Leapwork automation platform: pros and cons

Selenium, one of the leading open-source test automation suites, has been used as the basis for several tools with more advanced functionality and user-friendly design. The Leapwork automation tool is one of the most successful Selenium-based software products, partially due to its codeless interface, which makes testing with Leapwork much easier than testing with Selenium.

In this article, you will find a detailed overview of the Leapwork automation platform pros and cons.

Leapwork is one of the most popular automated testing tools on the market. It primarily specializes in functional UI testing, regression testing, and end-to-end testing. Leapwork test automation tool can also be used for continuous testing and has a dedicated test automation offering for DevOps.

In addition to test automation, this platform can also automate other processes. The offering includes application monitoring and process automation for agile transformation.

Leapwork can be used to automate testing web applications, including mobile web software and desktop applications, as well as business processes. It is a particularly common choice for automating testing of the Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) system, Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM and ERP (enterprise resource planning) system, ServiceNow, a cloud computing platform used for managing workflows for business operations, and other enterprise-level software products.

Since its release in 2015, Leapwork has gained great popularity among companies that have switched to automated testing. Like any other tool, it has its strengths and weaknesses. In this article, you will find a more detailed description of the Leapwork automation platform pros and cons.

testing process. It is especially impressive when compared to Selenium, which was used as the basis for this software product.

The Leapwork automation tool is a no-code platform, meaning it does not require any programming skills from users. The interface uses building blocks that allow users to combine them into real test scripts without a need to read or write any code whatsoever. In this way, organizations can delegate certain testing tasks to users with no technical background.

At the same time, when used by professional testers, Leapwork can speed up their work, as testers do not have to spend most of their working time on coding.

Moreover, by creating test scripts without coding, the probability of errors is significantly reduced, thus increasing testing accuracy. This is especially important for highly repetitive tasks such as regression testing.

Leapwork automation tool makes it easier for distributed teams to collaborate on testing tasks and work remotely thanks to its cloud architecture.

Because it is a cloud solution, Leapwork also can be more easily integrated with other tools. This point will be further discussed in more detail in this article.

Unlike many other no-code tools that are designed specifically for testing a particular product, Leapwork is suitable for use with many other software products. You can use it to test native mobile and Web applications on any device, OS, or browser, while it also supports IBM, Java, Oracle Forms, and Mainframe terminal applications.

It also supports Windows and Citrix applications, as well as SAP GUI.

Many processes that require the implementation of third-party frameworks when testers rely on Selenium are already available out-of-the-box for QR teams using the Leapwork test automation platform. For example, scheduling and ad-hoc execution are immediately available to users, while testers can use a build pipeline or a third-party system of their choice to trigger execution.

The same is true for parallelizing tests. For example, Leapwork agents that support test execution on remote machines can be used to automate desktop, virtual, and Web applications together.

A full-fledged REST API is also available to users of the platform. With this API, users can integrate the most popular CI/CD platforms with Leapwork.

Leapwork is equipped with dashboard and reporting capabilities and allows users to share test results with other tools, such as JIRA, a popular bug-tracking and agile product management tool.

With the Leapwork test automation tool, users do not have to customize the tool to enable automatic recording, as this is a built-in feature of the platform. In addition, old videos are also automatically removed.

It is also worth mentioning that data-driven automation is readily available with Leapwork. With tools like Selenium implementing data-driven automation requires advanced programming skills and separate data asset storage and management.

Furthermore, testers using Leapwork can benefit from intelligent algorithms used for locating web elements to test. It also has a chat that allows everyone involved in the testing and quality control processes to communicate without delays.

In addition, Leapwork has its own built-in version history, which is more user-friendly than the popular Git version control system.

Leapwork also takes care of data security by storing all information in an encrypted database. There is no direct access to the database and even administrators are not allowed to modify the audit log.

Needless to say, the previously mentioned features of Leapwork make testing with this platform incredibly fast. Without the need to write code and with the ability to run multiple tests in parallel, teams can significantly reduce the time needed for testing.

Considering all the benefits of using Leapwork, it is obvious that many of them help companies save significant amounts of money.

Although Leapwrok is a useful tool for advanced testers, the fact that it can be used by practically any employee without programming skills opens up great opportunities for companies to save money due to higher flexibility in their testing routines. They also do not have to rely only on professional developers all the time. On the one hand, the money they have to pay to such specialists is reduced. On the other hand, they also do not have to waste too much time waiting when professional testers will be able to start their work. This minimizes downtime, which usually causes additional costs for the companies.

Since Leapwork is a proprietary tool, it offers users professional support on demand which can be very helpful in troubleshooting and getting fast answers to critical questions.

Leapwork is undeniably a powerful testing solution, but it also has its drawbacks that you should keep in mind before choosing your testing solution.

Limited platform customization capabilities are a common problem with many no-code testing software products. In the case of the Leapwork testing automation tool, there is no way to customize the blocks used to create automated flows.

Depending on the needs of a company, the standard blocks may not be sufficient to meet all testing requirements.

Although Leapwork is cloud-based unlike the Selenium suite, some testers find that the Leapwork test automation tool is not fully powered by cloud technology. The reason is the need to install agents mentioned earlier in the article. QA teams believe that having agents on a server should be sufficient. However, using Leapwork requires the separate installation of an agent on each computer involved in the testing processes.

While this procedure may be a necessity to enable license monitoring, testers do not find it user-friendly.

Professional testers find debugging during automation testing with Leapwork rather difficult. They feel that the debugging features of this tool are not sufficient for enterprise-level application testing.

There is a similar opinion about the platform's database unit. Its capabilities are rather limited, for example, there are no multiple queries.

QA teams also complain about script execution issues. Many testers rely on Windows PowerShell support for proper execution.

In addition, Leapwork's JavaScript unit lacks external library references.

Although Leapwork is quite a popular tool, it does not have a large community yet. As mentioned earlier, users can rely on professional support, which is very helpful, however, this is likely to be the only source of information for most testers.

Despite the fact that Leapwork is designed to be user-friendly, many testers find it overwhelming to work with this tool, especially when it comes to focusing on the features they really need to be able to work on their priority tasks.

In this article, you have learned the Leapwork automation platform pros and cons.

As you can see, the Leapwork automation testing tool can be a great choice for companies that want to distribute standard testing tasks to employees without a technical background. However, such organizations should be aware of the fact that this tool still requires sufficient time to learn.

At the same time, for companies with specific testing needs, regular support from professional developers is required. In addition, Leapwork has limited customizability, which should be considered before investing in this solution.