Senior Manager - Software QA at a hospitality company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
We wouldn't be able to test as quickly or simultaneously on various browsers without it
Pros and Cons
  • "From an infrastructure support perspective, the number of VMs, browsers installations and versions that we would be maintaining without Sauce Labs would be a lot. This includes not only the infrastructure costs, but also the maintenance costs and people's time. The labor cost associated with maintaining all of that would be considerably high. In terms of efficiency, having concurrent VMs with various browser combinations available has allowed us to run multiple executions by all our teams."
  • "Sauce Labs has room for improvement with its price point. Using a real mobile device, and having that dedicated to your team, costs more than actually purchasing a mobile device. We haven't tried the real devices yet. This is because of their price point."

What is our primary use case?

We have been using Sauce Labs to test various browsers and OS combinations as well as test our applications. Our existing automation scripts are written in various technologies, which could be Java, JavaScript, Selenium, Cypress, etc. Jenkins is the tool that we use to typically run our jobs. Through Jenkins, they get scheduled and run in Sauce Labs. This is where we choose to run them, through various browsers and OS combinations.

We use Sauce Labs core and whatever services that we choose to go with, like browsers and mobiles. From there, we can choose the browser and OS versions, etc.

How has it helped my organization?

Without Sauce Labs, we wouldn't be able to test as quickly or simultaneously on various browsers. That is the capability Sauce Labs has brought to us.

The automated functional testing, visual regression testing are pretty important to us, as those are the use cases for which we use Sauce Labs. Specifically because it is hosted in the cloud, we don't have to use as much capacity from our own servers. We don't have to maintain and install various versions of browsers nor do we have to maintain them. It is a good solution and works well for us.

Most of our teams who have solutions to test on mobiles are using the solution's mobile emulators and simulators. Having that availability is very important for a complete testing experience.

We use the solution's emulators, simulators, and different browser version combinations for all our testing. For every release, we validate across various browsers. If it is a mobile application, then we need to validate across various Android and iOS devices as well as the previous few versions of each of the operating systems.

The customer base that we typically serve is vast, diverse, and varied. This makes it very common to have our applications used across various applications, systems, and screen sizes. To test across all that, we needed a system in place. That is why we are using Sauce Labs. Without it, we would either develop something in-house or rely on possibly testing in only one particular system. For example, with Android, our entire customer base who is not Android wouldn't be able to validate and reproduce the user experience.

When we are doing releases, the releases happen across all teams and various services. This means all of them need to test for a particular release deployment in whatever environment simultaneously. Based on the number of concurrent VMs that Sauce Labs provides, we can add or reduce VMs as needed. The amount of concurrency that we have purchased is specifically to support our various teams to do deployments simultaneously. Doing these simultaneous tests has reduced our test execution time.

What is most valuable?

There are a lot of analytics that you can do and look at when you run your jobs. It also gives you how much throttling has been seen across various teams over the past month. It tells you which particular line of code has been failing for however many runs that you have done. 

The concurrent usage and VM availability are its strengths. We have found concurrent throttling very useful. So, we know exactly which job or team is using more than their capacity and might need additional capacity.

We have also found the code analysis that gets run on Sauce Labs very useful. It tells us the line of code that has been failing or not received a new command.

Sauce Labs is optimized for automation and integration with the major CI/CD platforms and developer tools. Most of our teams are creating CI/CD pipelines. Some of our teams do many deployments in a day. Without CI/CD, that pace is not possible. Having that capability, for whichever automation tool that we go with, is critically important for us.

What needs improvement?

Some of the trends that it shows. It only allows you to view the last month. Having it go beyond a month, e.g., yearly trends, would be good. While the yearly trends are available, they are available to Sauce Labs administrators, who are internal to Sauce Labs. I don't know if they are available for customers yet.

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For how long have I used the solution?

My teams use it. I have about eight or nine teams and most of them have been using it at least for a year. Since I joined the company a year ago, I have been watching it being used.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good. I haven't seen any issues with it. We haven't experienced any latency or downtime issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It has been pretty scalable. We are looking at increasing some of its concurrency capacity.

We are currently using about 40 to 50 current VMS.

One part-time resource is primarily needed to design the user groups where jobs will be run. Initially, we had all of our jobs run under a single user name, but then we decided to segregate that and divide it up amongst the teams. So, one part-time resource is needed just to analyze and manage how your jobs get run, then analyze the trends after that.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support has been pretty good. We haven't seen a lot of technical issues in which to engage their technical resources. Occasionally, we used them when we couldn't see something, didn't have an admin account, or for account creation. All those things got resolved very quickly, maybe in a day or so. I would say the technical support is good and rate it as 10 out of 10.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

It was implemented before I joined the company.

How was the initial setup?

It was already set up when I joined the company.

What was our ROI?

From an infrastructure support perspective, the number of VMs, browsers installations and versions that we would be maintaining without Sauce Labs would be a lot. This includes not only the infrastructure costs, but also the maintenance costs and people's time. The labor cost associated with maintaining all of that would be considerably high. In terms of efficiency, having concurrent VMs with various browser combinations available has allowed us to run multiple executions by all our teams.

Typically, in a night, eight or nine teams have 40 to 50 jobs running simultaneously, which is amazing. Otherwise, if that was not concurrent, then it would have to be maintained in our own infrastructure. That would be a lot of money.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Sauce Labs has room for improvement with its price point. Using a real mobile device, and having that dedicated to your team, costs more than actually purchasing a mobile device. We haven't tried the real devices yet. This is because of their price point.

The number of concurrent VMs that Sauce Labs provides depends on your purchase license level.

Latency has not been a concern due to Sauce Labs being a cloud-based solution. This comes back to the number of VMs and licenses that you have purchased. For example, if I have a capacity of 70 VMs, but I am running 100 jobs, then 30 of them will be throttled and we will see the latency. However, if I were to up my licensing, then I wouldn't see that latency. That is why it just depends on the license tier that you have ordered.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have not compared it with other solutions.

What other advice do I have?

Plan for how you want to use it and how many teams will be using it as well as the types of accounts that it makes sense to have, different access levels, and who should have it on their team. If you plan ahead, then you don't have to fix it afterwards.

We haven't tried the front-end performance testing.

I would rate it as eight out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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Automation Architect at a hospitality company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Failure Analysis helps us prioritize remediation, and we can trigger multiple tests for different teams and schedules
Pros and Cons
  • "The Failure Analysis feature is really important for us, one of the most important aspects. What is the root cause? Is it because we have a defect or is it that we have a test case that we need to fix or modify? The Failure Analysis is one of the main functionalities that I am exploring all the time in Sauce Labs... The Failure Analysis helps us to discover which test cases we need to work on."
  • "Every time that we run scenarios where we need to discover the geolocation of our customers, by default it shows as Palo Alto, California. That's a problem for us and we need a workaround for those cases... It would be helpful if we could enter a latitude and longitude into Sauce Labs configuration and say, "When you run a virtual Chrome device or an iPhone, make this your default location. Then, provide me that device so I can run my scenarios," because we have stores in different regions across the United States."

What is our primary use case?

We have two kinds of applications using Sauce Labs in our company. One is the website, and we're using it to test across browsers, such as Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, and mobile, to see that all the components we have in a web page work. 

The second product we use the solution for is our driver application. We make and deliver pizza. Every time an order is received, we dispatch a driver to bring it to the customer. We have an application for driver dispatch on iOS and Android, and we run test cases for those as well.

How has it helped my organization?

I cannot imagine our company without Sauce Labs. We are using it a lot. It gives us a provider in the cloud for running test cases, scenarios, and validation, and that is really important nowadays. You could always run testing locally or have your own environment, but it's difficult to scale and difficult to maintain. You need to dedicate a lot of resources to do that.

We ran, for example, 500 test cases in the last week for one specific team, and those test cases were running at 2:00 AM or 3:00 AM, for some specific scenarios. We could not do that without Sauce Labs. We are integrated for continuous integration using Jenkins and we're triggering all these tests nightly for different teams on different schedules. It would definitely not be possible to run that manually or in a different way. The cloud is the right environment to run it in, and for that, Sauce Labs is the best option in the market.

Also, the Failure Analysis helps us prioritize remediation. If we have a very high number of test cases failing for a given feature, we can analyze them, see the root cause, see the code in our repository, and create a Jira ticket to address those failures. That feature is very helpful for us. It's pretty straightforward and doesn't consume too much time. I generally spend about 15 minutes analyzing all the failures across the teams to see which three test cases are failing most.

Another benefit is that Sauce Labs saves us on manpower. We have manual testers, but it's not possible for them to cover all the different scenarios and all the different features before release. That means we need to rely on the automated test cases, and to do that, we need to run those test cases on a cloud platform. Sauce Labs saves us a lot of time doing those validations. It probably saves us from having to hire hundreds of people. Every team within our organization has one or two manual testers, but for every team we have hundreds of automated test cases that we run before release. It's good enough, for our operations, to have one or two manual testers. We are seeing good results with that, but to run hundreds of different scenarios I don't know how many people we would have to hire.

What is most valuable?

From my perspective, as an automation architect, the most helpful feature is the test history. I can easily go to the dashboard and see how many test cases we ran and how many failures and errors there were. I can segregate things by team and by specification. And I can tell a teammate, "You need to fix this test case, it is failing too much. The percentage of failure is too high." 

The most important historical data is for the last seven days. I don't go too much beyond that period of time because my feedback is about how we did in the previous week. In our environment, everything is changing all the time. We are testing different products and running different test cases. So for me, it's the recent data that is key.

The Failure Analysis feature is really important for us, one of the most important aspects. What is the root cause? Is it because we have a defect or is it that we have a test case that we need to fix or modify? The Failure Analysis is one of the main functionalities that I am exploring all the time in Sauce Labs. I can see a test case that is failing and on which particular platform or device it is failing. And the most important part is identifying the problem with the code. We can always go to the line of code and see the possible solution. The Failure Analysis helps us to discover which test cases we need to work on.

Before the test history became the most important feature, the most important part was the configuration that made it easy to connect test cases to the cloud. As a result, we can easily test different devices at once. 

And from a manual test perspective, testing in different browsers using the live test solution in Sauce Labs is very helpful.

What needs improvement?

Every time that we run scenarios where we need to discover the geolocation of our customers, by default it shows as Palo Alto, California. That's a problem for us and we need a workaround for those cases. It would be great if Sauce Labs didn't provide any geolocation by default, and we could provide the geolocation that we want. It would be helpful if we could enter a latitude and longitude into Sauce Labs configuration and say, "When you run a virtual Chrome device or an iPhone, make this your default location. Then, provide me that device so I can run my scenarios," because we have stores in different regions across the United States.

That is the only "ask" that I have for a feature, a geolocation that we can set by configuration. That would be awesome.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Sauce Labs since I started with this company, back in 2018, so that would be about three years and six months.

I am an automation architect and my work includes providing cloud testing to different teams. Sauce Labs is one important piece for us.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's pretty stable. We don't have any problems with the solution. We probably need more virtual machines internally, but that's not related to the performance or availability of Sauce Labs. When it comes to stability, everything is going great.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is connected to our budget. The virtual machine concurrencies that we have are not great for our demand. I am talking with management about increasing the budget for 10 or 20 more virtual machines. But Sauce Labs itself provides the opportunity to scale very easily. For us, it's just a matter of budget.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Sauce Labs has a pretty reasonable price and is worth it for the solution and what we are doing with it.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

There are a lot of other options on the market and I have tried some of them in the past. But Sauce Labs has a lot of advantages. For example, one feature that I really love is that when we are doing troubleshooting or have a problem with test cases, they answer every single question so quickly and are very helpful. The customer experience using Sauce Labs is great in terms of support. That is an aspect other companies don't really have.

I started with our company as an automation engineer and their support was able to help me with every single configuration, every single problem, and every single question. I cannot remember a single time that they were unable to help me. They are the best.

What other advice do I have?

The usage of Sauce Labs was not as great, when I first started using it, as it is now. We have a great approach to testing using Sauce Labs. We test mobile and we do live testing and we are running automated testing. We're integrated with CI. Nowadays, it's better than three years ago and I look for it to improve even more in the next year.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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Quality Assurance Engineer at Optum
Real User
Insights provide a great overall state of the automation suite and can identify trends relatively quickly
Pros and Cons
  • "The insights section provides a great overall state of the automation suite and can identify trends relatively quickly. If we see a dip in our passing rate over time, we can look at what changed when the test started failing to find the root cause rather than doing a quick fix to find that the test fails a short time later."
  • "The one issue I have is the 14-day trial that a new user gets for free. I understand the concept of the trial period; however, I think this could be revamped to a free 30-minute run time every few months or after a significant update once the trial period has ended."

What is our primary use case?

My company uses Sauce Labs to run all smoke and regression tests for our application.

We primarily run our tests on Chrome 83, but we occasionally run on other versions (81 or 84) to check to compatibility. Our smoke suite runs on a nightly build, and regression on a bi-weekly basis.

For building out new automation features, we have to have a passing Sauce Lab run before creating a pull request. Doing this ensures that our new automation features will run on other environments and not just locally.

How has it helped my organization?

The insights section provides a great overall state of the automation suite and can identify trends relatively quickly. If we see a dip in our passing rate over time, we can look at what changed when the test started failing to find the root cause rather than doing a quick fix to find that the test fails a short time later.

The visual data is helpful for all levels within the organization from the QE engineer level up to the director level.

The ability to change the browser version has also ensured that our application stays compatible with previous and updated browser versions.

What is most valuable?

One major feature that I like about Sauce Labs is the recording feature. I love the option to watch a video playback and command and view log when I'm trying to figure out why my test was passing locally but may fail on Sauce Labs. It's helped to make sure of my automation.

Another feature I find valuable is the ability to choose browser versions. This feature allows us to test on our minimum browser version but also check/verify that our application is working on the most recent browser version as well.

The insights tab is also very valuable, as I’ve discussed early; it provides a great deal of data and determines trends in our automation sooner.

What needs improvement?

From a company use standpoint - I have no complaints. The one issue I have is the 14-day trial that a new user gets for free. I understand the concept of the trial period; however, I think this could be revamped to a free 30-minute run time every few months or after a significant update once the trial period has ended. Personally speaking - I like to maintain my automation framework and would like to occasionally test that it continues to run on Sauce Labs after releases without stealing from Sauce Labs.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Sauce Labs consistently for a year now since I've started with my company.  After being introduced to Sauce Labs, I've incorporated it into my framework that I maintain.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

A previous solution I had used was running a VM from a NAS server to run our automation scripts.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Be sure to plan out your solution before starting the free trial; 14-days goes by rather quickly.

What other advice do I have?

Sauce Labs was already integrated into our framework and SDLC process when I started with the company.  After using it for a year now, I would highly recommend this to anyone.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Senior Quality Assurance Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
The platform is easy to use and intuitive, so I can quickly navigate it
Pros and Cons
  • "I like the dashboard and seeing the test results. As a manager, I like to see the insights of the people using it, understanding the total path and run. I can see all of that as a manager. I also know team members love seeing the dashboard and seeing the test results in real-time."
  • "I can't remove team members that have left the organization. I can only set them as inactive. It would be really nice to clean up my data and delete them from the team management."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for a lot of end-to-end UI test automation.

We really just use the visual test automation, not the performance, for our product teams.

How has it helped my organization?

There are a couple of products using this solution, so it has been nice having a visual result. We can step through the tests, if necessary, and showcasing to the business that we are doing automation has been very helpful.

What is most valuable?

I like the dashboard and seeing the test results. As a manager, I like to see the insights of the people using it, understanding the total path and run. I can see all of that as a manager. I also know team members love seeing the dashboard and seeing the test results in real-time.

Sauce Labs is optimized for automation and integration with the major CI/CD platforms and developer tools. That is just what they do. It is an easy, one-click solution versus having to manually run scripts.

The platform is easy to use. I can quickly navigate it.

Sauce Labs provide access to automated functional testing and visual regression testing from a single platform. It is very important to have one tool that can do this versus having multiple. Just integrating Sauce Labs within the application and seeing the pass-fail results right away is extremely helpful for teams. You don't have to go to some place else to find them.

Everything is so intuitive.

What needs improvement?

I can't remove team members that have left the organization. I can only set them as inactive. It would be really nice to clean up my data and delete them from the team management.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it for several years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I haven't heard anything about stability. It has been pretty fantastic.

Latency has never been a concern with Sauce Labs. Being in the cloud is super fast for any application, and we take advantage of Sauce Labs being in the cloud. If there was any latency, then it would be on the coding of Selenium versus the Sauce Labs application.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have about 60 products and only three or four are using it. We have started getting other team members' products to use and integrate Sauce Labs in their test automation, though I am 100% sure of what every single product is doing.

How are customer service and support?

The support is fantastic. We have monthly meetings with Sauce Labs. Even if I have questions, I can just reach out to them. If I have any questions, then all I have to do is reach out to them for help, and they are very responsive. If I have any questions on training, they are willing to set up training calls and train the team on Sauce Labs.

The feedback is super fast. They are always there when I need help. I have never had an issue with their technical support.

I would rate their technical support as 10 out of 10. They are constantly reaching out to see if we have any problems or need anything, but we are perfectly integrated with the Sauce Labs application and don't have any issues.

If Sauce Labs doesn't suggest training, make sure that you ask for it, if needed. They are always willing to come out or even do virtual training. Whatever they can do to help with the process, they are always there. So, if you don't hear about the training, make sure you ask.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not use a different testing tool before Sauce Labs.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very straightforward. They make it so easy to be able to integrate Sauce Labs with Selenium. There were no issues at all, and if we ever had issues, the technical support would just help right away.

What about the implementation team?

We partnered with Sauce Labs. They came to our office for a few days and gave a demo to a large group of people on how to use Sauce Labs, but also provided a little training on Selenium.

I liked the training. As a manager, some people hesitate using test automation because they just don't know how to start. By having some hands-on training with Sauce Labs team members, we were able to give that technical training to people so they understood, "Oh, I could do this. I can start this."

They saw how easy it was to integrate Sauce Labs within Selenium code. The training just helps make it possible because I can't make people do things, when it comes to test automation. By being able to train hands-on and seeing the results, that made it possible for us to do test automation.

What was our ROI?

We have definitely seen ROI. We are utilizing Sauce Labs specifically for one of our product teams with several more being integrated with Sauce Labs. Seeing the benefit from even one team continuously using it, we are happy with the results that they are getting and having them sharing that knowledge. That is really how we will get other products on it, when people see that it is working for teams who are getting positive results. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I am not in charge of the licensing costs. They come and ask me, "Do we still need this?" Then, I tell the teams why we need XYZ and the licenses.

We did initially go with Sauce Labs because of the pricing and integration.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I didn't make the decision on Sauce Labs. It was recommended by some other team members that did the research. People were looking at, "Can it help us from a visual point of view? Can it add tests, see all the tests through portals in the cloud, and make testing go quickly?" It offered the possibility of being able to run on multiple browsers and operating systems as well as had integration with Selenium.

What other advice do I have?

I have no complaints nor issues with Sauce Labs at the moment. It meets all of our expectations.

Teams are continually using the product. I would hear complaints if there were any issues. I am trying to get teams to spread the word to other teams. So, the teams are very happy with it and trying to get other people to use Sauce Labs as well, then integrate that into their product team.

Because our applications are not mobile, there are only certain browsers that we need to support. So, we are really not taking advantage of the number of browser/OS combinations, mobile emulators and simulators, and real mobile devices that it offers. I am just trying to get team members up and running with test automation and having some tools to be able to help them with that. I know that they are very competitive with other products in this regard, but that has not been an important factor for us.

I would rate the solution as 10 out of 10. I love the capabilities of it, the support, and the service. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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Nitu Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Test Automation Snr. Consultant at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
There has not been a case where we want a given combination of browsers and OS and they don't have it
Pros and Cons
  • "One of the most valuable features is that we do not have to have the cross-platform testing vehicles in-house. Sauce Labs gives us the ability to test across platforms and that really helps give us confidence in our products."
  • "One of the challenging areas for us is the reporting and the matrix. It should be based on roles, but right now it is only available for the admin role. The admin role can really do a lot of stuff, but our infrastructure team, which holds the admin role, is not ready to hand it over to us on the testing team. If Sauce Labs had permissions associated with roles, where this role could do this activity and that role could do that activity, it would be easier for us."

What is our primary use case?

We mainly use it to run our test cases for different platforms. We're able to run it for multiple browsers and multiple devices. We use it for about 90 percent of our CI/CD test cases.

We are using it for automated testing and not for visual testing or performance testing.

How has it helped my organization?

It's important that the solution gives us access to automated functional testing, as well as browser/OS combinations, mobile emulators and simulators, and real mobile devices, all in a single testing suite. That's particularly so for our client-facing applications so that our customers are able to access our products and offerings through any device and platform. For those types of applications, it is a huge help. The number of browser OS combinations, mobile emulators and simulators, and real mobile devices it offers is really good. There has not been a case where we say we want a given combination and we don't have it.

What is most valuable?

One of the most valuable features is that we do not have to have the cross-platform testing vehicles in-house. Sauce Labs gives us the ability to test across platforms and that really helps give us confidence in our products.

What needs improvement?

One of the challenging areas for us is the reporting and the matrix. It should be based on roles, but right now it is only available for the admin role. The admin role can really do a lot of stuff, but our infrastructure team, which holds the admin role, is not ready to hand it over to us on the testing team. If Sauce Labs had permissions associated with roles, where this role could do this activity and that role could do that activity, it would be easier for us.

We have raised this suggestion with our product manager and she has put it in the product backlog, but, of course, she cannot guarantee when that will be looked at.

For how long have I used the solution?

I joined this company seven months ago, so I've been using Sauce Labs for that long. But the company has had it for about three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

From a solution stability point of view, it's good.

We are able to run some of our tests in parallel on the solution, within the constraints of how many licenses we have. We have some 50 testing teams across our organization, and we use them. There has never been an issue with not being able to execute tests.

Latency, due to Sauce Labs being a cloud-based solution has not been a concern.

We did have downtime in late September last year, but it was because of our lack of knowledge in terms of the configuration. Sauce Labs support was really quick in responding and triaging and fixing it, which was really great.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

With scalability, they are going in the right direction. I have attended some of their new product webinars on API testing, and I really found that to be cool. We may use it, or evaluate it at least, once we start going into that direction. That goes for visual testing as well. If they are able to deliver on some of their promises I really look forward to that and seeing how we can utilize them.

We could use Sauce Labs even more. While we are using it in our testing teams we are not yet there for things like API testing and visual regression.

Our next step, in terms of our exploration of the solution and how we want to use it as part of the CI/CD, is that we are moving into GitHub Actions. We were using Jenkins and it worked well with that. We are moving to GitHub Actions and trying to figure out how that will work.

How are customer service and support?

Overall, technical support has been really good. They have responded to our questions and have triaged pretty quickly and followed up.

The reports that our account manager at Sauce Labs provides are helpful to us to see where our gaps are. She also helps us evaluate where we could be from an industry-standard perspective. She gives us an idea of what others are doing, what she's seeing out there, and in which areas we can improve.

In terms of using Sauce Labs’ technical expertise to help integrate automated testing into the CI/CD pipeline and DevOps toolchain, we have not done that yet. That is more due to the way our organization is structured. We, as the testing team, do not have access to how the tool is managed or how it was set up. There are probably gaps in terms of our understanding of how the tool can be used effectively. But we have discussed this with Mandy, our account manager, and she has offered to do a free session for our associates, which is scheduled for next Friday, and we are looking forward to that. It should help us understand what the best practices are and whether we are using it right.

From the perspective of our organization's roadmap, we are new to testing automation in general. Our focus is on automated functional testing. There are certain use cases for visual testing, and there have been talks about performance testing, and an evaluation will be going on for that. As part of the workshop next week, Sauce Labs will also be presenting some of their offerings, so we'll be looking at those as well.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

What other advice do I have?

Sauce Labs is a tool. It can fit the needs that you have, but you first have to figure out your needs. Once your team has been able to successfully use it, and things have stabilized, go to the next need you have. That's exactly what we are doing. Once we get our functional testing to be stable, we'll look into the next performance test case.

Don't try to do everything together. When you're going with a new solution, it takes time for people to adopt it.

The process could be different for a large company like ours, versus a smaller company where there are just a couple of products. They may be able to move faster. For a financial institution like us, there are so many roadblocks that we have to go through. I do understand that the licenses are expensive, and you do not want to get these licenses and have them sitting idle.

I would rate Sauce Labs a 10 out of 10 because I have not been able to find any use case that Sauce Labs does not provide.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
LMTS, Software Engineering at Salesforce
Real User
The ability to test the visual aspects of our apps' UI has been crucial
Pros and Cons
  • "Sauce Labs helps us identify the root causes of bugs. The solution offers a lot of flexibility by providing the latest iOS and Android emulator versions, and even the Appium updates when it comes out in the market."
  • "Sauce Labs' dashboard could be improved by adding more filters and allowing more customization options. There was one instance where the dashboard on the Sauce Labs UI didn't meet our requirements, so we had to use the Sauce Labs API to create some apps and dashboards on our own. The API endpoints could be a little more robust and customizable."

What is our primary use case?

I'm on a team called the "Quadrant Three Mobile" team. Our focus is mobile testing and mobile browser testing. Sauce Labs provides iOS simulators and Android emulators that we use in our tests. It's running on our private cloud, and we have a Sauce tunnel set up to communicate between our environment and the Sauce Labs environment.

We don't often use the Sauce Labs UI to track the tests we need to do. We have a UI on our end to do that. However, we log in to the web interface to view the dashboards to see the test strength and what was triggered or to search for specific tests exact testing. The Sauce Labs dashboard has links to videos of the actual test runs, which helps us deal with debugging issues and test failures. 

Quality control engineers are the main users of Sauce Labs at the company, but developers also use it for making the CRM code base. They run tests on Sauce Labs mid-development to ensure their piece of work is going well.

How has it helped my organization?

Sauce Labs helps us identify the root causes of bugs. The solution offers a lot of flexibility by providing the latest iOS and Android emulator versions, and even the Appium updates when it comes out in the market. 

Those have been helpful because the apps we test on Sauce Labs are used by customers across the globe, and we want to be sure we're testing on the latest iOS and Android versions as well as older versions that our customers still use heavily. Sauce Labs has done a decent job of giving us all the versions we need. 

What is most valuable?

Sauce Labs' dashboards are a good supplement for our dashboards and UI. The web interface is useful when we want to triage a specific test run or overall across different jobs. It's also handy when we want to look at what results we get when we run a test across a whole account.

Sauce Labs' ability to test the visual aspects of our apps' UI has been crucial. At the end of the day, mobile testing is not only about functionality but also making sure your UI looks good in different languages and works well. Sauce Labs supports screenshots whenever test failures happen, giving us a good idea if something is broken on the visual side.

What needs improvement?

Sauce Labs' logging features could be improved. For example, when we run a mobile test on iOS, we want a way to capture the logs generated. It has some drawbacks there. Sauce Labs isn't able to give us everything we test for. 

Sauce Labs' dashboard could be improved by adding more filters and allowing more customization options. There was one instance where the dashboard on the Sauce Labs UI didn't meet our requirements, so we had to use the Sauce Labs API to create some apps and dashboards on our own. The API endpoints could be a little more robust and customizable. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Sauce Labs for four to five years now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Sauce Labs' reliability is one of the most important aspects of the platform. They have a status page to notify if there is any downtime. We rely on Sauce Labs because we have a continuous development process here, and we are testing code that comes out through Sauce Labs' emulators. 

However, we've had occasional performance issues. For example, there are times when devices need to be restarted or the UI takes longer to load and things like that. The virtual emulators and simulators have been good, and their hardware and infrastructure have been standing up well.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I think Sauce Labs has proven that their platform is pretty scalable because they give us a broad selection of versions available for iOS and Android. They also support their emulators with good virtual machines, so Sauce Labs can scale their infrastructure to their customers' needs quite well.

I don't know exactly how many users are currently working with Sauce Labs in my company, but it's in the hundreds. We'll certainly expand usage in the future because we're planning to offer new kinds of mobile apps, and when those come out, we'll need to test them using Sauce Labs. As the number of products we offer increases, the usage will too. We use it for nearly all of our functional testing.

How are customer service and support?

I rate Sauce Labs' support at about seven out of 10. We put in certain requests with Sauce Labs, and sometimes it takes a while to get solutions implemented, depending on the priority.

How was the initial setup?

My team didn't deploy Sauce Labs in our environment. A different team handled that. We did the initial installation back in 2016, and I don't recall it being very complex. 

They had some binaries and decent instructions on how to set up Sauce Labs' tunnels. They also give instructions on how to capture logs of those tunnels to see traffic between your environment and the Sauce environment. All of that is pretty well documented, and support teams have been quite helpful. Whenever we needed something out of the box, we've been in touch with them for it. 

What was our ROI?

I can't really quantify a return on investment, but testing on Sauce Labs has helped us catch issues and fix problems much sooner than we would have without it. That has saved us money.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Sauce Labs eight out of 10. I recommend it for mobile testing. Sauce Labs is a reliable vendor, and you can trust their network. They have a good platform, with broad support for various mobile OS versions. Their availability is also high in the region, so we seldom see outages. The dashboards on their website for tracking your mobile testing strength are helpful. Overall, it's a good product for anyone wanting to do mobile testing. 

The main aspect I've learned from working with Sauce Labs is that it's not easy to maintain a range of devices or virtual environments and provide it for mobile customers. We have tried to do that at my company, and it's challenging. I definitely like what Sauce Labs is doing in terms of providing that reliable network for us. We're also learning more about our own product through testing on Sauce Labs. The sooner you test, the quicker you identify issues in your own application. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
IT Analyst at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Helps us find bugs that users might be facing and correct them
Pros and Cons
  • "It provides a comprehensive selection of browsers and platform versions for our test automations and CI/CD pipeline process. It also provides a comprehensive set of virtual mobile devices, which we can configure for our automation and availability. These features are valuable for us when it comes to testing our applications. We have a website and mobile applications that we want to test and diversify to various browsers and mobile devices as well as restore various versions. This helps us to find bugs that users might be facing and correct them."
  • "The real concern is the load time of applications or real devices when we start our tests. It takes some time to load the application or web browser. Sometimes, it is frustrating too. Since they are real devices, we understand it takes some time to load. However, if it were to improve, then that would be a great asset to the solution. So, we would like better responsive times when opening applications and running tests."

What is our primary use case?

They are our preferred vendor for all our mobile and browsing test needs.

We have been using it for mobile applications and multi browser testing and multi-device testing.

How has it helped my organization?

I use the mobile application. Whenever we get mobile builds through the CI/CD pipeline, we directly upload them to Sauce Labs. We usually test on various devices and versions. The solution helps us to identify any issues that we might face in different environments, devices, and versions.

We can run our tests in parallel. We have access to all the browsers and devices, where we can run our test haphazardly. They have video recordings as well for the tests that we run, which can easily be accessible and shared across different teams or management without them being actually logged in. 

What is most valuable?

It provides a comprehensive selection of browsers and platform versions for our test automations and CI/CD pipeline process. It also provides a comprehensive set of virtual mobile devices, which we can configure for our automation and availability. These features are valuable for us when it comes to testing our applications. We have a website and mobile applications that we want to test and diversify to various browsers and mobile devices as well as restore various versions. This helps us to find bugs that users might be facing and correct them.

What needs improvement?

The real concern is the load time of applications or real devices when we start our tests. It takes some time to load the application or web browser. Sometimes, it is frustrating too. Since they are real devices, we understand it takes some time to load. However, if it were to improve, then that would be a great asset to the solution. So, we would like better responsive times when opening applications and running tests.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Sauce Labs for more than two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable. We haven't explored all their platforms yet, but as far as we are concerned, we have seen stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is definitely scalable.

Mostly, our team consists of 15 people who run tests automation and test manually. We have other teams as well who have access to Sauce Labs, and they test certain applications in Sauce Labs. We guide them on how to use it. So, there are around 25 to 30 people who probably use it quite often.

We use it to do at least 10 test automation runs every day. We do have plans to increase our usage in the future.

How are customer service and support?

I worked with their customer support for these devices. For the issues that we were facing, they were very responsive. 

Other than the automation part and CI/CD process, one of our colleagues works with them. I mostly work on the manual efforts of Sauce Labs and our applications while one of our teammates works with the automation support.

I would rate them as nine (out of 10). I would even give them 10 at times. They were very responsive and quick. When we were facing some issues, they usually responded quickly.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before joining my company, I used to do tests manually.

How was the initial setup?

I was not involved in the initial setup, but I was able to quickly adapt to using Sauce Labs after joining the company.

What was our ROI?

Running tests in parallel on Sauce Labs definitely saves time and effort. Less time is consumed and we can have various results on our various versions or devices. This ultimately impacts our business by identifying the real threat and real defects, then moving forward accordingly. 

Usually, our test runs for about 40 minutes with various levels of testing. Sauce Labs reduces that time in half.

We have seen ROI. With some improvements, we will be much happier with our ROI.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing is reasonable due to the amount of diversity that they provide. However, I feel they might be more flexible to bargain based on their relationship with our organization.

They can increase the range of real devices for testing while reducing the cost. When it comes to purchasing real devices, even if we have a certain number of devices available, it would be great if we could add additional real devices for a reduced cost. 

I would like to give the admin the ability to upgrade operating systems based on the client's needs rather than having them update the OS versions every time. Maybe they could create a page for admins where all devices or browsers can be purchased or viewed, so we could then have an idea of what kinds of devices could be purchased.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the solution as eight or nine out of 10 based on the diversity that they provide.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Andy Antes - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Saves us time, good support, and helps us ensure product quality cross-platform
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the ability to run concurrent automated tests up to a specified value, depending on what we are currently paying for."
  • "This product is not super scalable, because you have a very specific number of VMs that you can use."

What is our primary use case?

We use the Sauce Labs test automation VMs to help our quality assurance engineers run automated tests concurrently, using a platform that we build in-house.

We use the browser VMs and we definitely use it for end-to-end testing. We may use it for performance testing, as well.

The way that we use it is pretty straightforward.

How has it helped my organization?

This product is a big time-saver, so by extension, it's a cost-savings.

It's helped us remove the need for extensive manual testing, which is how it's freed up a lot of time for quality assurance engineers to work on other things. They can work on the automation itself, for example, whereas otherwise, they'd be spending all of that time doing these tests manually and synchronously.

Sauce Labs is optimized for automation and intention with major CI/CD platforms and developer tools. In our case, we've plugged it into our pipelines quite easily. It's an integral tool in that regard, so it is very important to us that it is optimized for integration.

We run Sauce Labs with almost every code commit.

Although Sauce Labs is a cloud-based solution, latency has not been a concern for us. We haven't run into any situations where latency is causing any major issues.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the ability to run concurrent automated tests up to a specified value, depending on what we are currently paying for.

I am pretty satisfied with the options in terms of the number of browser and OS combinations they support, as well as the number of real devices, mobile emulators, and simulators. I haven't had any needs that they couldn't satisfy. This enables us to ensure the quality of our products, cross-platform.

What needs improvement?

A really nice feature would be a pay-as-you-use model, as opposed to a strict number of VMs that you pay for continuously.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with Sauce Labs for two years and nine months. It has been used by the company since before that.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This product is not super scalable, because you have a very specific number of VMs that you can use. If there was a pay-as-you-use-it model, I think that would really increase the scalability of the solution, but right now Sauce Labs is a bottleneck because you have a specified number of VMs.

We use, on average, 75 of their VMs per hour. Optimally, we're using as much of the VMs as we pay for. As such, the goal is to have our tests running often enough to maximize that usage.

I can't speak to how widespread this product is used in the company, although in my team, there are 10 of us using it. My team is serving between 30 and 40 quality assurance engineers. Other teams in the company are also using it.

How are customer service and support?

I have not personally used Sauce Labs' technical expertise to assist us with integration or for implementing solutions, although, in the past few years, I've submitted a couple of trouble tickets based on some technical difficulties.

I found the technical support to be great and timely. I haven't had any complaints, and the issues have been resolved.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I don't have any experience with other similar technologies.

How was the initial setup?

I was not with the company when it was first implemented.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We pay for a specific number of VMs. The licensing model should be changed to pay-as-you-use, which would make it more effective.

What other advice do I have?

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using Sauce Labs is that concurrency and automation save a lot more time than you initially think.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Sauce Labs Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Sauce Labs Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.