"For any automated testing process, test automation frameworks have distinct importance. The usage of frameworks helps the teams in the maintenance of reduced costs, less testing efforts, and to achieve a higher return on investment (ROI). In addition to these, frameworks are also an important factor to improve the efficiency of a test, increase the test coverage, reuse of the code, and so on. Evidently, enterprises have to choose a proper test automation framework for their testing process."

Frameworks are a set of guidelines, tools, coding standards, protocols, and libraries that are used across the teams. It is an environment to execute the test automation test scripts and enables a user to develop, execute and report. Also, the frameworks provide a good number of advantages such as reusability of the testing code, recovery options, lesser manual intervention, low-cost maintenance, easy reporting, etc. However, to achieve all these benefits, a team needs to use a test automation framework.

Achieving success with test automation completely depends on the type of tool which is being used and how oriented it is for your business requirement. There are many commercial and open-source test automation framework tools available in the market. Hence, enterprises have to choose the right test automation tool as per the need.

What are the top 10 test automation framework tools in 2020?

1. Selenium:

 Selenium is one of the popular test automation framework. It is an open-source automation tool with a good demand in the market. Selenium is rich with testing tools; it automates the code across various browsers such as Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, etc., and OS such as Mac, Windows, and Linux. Also, it supports various languages like Java, C#, PHP, Python, Ruby, etc. and helps in the creation of advanced and complex automation scripts. 

2. Watir:

 Watir is an open-source web automation framework tool with Ruby as its script language. It supports cross-browser testing, data-driven testing, and allows automation of web apps developed in any language. It helps to integrate with the BDD (Behavior Driven Development) tools such as RSpec, Test/Unit, Cucumber, etc. By using Ruby as the language, it will be easier to connect with the database, read the spreadsheets/data files, and structure a code as a reusable library. 

3. Cucumber:

 Cucumber is an open-source tool for Behavior Driven Development (BDD). It mainly focuses on end-user experience and it is used for writing acceptance tests. It mainly supports programming languages like Java, Python, Ruby, Groovy, Scala, Perl, PHP, etc. Also, the code written in Cucumber can be executed on various other automation frameworks such as Ruby, Selenium, etc.

4. Appium:

 Appium is exclusively designed for mobile application testing. It is designed in such a manner that, there is no need to reorganize or modify to perform a test. It is a cross-platform, therefore tests can be performed across various platforms such as Android, Mac, Windows. Also, it reuses the code of Android, iOS, and Windows.

5. Apache JMeter:

 JMeter is an open-source framework designed for testing load and performance across different applications, servers, protocol types. It is cross-platform, completely portable and oriented with pure Java. 

6. Robotium:

 It is also a test automation framework used for testing both native and hybrid android applications. Robotium is a framework that simplifies writing powerful and solid automatic black-box UI tests. The framework helps a developer to cover a number of activities related to Android such as user acceptance test scenarios, and writing functions for the system.

7. Carina:

 Carina is an open-source framework that supports all browsers and mobile devices. It is a cross-platform and helps in executing the tests on both Windows OS or Unix. Also, the framework supports both non-relational and relational databases. It is completely integrated into a QPS-Infra and helps to setup a production environment for Web, API test, and mobiles.

8. Katalon Studio:

 Katalon Studio is an automation tool for web applications, mobiles, and web services. It is based on Selenium and Appium, thus benefits integrated software automation. It is a platform that helps in performing various levels of test capabilities. And with the feature of Katalon Analytics, it gives an overall perspective of the execution reports for the users.

9. Testim.io:

 Testim.io is an automation framework, which exclusively uses the technology of artificial intelligence. With the technology, it eases the process of execution, troubleshoot, maintenance, and other test case automation.

10. Ranorex:

 Ranorex Studio assures to provide different automation testing tools for all mobile, web, and desktop applications. It is an efficient tool for iOS and Android gadgets. The tools effectively work for ERP and SAP packages. Ranorex is the best tool for organizations to save their time in fixing errors.  

Conclusion:

Test automation frameworks are essential to automate a testing process in order to save time, reduce the efforts, and bugs in an application. The above-mentioned are the top 10 test automation frameworks in 2020 which enterprises should consider based on their requirements. However, by achieving services from next-gen specialist QA, it will be easier to understand and adopt the right test automation framework.

About the Author:

I am a technical content writer, writing articles on the latest IT related topics. In this article, I tried to share my views on the automation in testing framework and the top tools which help in reusability of the testing code, recovery options, lesser manual intervention, low-cost maintenance, easy reporting and more.