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Decades of Leadership in the Software Testing Industry

AscentialTest has been forming in the minds of our founders for several years. After building QA Partner/SilkTest at Segue Software in the 90s, they got the opportunity to use their product extensively in the field. As consultants implementing test automation with various tools for more than 10 years, they’ve formed a thorough assessment of the state of the field. What they found surprised them: automated tests were too expensive to build.

Furthermore, the requirement for programming skills to move beyond the superficial tests that can be recorded left out too many members of the team. They also discovered that a large portion of test development time is spent ‘writing code’ to workaround object recognition deficiencies. Some users estimate that time to approach 80%. Clearly this explains why the decision to adopt automation is not always straightforward. With a fresh understanding of the challenges and our heads full of ideas, we’re energized and excited to bring about the next paradigm shift in test automation.

Brian has been working in the field of test automation for more than 30 years. Brian began as a QA Engineer using the testing tools available in the early 1980’s. He joined Segue Software in its infancy and served as the EVP of R&D during that company’s golden years. Brian formed Star Quality, a consulting firm specializing in test automation in the late 90s. After 12 years of experience in the trenches, he’s excited to be building the next generation testing tool that will increase the productivity and and effectiveness of test and development teams.

Dave is a pioneer in the field of automated testing. Dave developed ATF, one of the first automation tools, more than 20 yeas ago. He was a founder and Chief Architect of Segue Software, Inc., the original creators of QA Partner/SilkTest. Dave believes that no testing tool can be easy to use without a solid foundation. That’s why he is committed to providing AscentialTest’s universal agent with the most powerful object recognition engine in the industry.

Pricing Plans - Solo Testers to Large Enterprise Teams

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Subscription

Solo Testers

Starting at $200/mo

  • All extensions & defect tracking
  • Ascential consultant network (no dedicated support)

“The Selenium Killer”

Subscription

Teams

Starting at $380/mo

  • Includes 1 extension
  • Includes collaboration pkg
  • Choose additional Seats
  • Choose additional extensions

Subscription

Unlimited

Starting at $6k/mo

  • Unlimited Seats
  • Includes all extensions
  • Includes collaboration pkg
  • Lifetime maintenance
  • Lifetime updates

Perpetual License

Teams

Starting at $8.4k

  • Includes one extension
  • Includes collaboration pkg
  • Annual maintenance starts at $1.4k

Perpetual License

Unlimited

  • Unlimited Seats
  • Includes all extensions
  • Includes collaboration pkg
  • Annual maintenance starts at $50k

Other Resources

Upcoming Webinar

Building Reusable Verification Tests

Tue, Jun 25, 2024 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM EDT

The participant will learn:
* How indirection and dynamic instantiation are used to build generic test steps
* How to create universal verification steps and functions
* About built-in functions that provide information about the current state of the target application
* How metadata can be used to set object-related test data
* How to create a test that walks the main menu of an application, opening and closing each dialog

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See How We Achieved an 83% Five Star Rating on Gartner

See how AscentialTest compares to the competition, using 18 key features and functions and across 14 different development platforms

  • Supported Platforms (14)
  • Integrated Test Planning
  • Object Recognition
  • Object Repository
  • Test Frameworks
  • Foreign Language UX
  • Drag Generations of Actions
  • Reusable Steps
  • Scripting
  • Manual Testing
  • Parallel Execution
  • Integrated Defect Tracking
  • Test Localization
  • Test Portability
  • Test Management
  • Test Execution Management
  • Integrated Version Control
  • Integrated Test Management

Eggplant

Gartner 5 Star Reviews:

0 %

TestComplete

Gartner 5 Star Reviews:

0 %

Tosca

Gartner 5 Star Reviews:

0 %

Ranorex Studio

Gartner 5 Star Reviews:

0 %

Features

Platforms

How We Compare

AscentailTest

TestComplete

Tosca

Eggplant

Ranorex Studio

Free Trial

While a short free trial term creates urgency from a sales perspective, the reality is that automated testing software requires enough time to conduct a POC and gain enough familiarity to ensure there is good client-product fit. In our experience, the POC process really requires a minimum of 60 days. In the case of AscenialTest, we often extend the trial period until our client is comfortable that our tool is a good fit.

6 Months

14-Day

14-Day

30-Day

Yes – Unknown

Features Included in Base Product

Components that have been designed to work together provide an efficient workflow. When extra steps are required to integrate components, valuable time is wasted. Cost is also a factor. An all-in-one solution is less-expensive.
  • Manual Testing
  • Automated Testing
  • Test Planning
  • Test Management
  • Test Execution Mgmt
  • Test Data Mgmt
  • Test Localization
  • Test Portability
  • Distributed Testing
  • Version Control
  • Automated Testing
  • Test Planning
  • Test Management
  • Test Execution Mgmt
  • Distributed Testing
  • Version Control
  • Automated Testing
  • Test Data Management
  • Distributed Testing
  • Automated Testing
  • Automated Testing
  • Test Data Mgmt
  • Limited Version Control

Primary Features Missing

When primary features like test planning or test data management are missing, organizations need to obtain additional products either from the same vendor, a third-party or from open-source. In any case, if the modules are not designed to work together, there will be significant loss in productivity trying to integrate them.
  • Mobile Testing
  • Manual Testing
  • Test Data Mgmt
  • Test Localization
  • Test Portability
  • Manual Testing
  • Test Planning
  • Test Management
  • Test Execution Mgmt
  • Test Localization
  • Test Portability
  • Version Control
  • Manual Testing
  • Test Planning
  • Test Management
  • Test Execution Mgmt
  • Test Data Mgmt
  • Test Localization
  • Test Portability
  • Distributed Testing
  • Version Control
  • Manual Testing
  • Test Planning
  • Test Management
  • Test Execution Mgmt
  • Test Localization
  • Test Portability
  • Distributed Testing

Support/Service Model

While asking the community for assistance with techniques and tips might yield an answer eventually, knowing that there is a real expert available to not only answer questions, but to share experience is invaluable especially when there is pressure to meet project deadlines and achieve a postive ROI.
  • Senior Level Support
  • Founder Office Hours
  • User/Community Forum
  • Online Academy
  • Monthly Webinars
  • Paid Packages
  • Support Team
  • User/Community Forum
  • Knowledge Base
  • Webinars
  • Live & Virtual Support
  • User/Community Forum
  • Knowledge Base/Academy
  • Submit Service Tickets
  • Support Services (separate)
  • Test Creation Services (separate)
  • Knowledge Base/Academy
  • Premium Support Upsell
  • Submit Service Tickets
  • Community Forum
  • Knowledge Base/Academy

License Structure

Not sure whether test automation is right for your team? Entry level pricing makes it easy to try it out at a low cost.

Perpetual and Subscription

Subscription Only

Not Published

Perpetual Only

Perpetual Only

Single Seat Pricing

Not sure whether test automation is right for your team? Entry level pricing makes it easy to try it out at a low cost.

We did our best to do an apples-to-apples comparison, including those upsells where appropriate.

Starts at $200/mo

Includes desktop + extension

All Floating

Approx $675/mo

Includes desktop + web, distributed testing, floating seat, enhanced object recognition

Not Published

None

Base Bundle is 3 licenses (one developer and 2 execution licenses)

Approx $5k/yr

Not Floating

Enterprise Pricing

Collaboration features are important to promote the productivity of the entire project team. Team pricing provides a cost effective way to enable teams to work together efficiently and effectively.

Starts at $380/mo

Perpetual at $8.4k

Team functionality only available via separate products like Zephyr, etc.

Not Published

Not Published

Approx $7.5k Perpetual (+ $1.8k annual maint)

Per Seat/Floating

Unlimited Pricing

Enterprise pricing provides a cost-effective way for the entire organization to adopt a single all-in-one testing solution. A single solution reduces training requirements as staff migrate from one project to another and offers economies of scale as test components can be shared across projects.

Starts at $6k/mo

Perpetual at $180k

Unlimited Seats

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

x

AscentailTest

TestComplete

Tosca

Eggplant

Ranorex Studio

WebApps

Windows MFC

.Net Winforms

  • Unmentioned

.Net WPF

  • Unmentioned

PowerBuilder

  • No Testing API
  • Out of Date
  • Unmentioned

PowerServer

  • No Testing API

PowerClient

  • No Testing API

Omnis

Delphi

  • Unmentioned

Java Swing

  • Unmentioned

Terminal

CEF/Electron

  • Unmentioned

MS Webview 2

PDF

AscentailTest

TestComplete

Tosca

Eggplant

Ranorex Studio

Manual Testing

By supporting both manual and automated testing within the same testing solution, AscentialTest provides a transition from manual to automated testing. Whether tests are executed manually or through automation, all of the results are captured in a common results database for comprehensive project reporting.  

API Testing

By supporting both manual and automated testing within the same testing solution, AscentialTest provides a transition from manual to automated testing. Whether tests are executed manually or through automation, all of the results are captured in a common results database for comprehensive project reporting.  

Feature Upsell

Available through an additional product called SwaggerHub

Test Planning

The built-in Test Plan Editor, which is central to the design of AscentialTest, not only promotes better test planning, it provides a way to organize tests within AscentialTest, allowing testers to increase test coverage while reducing the level of effort necessary to manage test assets. Other testing solutions require integration with a separate component in their solution suite or with a third party test management tool. But integration comes at a high cost. Not only does the organization have to purchase an additional product, but it becomes obvious right away that the disparate components were not designed to work together and a lot of time is wasted configuring import criteria for tests and test results.

Test Frameworks

The degree to which an automated testing solution provides a test framework significantly impacts the cost of building a set of automated tests and the return on investment. Building a custom test framework is costly and inefficient. Time should be focused on building tests that validate the target application, not on test frameworks.
AscentialTest automates much of the process of building automated tests by providing pre-built components like the test class, class library and test planner and through effective use of wizards to generate components including app states, steps, tests and data tables. These features combine to provide a full testing solution that reduces costs and increases tester productivity.

No framework needed. AscentialTest builds automatically as tests created

Does not appear to have appstates, some framework creation appears to be needed

Lots of dialogs and user steps to get work done. Not efficient

For simple tests, it appears to be a quick and easy process

For simple tests, it appears to be a quick and easy process

Object Recognition

AscentialTest patented snapshot technology provides a much more robust approach than competing solutions. Regardless of the target platform, AscentialTest recognizes application elements using attributes that will persist day after day and from one machine to another. Instead of spending your valuable time on hacks and tricks to make up for shortcomings in object recognition, with AscentialTest you can concentrate on building tests.

Advanced. Regardless of the target platform, AscentialTest recognizes application elements using attributes that will persist day after day and from one machine to another. 

Test Complete comes closest to AscentialTest in object recognition. Without the snapshot, it takes more time to test and maintain object definitions

Each element has full path, fragile over time and time consuming to generate, poor recognition of complex objects like treeview, table or grid

Object recognition is based on images and OCR

Each element has full path, fragile over time and time consuming to generate, poor recognition of complex objects like treeview, table or grid

Object Repository

If the target application did not change over time, you wouldn't be testing it. Not only are the types of elements used to implement an application's GUI different from version to version but the depth of the hierarchy and the relationships between the elements change too. Despite the differences in the construction of the a target application, AscentialTest recognizes the application elements with a single set of object definitions.

Yes, AscentialTest collapses object hierarchy. Objects inherit path from parents which makes maintaining object locators much more robust

Similar to Selenium. No object hierarchy. Each object is identified from top to bottom. Alias permits shorter names but it doesn’t resolve issue of object hierarchy changing in future.

Their solution is most similar to Selenium. There is no object hierarchy. Each object is identified from top to bottom.

There is no concept of an object repository

Yes, but there is not object hierarchy so if the depth of the hierarchy changes, many object paths might need to be updated

Drag Actions

Recorders are fraught with problems from object recognition to synchronization. Building automated tests through Drag & Drop reduces the learning curve, does not require a specialized skill set and provides the fastest, most efficient way to build robust automated tests.
via Recording
via Dropdowns
via Recording

Scripting

While most testing actions can be generated through drag & drop, condition and iteration require some level of scripting. AscentialTest offers scripting options to match your skill level from visual scripting to full code editing.  

Visual and manual scripting

Assisted scripting with autocomplete

Not described

Assisted scripting with autocomplete

Manual scripting and limited visual scripting

Foreign Language UI

Being able to utilize a software application of any kind in your native language makes it easier to learn features and workflows so that you can become productive faster.

Spanish, French, Japanese

German

Arabic, Hebrew

AscentailTest

TestComplete

Tosca

Eggplant

Ranorex Studio

Test Management

Keeping track of test assets can be time consuming without a good test management solution that provides the ability to locate test requirements, tests and test data.  Frequently offered via a product upsell.

Feature Upsell

Available through three separate platforms: test management for Jira, qTest pro and qTest Enterprise

Feature Upsell

Available through separate product: Eggplant Manager

Test Data Management

Most testing tools require test data to be accessed from spreadsheets that are external to the testing project. Since data retrieved from spreadsheets is in string format, it must often be transformed by the test developer to match the datatype defined in the associated test.

Inputting data to spreadsheets is time-consuming and error prone. Until we pushed the boundaries when we introduced automatically-generated data tables in AscentialTest, this was the state of the art. Our approach unique approach offers the following benefits:
    * Data tables auto-generated based on the requirements of test actions
    * Data types handled automatically
    * Pick-lists auto-generated to reduce time to input test data and eliminate data input errors
    * No need to spend $ to purchase spreadsheet

Some, Parameters and Variables are stored at project level, Data is accessed from spreadsheets, external files and databases. They do not have built-in datatables, the mapping to data sources for data driven tests is really tedious and time consuming

Partial Solution

Partial Solution

Partial, uses underlying Excel of AceOleDB

Execution Management

Organizations do not have to incur additional cost for test execution management and reporting since these features are built in to AscentialTest’s all in one testing solution. Furthermore users do not have to spend additional time manually integrating various components that were, in most cases, not designed to work together.

Feature Upsell

Available through separate product: Eggplant Manager

Defect Tracking

Testing tools don’t exist in a vacuum. The ability to interface smoothly with defect tracking impacts tester productivity. AscentialTest keeps track of the relationship between test errors and defects so that you don't have to.

Partial Solution

Partial, uses underlying Excel of AceOleDB

Test Localization

By providing a mechanism to translate tests built against one localized version of the target application to validate versions built for additional languages, AscentialTest not only saves time and money, it ensures that the the application produces the same results regardless of the local language. Return on investment is extremely high as these benefits are achieved with only a small amount of effort.

No (strings need to be recaptured via OCR)

Test Portability

By providing a mechanism to convert tests built against an application built on one platform to validate a version built on a second platform, AscentialTest not only saves time and money, it ensures that the newer version of the application produces the same results as the original. Return on investment is extremely high as these benefits are achieved with only a small amount of effort.

Parallel Execution

The ability to distribute tests across multiple machines improves throughput significantly. Rather than running tests one at a time, this feature cuts execution time in half just by adding a second target machine. Tools that provide this capability include a multi-machine controller that sends tests to physical or virtual target machines that are equipped with ‘runtime’ components that carry out test execution. The results are sent back to the controller machine or a centralized database where they are compiled for reporting and metrics.

Version Control

Testing tools don’t exist in a vacuum. The ability to interface efficiently with version control impacts tester productivity. Teams can collaborate smoothly by managing changes to test project components right from within AscentialTest.

Partial Solution

Partial: through integration with other commercial tools

Automated testing, manual testing and test management tools that are easy to learn, easy to use, and easy to maintain.

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What We Are Up To Next

TFS/Azure Integration

Check our new Azure extension for executing AscentialTest command lines in the Azure Marketplace.

We look forward to offering additional integration with Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server and Azure through defect tracking and version control soon.

Omnis Studio

Automated testing support for OMNIS Studio is coming soon. All OMNIS elements will be supported including complex grids, list boxes, tables and tree views.

Custom Objects

Add automated testing support easily for your custom application elements by responding to simple test API messages with json strings. This feature will open up the possibility of testing any GUI element and  will be offered free of charge.

Test Debugger

Set breakpoints in your automated tests, view global and local variables and execute statements to make it easier to debug tests running on any of our supported platforms.

Thank you for submitting your inquiry!

We will get back to you ASAP.  We aim to respond to all inquiries within 24 hours.