Hello my fellow automation pioneers,
TLDR: I love Katalon Studio. I dunno how I feel about the enterprise version of it. Thank you to the community. What are your thoughts?
This will probably be a sappy post, but I’d love feedback and input on this. I’ll preface with this is just my story and my opinion. I’d appreciate your time to read.
I started working on automated testing about a couple years ago now and it’s been a great journey so far. I started as a manual QA tester now three years ago and was given the go-ahead to start looking into better solutions, specifically automated ones. This was my time to shine as I had a college career in software engineering. I looked into a few tools for this purpose, most notably the SmartBear products. The cost of these software packages where certainly overwhelming, coming from a company that is very tight on budgets. It was looking pretty bleak until I came across the tool we are all here for, Katalon Studio. This was around maybe late 2017/early 2018 when Katalon was in a very early state, the community was relatively small, and this forum was also in a very early state. I have been able to see Katalon improve so much over the past couple years, and see people of the community really come together to help each other out. I’m sure we all share that little excitement when we see posts from the Katalon developers that tell us “This new thing will be available in X release”. If it wasn’t for Katalon Studio being free, I certainly wouldn’t be where I am today.
I loved it, and I was really excited to be part of a new community and application that seriously was blowing my mind. I have been given the opportunity to do some really cool stuff at my company. I can happily say that I lead a small QA team in automation efforts and helping them get rid of all the boring manual QA they do day-to-day. It has even gone as far as creating a sustainable and modular automation framework for them to use on the 100-200+ web apps the company builds throughout the year. It has been an incredible benefit to both my team and myself to have such a tool to use. Now that it has been proven to be an incredible asset to the company, other departments are looking for ways to make their processes even better with the use of automation. it has really flourished here and although it may seem silly, it really makes me happy to see people get excited about this stuff.
In regards to the upcoming release, I find it bittersweet. I’m glad I get to keep doing what I’m doing in regards to pressing on with automation efforts. I can only imagine I’ll still be lurking and helping out where I can in the community. I do understand that business need to make money, so I see where KMS (my assumption, the parent company of Katalon Studio) are coming from when making another paid version (Katalon Studio Enterprise) of the tool we know and love. I am still a little concerned however because of the split versions. I’m the type of person that loves new stuff and toys to play with in software applications. I’ll make a correspondence to video games for this next part. As an avid player of video games I have been seeing things like this for awhile now. You get a game from $0-$60 and then there are pay walls for more things, all the fun stuff. The extra goodies and things you get to have but only if you pay for them. Again in a sense I get it, people want to get paid for what they do and the efforts they make. The problem arises where these sorts of business models become more common or more important then the people that it’s for. If anybody is an active player then you’ll know what I mean when I mention micro-transactions or even paid DLC. There are companies out there that are taking advantage of this and giving us 1/2 a game for full price and then selling the rest in 15-30 dollar expansions. It really sucks!
My main concern here is what things are going to be held back on the “freemium” version of KS or even down the line what things will be pulled from it. I have already seen this in the form of TestRail and JIRA integrations/plugins. These used to be part of KS but were later pulled into a paid plugin. As I look at the “enterprise advanced features” grid, I fear that these things will not be able to be used anymore unless I break down the pay wall so to speak. Unfortunately I’m at the will of my company and I’m going to be missing out which makes me a bit upset. I hope it never comes to a point where I’m unable to continue my work because of features being pulled. It really is a battle to get certain things where I currently am, and I’m not looking forward to trying to battle again over such an important tool.
In closing, I just want to thank all those who have helped me in the community here, it really means a lot. May we never stop learning, discovering, and helping with our own automation efforts. We’re all from different disciplines, companies, and what have you, but we all share a common goal here and that’s just great. If you did end up reading my whole post here today, I really appreciate your time.
What are you’re experiences with Katalon Studio?
How do you feel about the new release of V7/KSE?
Do you have any concerns about the different versions?