involved when designing a solution for a customer. So we can do the automation using ReadyAPI, DV, file creation or file deletion. Every operation can be done because it provides Groovy's coding platform, which is nothing like Java. If you have a working Java code, remove the class and other steps, like the primary method, and you can easily create the Groovy code, which is the same code written in Java. Then, the pending status can be updated and available. This allows for easy integration with various databases, even MongoDB and code databases can easily be integrated. With the test management tools and JIRA, it is effortless to integrate. Additionally, it is open and easily configurable with the database tools. Hence, it's one of my first choices whenever we do API testing.

The product could be improved by including an inherent feature for UI automation. This will allow us to require mobile UI automation testing.

We have been using this solution for five years and are currently using version 3.40.

The solution is stable. Initially, there was a huge problem, but currently, we're only facing a challenge with integrating test cases with databases because it hangs for a minute.

The solution is scalable. Approximately 50 people use this solution in our company.

We have had a good experience with customer service and support. I rate them an eight out of ten.

The initial setup is straightforward. You only need a license file from the customer, then download EXE and install the ReadyAPI. If the software support center is not providing us with the EXE., we usually download it from the internet. The customers provide a paid license file, or a license variety, in the model they are configuring. The setup takes approximately five to ten minutes.

We have seen a return on investment because our organization is large and we can easily afford it.

The licensing fee is charged annually, and we currently charge 10,000 Swedish Krona per user.

We chose this solution because it is a good test case. In addition, it allows us to speed up manual processes through automation.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. I recommend this solution to new users because it is the best solution you can get across the globe for API, test automation, and API penetration testing. My primary advice to new users will be to understand the risks and the fundamentals of API testing.