An Update on the Future of Katalon

I also need to weigh in with other users.

Features that have been available since 4.x cannot be stripped from a free version. I will have a very hard time convincing/ explaining this to my superiors.

All effort put into Test Suites & Cases could just become useless because a KRE license is needed to run them.
I understand a change is needed, but it feels like you are forcing a company to get a new license to keep using current available features. I have to say it doesn’t feel good.

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I just associated these accounts and it works!

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I’m not sure where things stand with Katalon products, I’ll be honest! Been holding off on new versions (with plugins) anyway since they don’t play nicely with proxy settings. A community user has generated a workaround but I would like a more robust solution for a paid-for product. The proxy settings for plugins (unwanted mainly) means we cannot use internal proxy for tests.
Anyway, my main point is - TestOps and Analytics are both in beta and don’t really see what TestOps offers but surely concurrent execution (like Selenium Grid) will eat up licences for RE? There is not a lot of documentation, other than the usual marketing blurb. Is TestOps related to CI plugins or independent?
Am I to assume that database keywords will no longer work in V 7.x KS? Will Git integration be removed in V 7.x? KS? What about any custom keywords that people built? These are questions that assist in making a decision, since so much functionality is community-generated it would be nice to know that the custom mods still have a place. Thanks in advance, Dan

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I also agree with others. I am the only one on my team using Katalon, but as part of our CI/CD I must run my tests using command line with Jenkins. I feel you should not start charging for something that has been in the free tool from the start. I do not want to go back to my management and try to explain that Katalon said the tool was going to remain free, but now we have to pay just to use what we have already been using.

I also understand a change is needed, but not by removing features that were already in the free product. My suggestion is to start charging for new features. I still love Katalon, but looks like I will have to dust off my old selenium framework and switch back to that once v6 is unusable.

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I also agree with others. We wanted to integrate Katalon with Teamcity but now with version 7, it cannot be done because of the requirement of licence for command-line mode. Running the application from the command line is a basic feature and should be included in the free version. My company is also sceptical paying $49/month for 1 machine. This cost is way too high.

Now we are losing trust in Katalon. Maybe try to switch to another tool if we need to integrate our automation tool with continuous integration application.

@Katalon_team Please listen to the community and rethink about paid modal. We have helped you to make the product better and now you are deceiving us!

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Hi @Dan_Bown Thank you for your inquiries.

To answer your concerns regarding what is available in KS and what is available in KSE, please refer to the section How is KSE different from KS

Some of the following points I think can be addressed from the above comparison list, in addition with the documentation we have on Runtime Engine.

https://docs.katalon.com/katalon-studio/docs/intro-RE.html

  1. In the feature list, Git integration is not removed from KS, only the ability to connect to Git through SSH. This feature does not prevent you from using Git and KS together.

  2. Runtime Engine which is what you need to run CI/CD and the number is based on the maximum parallel sessions/processes you plan to execute. A Runtime Engine license:

is a node-locked license. The number of licenses to acquire should be based on the number of processes and the maximum parallel sessions that you plan to execute.

  1. TestOps is with with many capabilities, one of which is to allow you to plan your test executions across machines for resource utilization. A Runtime Engine license is associated with a machine and an execution session as:
  • A license is linked to a single machine ID and for one execution session.
  • A machine can be mapped to multiple licenses (if needed).
  • The license can be transferred to a new machine for an online environment. For the offline environment, once converted, the license cannot be transferred to another machine until it is expired.
  1. In the feature comparison list you can see that Custom Keywords refactoring is mentioned, but we don’t take away the ability to use your own developed Custom Keywords.

  2. Also in the future comparison list, you see that External Data with Oracle SQL and SQL Server is mentioned. This refers to Test Data which provides you with data-driven testing when your Data Source is coming from SQL Server or SQL Database. On the other hand, the DBMS Keyword offers:

Database Management System (DBMS) customs keywords will help you easy to establish with various connection ( Mysql, Oracle, PostgresSql, SqlServer), and read, write data into database easily Besides that, They will help you get global DB setting connection from ( Project->Setting–>Database) easily, and the list of powerfull keyword allow you to dynamic create DB Test Data files support for automation need.

Of which the ability to create DB Test Data will be available when used with KSE. The rest of the features of this keyword remain intact.

https://store.katalon.com/product/24/DBMS-Keywords#overview-content

I agree with what many of the users are saying. I had recently brought Katalon Studio up as part of the company initiative to do API testing. Lots of features had got the team excited and it was unbelievable to many that everything was free. I hope that it wasn’t too good to be true now. We have decided to dedicate lots of hours into developing our framework around Katalon Studio and hope that the model remains free, and that we would not lose functionality to the payment model. The free aspect was a huge selling point for the organization and I would hate to have members of the team disappointed with the transition to a paid model in order to have the functionality that I recently promoted. Please consider keeping things the way they are and not stripping functionality that was originally free. Having specific tools for the Enterprise edition is fine in my opinion as long as us users do not lose what we already have. There is a way to introduce and promote a paid variant without making all other users lose out. But this is just my opinion.

Thank you,
Daniel Tran

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Katalon Product team, you initially assured to keep this tool free without any clause or condition.

Most of the Katalon end users choose this tool since it was promised to be free. I convinced my team, boss, superior … after going through the Forums Q & A.

On the otherhand things are drifting away now. To be honest… my position is at stake. We have spent couple of years on this tool, training people , building scripts . Now it is terribly upsetting frustating and daunting to see price tag on free product.

Even the very basic feature, we use day to day … like refactoring test object, basic debugging, cmd line execution,custom Api keywords … etc are missing in the free version.

Please understand … The user community is in distress mode.

I/ We are in deep Soup. Help US … PLEASE.

Hope you are listening …

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@abhishek.snitches199 I hadn’t even realized that even test script debugging will go to the paid version as well. Yet another really basic feature, and this just comes naturally with the Eclipse base they use.

I’m lucky to only have started using Katalon Studio at work relatively recently, because right now I absolutely feel cheated. Taking away script debugging and command line execution from the free version would mean to have those two features I rely on frequently I would have to get both KSE and RE, which on top of being hard to afford for small teams really makes me look like an idiot after I’ve picked this tool specifically for it’s feature-rich free version.

I’ve said this before in this thread, I’ll say it again. Offerding paid tiers is completely fine, but taking previously free features and putting them behind a paywall is an absolutely terrible idea.

We would probably have become paid customers once the company grows a little and I can get the budget, but my trust has been completely broken. How do I know that once we move to RSE you don’t suddenly decide to create a 2000€ RSE+ Edition that takes away features I relied on in RSE? Essentially, I can rely on absolutely no features you provide.

@Katalon_team Please rethink this move.

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I agree with this sentiment. Removing some of the most basic features and making them paid puts a real damper on those who have recommended the adoption of the tool within their organizations as well as other organizations.

Currently where we work, they have a standard tool (UFT) which we found very inflexible, time consuming and expensive. I introduced Katalon after reviewing many other options due to ease of use and its basic feature set meeting our needs. Because of these new licencing changes, management is pushing back and saying why use it if basic features will cost us the same as those who need all the features. Based on the numbers of users here across separately budgeted teams and the need for CLI reservations for those same teams will cost us over $80,000 cdn per year.

@Katalon_team as @christopher.berger said, please rethink this move for basic users.

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@devalex88 @ThanhTo I am not able to find anything about the pricing of TestOps . Right now we have our test results going to TestOps and it would be good to have an idea about how much it is going to cost in future ?

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I agree with @manpreet.mukkar Based on the paid modal, very likely that Katalon team will make TestOps a paid feature

@Bhawna_Rani I read over here few months back that TestOps or Katalon Analytics ( during that time ) is going to be a paid product but there was no mention of the license price.

So basically all my tests that use a data driven approach, which is basically all of them will no longer work unless I get a KSE license?

I am under the impression that we would have to pay for multiple licenses if I wanted to run separate suites inside of a VM? Is this true? Can I not download KSE on my machine and the VM and run two separate collection suites on them?

I reached out and sent an email to business@katalon.com over a week ago and never heard anything back. I sent the email on Thurs, 10/24 and today is 11/1. We have been with Katalon for 2 years and have spent considerable time and effort creating hundreds of test cases and suites for out site.

I have seen several mentions (including the one that I am responding to) regarding discount pricing for existing users and sent the email out inquiring about this but have heard nothing. Are these discounts still available to those of us that have created automated tests over the last couple of years that incorporate features that will no longer be available through the free version?

My hope is that these are still available since our existing scripts will not work and many of the things that we used in the development of these scripts will no longer be available. It is my hope that the Katalon team will see that this is the least they could do given the fact that so much time and effort was put into creating scripts having no clue that these scripts were created using functions in the free software that would later be stripped from the free version and only included in the paid version.

I know that it has probably just been very hectic there since the announcement and emails might just be running behind, but I would have thought that I would have heard something by know given the fact that we are entertaining the very real possibility of purchasing some licenses.

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Hello,

we are currently implementing Katalon as our Test Automation Tool. We have put quite some time into building Tests and our requirements do get satisfied. The problem came to me today, when I received an email about the expiration of my Enterprise Trial. Up to this point I was not aware of the fact, that I have been working on the commercially version of this tool. We are making use of features that are only included in the Enterprise Version of KS. Actually those are the very features that made us choose Katalon as an option. Without those features our Tests do not run (have disabled them in my local KS installation to verify this). I am working on a workaround to get them running with a custom solution to our problem, but the question remains: Will Katalon really stay free? If we put in even more effort and time into Katalon, that might go to waste, we can better bail out now and choose another option. Paying 69$ a month is simply way too much for a small team of 3 developers. We would gladly pay like 10-15$ a month. Either your pricing has to adjust to situations like that or we can not continue using the product. (And personally I belive that 69$ is way too much for the amount of bugs and inconveniences we have experienced with the UI so far).

So can you please make a statement about wether it is smarter for such a small Team like us to move to another solution or to stay with Katalon (free version). We need security, that Katalon is staying free at least 2-3 years!

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it depends … how smart is that small team?

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That’s a big ask. It’s a reasonable question given your position but unreasonable to expect anything like a dependable answer. I can’t imagine any company being able to make promises about the playing field two or three years from now.

Possible scenario: You get an answer, today - “sure, it’ll stay free.” Meanwhile something changes, and they decide to

  1. start over. New product. Kill the existing product.
  2. Change the licensing approach significantly again so the question becomes moot.
  3. They get bought out by SuperMegaCorp.com who decide nothing is free.

Where I think @Ibus is coming from:

If you’re smart (RE/CI pipelines excluded) you can do a lot of clever stuff with the free version. You just need to rethink your test strategies and knuckle down and write some code. :sweat:

No, it isn’t perfect. But nothing is. :wink:

Yeah, I did not expect too much of an answer. I simply hoped for some encouragement and safety to be honest ^^. Anyway, I do know quite some coding is necessary, since I already created several custom solutions for our application. I am just afraid that even those will get stripped away sooner rather than later. I guess I’m gonna have to rethink the whole approach and make some calculation on what solution I shall invest our limited resources into…

Thanks for you answer though. Much appreciated!