Python Web Automation Without Selenium: Top 3 Alternatives

Selenium served as the industry standard for test automation and was used by DevOps teams for a while. Because it enables test engineers to create test scripts in their native computer language, it was the testing tool of choice.

However, as everything changed, the usage of Selenium for automation changed too.

In this article, find out what are the pros & cons of using selenium and the top five alternatives to using selenium.

What is Selenium?

Basically, you can test your web application with Selenium. 

There are numerous ways to accomplish this, for example

• Allow it to tap on the buttons.
• Put information in structures.
• Look over your website to see whether everything is “OK” and such.

Among the few benefits of using Python with Selenium over, for example, Java is:

• When compared to Python scripts, Java programs frequently run more slowly.
• Python utilizes indentation, but Java uses standard brackets to begin and finish blocks.
• Python uses dynamic typing, whereas Java uses static typing.
• Compared to Java, Python is more straightforward and brief.

However, Selenium has its advantages, which we’ll discuss in just a few paragraphs. 

So, should you use Selenium to test your applications, or are there better choices? You can find out if you keep reading!

Why Don’t We Use Selenium Anymore?

That is a good question! Why?

Well, Selenium has never been a testing tool.

It was created as a tool for developers to automate browsers.

Very helpful when constructing websites for scraping and automating repetitive chores. At first appearance, using it to automate end-to-end testing would seem like a no-brainer, and you might have been right… In 2010.

Still, Selenium did a good job, but now it’s his time to go.

Let’s see some advantages and disadvantages of Selenium before stepping into the world of alternatives.

What Are Advantages Of Using Selenium?

There are a couple of excellent advantages. Let’s have a look!

First of all, as an open-source testing tool, Selenium has no licensing fees for users. That’s amazing, considering there is so much for what you have to pay for in a coding world.

Another thing is that Selenium is a cross-platform tool that facilitates testing across many browsers. This means there is no need or minimal need for extra tools for this job. This is, of course, amazing, and also perfect if you add that there is no cost.

The third thing is that Selenium users can run tests on any operating system, including Linux, Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. Diversity!

Besides all that, let’s add more diversity to the Selenium bucket – any browser, including Safari, Chrome, IE, Mozilla, and Opera, can use Selenium.

And lastly, to handle the test cases and produce the results, the integration of Selenium with other frameworks like JUnit, TestNG, and NUnit is possible.

There are some outstanding advantages to using Selenium. So, what is then bad about it?

Keep reading to find out!

What Are Disadvantages Of Using Selenium?

Welcome to the disadvantages of using Selenium! Let’s find out what could be better about Selenium.

First, only web apps can be tested with Selenium. You have to have other programs, which is not good, considering multiple options have it all.

Also, since it is an open-source tool, any team needs consistent nominal and technical support.

Except that, selenium tests are not that much stable. If new Selenium library versions are released to address a problem, the earlier test may become unreliable or disrupted.

And lastly, the Selenium test maintenance is complex because of its low-level API.

Dealing with error capturing, page screenshots, and element locators do not help or aid the developer.

What Are The Selenium Alternatives For Test Automation?

Yay, we are here!

There are much more tools you can use instead of Selenium to auto-test, but, there are three of them that are out fav.

Let’s see them all!

Alternative #1: Screenster

The best visual regression testing tool for websites and web applications is called Screenster.

It offers a cloud-based platform for UI (User Interface) automation testing. When compared to other Selenium alternatives, Screenster offers ten times higher productivity.

Using Screenster increases productivity and improves test quality for non-technical users.

Also, in contrast to Selenium, Screenster offers a few unique capabilities like automatic timeout control and auto-correcting smart pickers.

Besides that, Screenster’s automated Content Verification and Visual Baselines cover every aspect of a user interface.

And lastly, people can automate the UI test scenarios on a local server or in the cloud without writing any code. When compared to Selenium, Screenster’s learning curve is less steep.

Alternative #2: Subject 7

Subject7 is a “fully codeless” cloud-based automated test solution that unifies all testing on a single platform and makes it possible for anyone to develop into an automation expert.

The user-friendly software uses open-source standards, simplifies technical issues, and aids teams in accelerating codeless, at-scale test automation.

Some of the key features that Subject 7 has is that it enables the creation and execution of reliable test processes by both technical and non-technical users.

It also uses:

1.  open APIs, 
2. native plugins, and 
3. in-app integrations… 

…to integrate with your DevOps and Agile tooling seamlessly.

Finally, it contains major cross-browser parallel execution on your cloud environment, the secure public cloud, on-premises, or a hybrid, all of which have enterprise-grade security. At least for the purposes of this paper.

Alternative #3: Puppeteer 

A Puppeteer offers a high-level API for controlling via the DevTools Protocol. 

It allows them to use methods like .goto() and .type to interact with a web browser as an object (). It is a browser-driven framework that is developed by the Chrome DevTools team.

Here are some of the coolest characteristics of a Puppeteer:

1. includes further control over Chrome
2. allows for web scraping
3. it can capture screenshots and PDFs of web pages for user interface testing
4. uses the Chrome Performance Analysis tool to measure load times

Conclusion

Okay, now that you have the three alternatives and know all the advantages and disadvantages of using Selenium, will you transfer to one of the alternatives?

Let us know in the comments