After the pandemic, SaaS platforms are on the rise. Consumers often prefer SaaS software over on-premise systems because it allows immediate access from anywhere. Virtual delivery is becoming more popular in all aspects of life, from professional to leisure endeavours.

However, not every SaaS platform is created equal. Inappropriately tested SaaS platforms can fail to deliver the quality, convenience, and speed users want. This guide will help you and your team to determine the best testing strategy for your SaaS product.

What is SaaS testing?

Cloud computing and SaaS applications are becoming ubiquitous across industries. This means that it is essential to test these applications thoroughly. SaaS testing refers to the testing of these web-based or on-demand software applications.

SaaS application testing differs from testing on-premises apps because it requires access to the internet. This type of application testing also uses web application testing methods.

It includes testing security, performance, data integration, reliability, availability, and other factors. A SaaS testing plan should also test the applications against real-world traffic in the cloud to ensure they are available for concurrent users.

SaaS Application Testing: The Challenges

Before diving into SaaS, we must understand the potential problems in testing SaaS products. These are some of the challenges:

• Product development has a shorter development cycle and requires the QA/testing team to stay on cycle.
• SaaS applications require close attention to security and integration testing, as they are web-based. It can be challenging to manage multiple users and maintain the privacy and integrity of test data when migrating or integrating SaaS apps.
• To deliver more value, SaaS products are increasingly using APIs. This requires a particular focus on API testing. This can be time-consuming and complex for QA because they must identify all customer scenarios to create suitable test cases.
• Regular updates and releases that improve the product experience make it easier to test the validity and security of the application.

SaaS Testing: Best Practices

SaaS applications are subject to continuous testing, which shifts left and is ongoing due to the use of DevOps for their development. Test automation is crucial to driving successful testing strategies.

It is important to perform a variety of tests on these applications. Here are some areas you should pay particular attention to:

• Security testing: It is crucial to ensure that SaaS applications are secure against digital attacks and vulnerabilities. Enterprises must expand their testing area coverage and learn intelligent test planning to increase testing coverage. This includes developing a comprehensive testing strategy to uncover any weaknesses in the application, creating robust test cases, increasing coverage of testing areas, and designing strong test cases.
• Performance testing: It is essential to test each module of an application’s performance and develop extensive performance testing capabilities. It is essential to identify the dependencies of plugs or APIs and the key performance indicators with robust test cases.
• API testing: API integration with SaaS applications can ensure they work as intended. To test SaaS applications, it is essential to create comprehensive test cases to test API and data integration. It is important to verify the accuracy of API documentation and check for performance, security, reliability, and scalability. It requires API testing due to its complexity and structure. It is essential because APIs require Regression level automation maturity.
• Stress Testing and Load Testing: SaaS applications must perform under different loads. SaaS testing should perform stress and load tests to determine how the application handles stress and load beyond its operational capacity. For comprehensive testing, automated stress and load testing are essential. This will ensure that the application performs well under stress.
• Cross-browser Functionality Testing: SaaS applications are well-known for their flexibility and accessibility. They must be compatible with all browsers because they are internet-delivered. Cross-browser functionality testing is used to verify the browser can handle the required number of versions, ensure compatibility with other browsers, and determine the minimum version that will work on that browser.

These tests are not the only ones to be concerned about. Reliability testing to minimize the risk of failure at Real Time deployment, regression testing after any data migration, update, or upgrade, Black Box testing and White Box testing as part of component testing are all other examples.

Conclusion

Quality assurance is a dynamic and constantly changing field. The rapid growth of SaaS applications has brought about major changes. This has made quality assurance more important than the application’s functionality. Only SaaS applications with excellent quality assurance can be your secret weapon. Incorporating all testing resources and tools into your testing strategy can be difficult. Instead, you can talk to our SaaS testing expert to ensure your SaaS applications run smoothly and efficiently without consuming your resources. Our SaaS-specific team of experts has years of experience with service applications using all SaaS testing tools. Let’s connect us for more details!