Top 10 Website Performance Measuring Tools

Website performance measuring is crucial for any business. Fast page load times improve customer experience, conversion, and search ranking. The ability to handle increased web traffic allows businesses to make the most of busy shopping days. Catastrophic failures are less of a disaster when your site can crash and restore itself gracefully.

You can’t know if your website is performing well without the right website performance measuring tools to test and measure site performance. These tools also help you identify opportunities for improvement.

Load testing solutions can measure several types of website performance. In the course of a load test, you start with a small number of virtual site visitors and then increase the number of users to see if the site can handle the extra traffic without slowing down. The test results from early in the test measure website performance under typical conditions. If you increase the number of virtual users until the site crashes, you’ve also run a stress test.

We’ve identified ten of the best website performance measuring tools. You don’t need all ten, but you may need more than one. Only you can tell which ones best suit your needs. They’re not listed in any particular order because the best tool is the one that’s right for you.

 

  

LoadView

This cloud-based SaaS (Software as a Service) performance testing solution from Dotcom-Monitor makes website performance testing easy and affordable. With LoadView, you record test scripts by pointing and clicking – no scripting needed. LoadView supports testing over 40 platforms and browsers.

Cloud-based servers allow you to create virtual users around the world, mimicking your real website traffic. With LoadView, the number of virtual users and servers used to determine the per-test cost.

 

StresStimulus

This commercial performance testing solution will create virtual users on a local test machine, your private cloud server, or third-party cloud servers. It provides a wizard to guide you through recording, configuring, and running test scripts.

 

Website Speed Test

Sometimes you just need to check the speed of a single URL. This free tool from Dotcom-Monitor allows you to do that quickly and easily.

 

Performance Center

Large companies may have the need (and the budget) for an enterprise-wide performance testing solution. Performance Center can test applications as well as websites and creates virtual users on cloud-based servers.

 

 

WebLoad

This load testing solution records test scripts with pointing and clicking and turns them into editable JavaScript. It automatically identifies and replaces dynamic values like User Name and Session ID.

WebLoad offers a variety of licenses with pricing based on the number of virtual users you want to generate in each test.

 

 

BlazeMeter

This commercial solution runs and analyzes test scripts created in other tools, including The Grinder and JMeter. It can generate an infinite number of virtual site visitors on your private network, on your private cloud, or on third-party cloud servers.

BlazeMeter offers monthly subscriptions based on the number of virtual users you need to generate in a test.

 

 

Taurus

This open source load testing solution lets developers load test pieces of code before implementation. The earlier problems are caught, the easier and cheaper it is to fix them.

Taurus requires test scripts to be written in YAML.

 

 

The Grinder

This free tool load tests Java APIs during development. Test scripts must be written in Jython or Clojure. It runs the test scripts on load injection machines that you must set up.

 

 

Siege

This open source tool performs performance testing on basic website functions including user authentication, cookies, FTP protocols, HTTP, and HTTPS. It’s not suited for large-scale testing, therefore, use it in conjunction with other tools.