Browserling

What is Browserling?
Browserling is a cloud-based cross-browser testing tool where you can test your web application on multiple OS-browser combinations. This online program helps users test their websites for cross-browser compatibility faster, cheaper, and at any time of the day without maintaining their own devices and browser installs.

Browserling makes use of virtual machines that run multiple operating systems and have multiple browsers (along with their versions). A user can enter the web address and select the platform to launch their personal browser in just five seconds. Browserling also comes equipped with SSH tunnels to perform local web testing and extensions to extend your browser’s functionality to perform cross-browser testing from within your browser. All these features are mentioned in detail in the below section.

Browserling Features
Browserling provides the following features as part of its complete cross-browser testing solution.

Live interactive testing: The live interactive testing feature of Browserling provides the facility of interacting with your website. Browserling provides this feature to make you feel as if you have installed the browser on your own system. A tester can mimic the user and find out smaller defects that cannot be seen without keyboard or mouse interactions. This makes the overall testing process more effective and results in a better quality web application.

Updated browser matrix: A new version of a browser is released every four weeks in the market. Such frequent releases require constant updation of systems as most of the users work on the latest releases. This creates a problem with on-premise solutions as the management of infrastructure and updation is required constantly.

Browserling provides updated browsers as soon as they are released in the market. The updated list is visible to the users and they don’t have to track the release dates and worry about installing them separately. This is done for all the browsers including mobile browser versions.

Screenshot testing: Browserling comes equipped with a screenshot factory that takes screenshots of currently visible browsers. The screenshot can then be edited with tools available on the platform such as highlighting, drawing shapes, or writing comments. Once done, these screenshots can be shared through different methods or saved in your account for later use. Browserling eliminates the need to download and manage screenshots on your local system. You get your own screenshot storage space when you sign up for an account.

Responsive testing: Browserling provides options to select different screen resolutions either at the launch of the website or during live interactive testing. By switching between various resolutions, the users can get an idea about how their website would look when rendered on a mobile screen or a tablet screen. In other words, this option helps decode whether your website is responsive or not.

Local testing: The platform provides an SSH tunnel system through which you can create a secure connection between your local system and Browserling’s server. This helps in interacting and testing a website that has not been published on the Internet yet. Through the tunnel, you can also take advantage of the developer tools as if the website has been published and you were debugging it live on the Internet.

Be anonymous: Browserling respects your privacy and hence your activities and identity remains anonymous all the time. This is achieved by making all the connections SSL encrypted between you and Browserling’s servers.

Safer browsing experience: Apart from testing your own website, you can also use Browserling to run a suspicious website on its servers. Browserling runs the browsers on its own machine within a sandboxed browser environment that does not affect your local system. If the websites contain any malware or virus, they cannot be injected into your system. You can consider your browsing as safe and interact with any website without worrying.

Browserling browser extensions: Browserling browser extensions can be installed in your browser to speed up the cross-browser testing process. When the Browserling’s extension is installed as an add-on, with a single click you can launch the same website on the Browserling’s servers that you are currently viewing. You don’t need to visit the Browserling website for this. That saves a ton of time.

Browserling bookmarklets: Another feature to accelerate the cross-browser testing process is to use Browserling bookmarklets. These are small Javascript functions that can be embedded to your browsers. When you open a website on your local system, clicking this bookmarklet will launch the same website on the Browserling’s servers. You don’t need to visit the Browserling website for this. To create your own bookmarklet, you need to visit Browserling’s bookmarklet web page.

Live API: This feature is for web developers who want another browser to be embedded into their web pages. By using the Live API, they can enable user interaction without redirecting their users on Browserling. This feature uses Browserling’s virtual machine at the back-end to launch the embedded browser, therefore the local user system, developer’s servers and developer’s local system all are unaffected in case a virus is injected.

Browserling Pricing

Browserling offers a variety of plans for its customers that differs in the features they receive along with it. It understands that many people like to explore more than one tool and settle on the one they feel most comfortable with. For all those people, Browserling also offers a free plan with limited functionalities. All the plans in Browserling are divided into three sections discussed below.

Free plan: Browserling’s free plan is limited to 3 minutes per session and is absolutely free to use for anyone. You don’t even need to create an account and can start testing right away.

Developer’s plan: The developer plan aims to satisfy the requirements of a single developer. With the developer plan, Browserling’s users can create an unlimited session and get access to all the browsers and their versions. Along with this, the user will also be eligible for a premium support option where he can raise his concerns and queries and get professional support. This plan is available for $19 per month.

Team plan: The team plan, as it states, is for people working in teams on a project. All the functionalities available in the developer’s plan are extended to all the users in the team. Also, the premium support is extended to at least two users in the team. This plan is available for a minimum of $29 per month and depends on the size of the team.

Conclusion
Cross-browser testing is an extremely necessary process in guaranteeing the quality of your web application. For this, an online cloud-based cross-browser testing tool brings a lot of added advantages to you. Browserling is one such tool helping developers and testers in refining their web application and rectifying error before it reaches the customers. Browserling can not only launch the website on a virtual machine, but provides debugging features, screenshot testing and sharing methods to ease out the process. With Live api, bookmarklets and browser extension, the users can launch the platform in one click. A long list of such features awaits you at Browserling. Try the free plan and test the features yourself!