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Selenium HQ pros and cons

Vendor: SeleniumHQ

4.0 out of 5

111 reviews
89% willing to recommend

3,018 followers

Pros & Cons summary

Selenium HQ supports multiple programming languages, allowing integration with Java, Python, C++, and .NET. It offers open-source access with broad community support, enabling testing across various browsers. Users can automate UI tasks and customize tests, improving efficiency. However, its complexity and need for programming skills can be a barrier. Issues with dynamic elements, Internet Explorer, and lack of built-in reporting tools are notable, though it excels in scalability and parallel testing.

Buyer's Guide

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Selenium HQ is open-source and supports multiple programming languages, making it highly flexible and customizable.

It integrates easily with various tools and frameworks, enhancing its utility for automated web testing.

The ability to perform parallel testing and handle a wide range of web browsers greatly improves testing efficiency.

There is extensive community support and a wealth of resources available for troubleshooting and development.

Selenium HQ's automation features significantly reduce the time and effort needed for testing large-scale applications.

CONS

Selenium HQ setup and installation process is complex and challenging for beginners.

The tool requires a significant level of programming skill, making it less user-friendly for non-developers.

Handling dynamic elements and XPath identification are difficult, requiring better solutions within Selenium HQ.

There is a lack of built-in methods and frameworks, which complicates usability for less technical users.

Integrating Selenium HQ with desktop applications is not supported, limiting its scope beyond web applications.

Selenium HQ Pros review quotes

MF

QA Automation Engineer at XPO Logistics

Jul 29, 2021

Its biggest advantage is that it is very customizable.

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AB

Automation Tester at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Nov 3, 2021

For me, the most valuable feature of Selenium lies in its ability to help us find elements quickly. Apart from that, the driver interface is really useful, too. When we implement the Selenium driver interface, we can easily navigate through all of the pages and sections of an app, including performing things like clicking, putting through SendKeys, scrolling down, tagging, and all the other actions we need to test for in an application.

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reviewer1709871

Senior Project Engineer at Wipro

Nov 3, 2021

There are many useful features in Selenium that I like, and of the new features I particularly enjoy the Selenium Grid. With this, we can run many test cases in one go, and in one suite we can extract multiple results.

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SG

Director Technology at Simplify 3x

Jul 22, 2020

What I like the most about this product is that it gives us a lot of freedom to code anything, there is no restriction on the type of function you can do.

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reviewer1687902

Software engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Oct 5, 2021

Selenium is the fastest tool compared to other competitors. It can run on any language, like Java, Python, C++, and .NET. So we can test any application on Selenium, whether it's mobile or desktop.

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Project Manager at Nalashaa

Sep 9, 2021

Data parametrization and parallelization are the most important features in any automation tool.

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Director at Finding Technology Company

Apr 3, 2021

The solution is free to use.

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reviewer1736361

Senior Software Developer at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

May 4, 2022

It's easy for new people to get trained on this solution. If we are hiring new people, the resource pool in the market in test automation is largely around Selenium.

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reviewer1664187

Software quality engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Sep 3, 2021

My customer previously validated every file and it would take almost 15-20 minutes for a document. They used to randomly select and test only 100 out of the thousands, maybe 85,000, files, to pick up sampling. Each file would take around 20 to 25 minutes, so we were not able to do it manually, but with the help of Selenium, we were able to test all the files in two days. It saves a lot of time.

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Director at Finding Technology Company

Mar 30, 2022

The main characteristic that is useful is that the tool is completely free.

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Selenium HQ Cons review quotes

MF

QA Automation Engineer at XPO Logistics

Jul 29, 2021

We use X path for our selectors, and sometimes, it is difficult to create locators for elements. It is very time-consuming because they're embedded deeply. A lot of that comes from the way that you architect your page. If devs are putting the IDs on their elements, it is great, and it allows you to get those elements super fast, but that's not necessarily the case. So, Selenium should be able to get your elements a lot quicker. Currently, it is time-consuming to get your selectors, locate your locators, and get to the elements.

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AB

Automation Tester at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Nov 3, 2021

One drawback to Selenium is that there is nothing like an object repository, such as that found in QTP, especially considering continuous integration practices that have become common nowadays.

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reviewer1709871

Senior Project Engineer at Wipro

Nov 3, 2021

For email-based applications, we can't automate as we would like to, making it necessary to bring in a third-party product to do so.

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Free Report: Selenium HQ Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Selenium HQ. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2025.

849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.

SG

Director Technology at Simplify 3x

Jul 22, 2020

Selenium is good when the team is really technical because Selenium does less built-in methods. If it came with more built-in and pre-built methods it would be even easier for less technical people to work with it. That's where I think the improvement can be.

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reviewer1687902

Software engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Oct 5, 2021

For now, I guess Selenium could add some other features like object communications for easy expansion.

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Project Manager at Nalashaa

Sep 9, 2021

I continuously see failures in threads when it is running in parallel.

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Director at Finding Technology Company

Apr 3, 2021

For people that don't know about technology, maybe it's difficult to use.

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reviewer1736361

Senior Software Developer at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

May 4, 2022

Shadow DOM could be improved and the handling of single page applications. Right now, it's a bit complicated and there are a lot of additional scripts required if you want to handle a single page application in a neat way.

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reviewer1664187

Software quality engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Sep 3, 2021

Sometimes we face challenges with Selenium HQ. There are third party tools that we use, for example for reading the images, that are not easy to plug in. The third party add-ons are difficult to get good configuration and do not have good support. I would like to see better integration with other products.

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Director at Finding Technology Company

Mar 30, 2022

If the test scenarios are not subdivided correctly, it is very likely that maintenance will become very expensive and re-use is unlikely.

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Product Categories

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Functional Testing Tools

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Popular Comparisons

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Tricentis Tosca vs Selenium HQ

OpenText UFT One vs Selenium HQ

BrowserStack vs Selenium HQ

SmartBear TestComplete vs Selenium HQ

BlazeMeter vs Selenium HQ

Sauce Labs vs Selenium HQ

Worksoft Certify vs Selenium HQ

LambdaTest vs Selenium HQ

Ranorex Studio vs Selenium HQ

Testim vs Selenium HQ

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