Why you should use ReQtest (when compared to competing products)

Why should you use ReQtest (when compared to competing products)?

If you’re a test manager, test consultant or test leader, you may be in the difficult situation of having to choose what test management tool you, your team or your client should use. It is a difficult situation because you will want a tool that is dependable, customizable, easy to use, reliable and of course, not too pricey.

Without blowing our own trumpet too much, in this blog post we will go through the main competitors of our product ReQtest, and explain why we believe ReQtest is a better and safer bet. Let’s assume that you want a tool which can deliver on all of the below points –

Flexible pricing when needs change from time to time
Ease of use
No extensive training required
Easily customizable

ReQtest competitor 1 – Microsoft TFS

Microsoft TFS works well enough in small teams in which everyone uses Microsoft’s technologies. When the team sits together in the same room they can use the built-in scrum features. Projects with a blend of technologies, a bit of Microsoft, a bit of Java or a bit of legacy cannot use TFS as a hub for testing and development. TFS does not support geographically distributed projects, such as when the customer or the vendor is located in another office.

In comparison, ReQtest offers better usability which is highly appreciated by system testers and acceptance testers.

Simply put, TFS is often considered more complicated to use for business specialists. TFS is also more expensive than ReQtest. Microsoft is more proven as supplier of development tools. If your developers use TFS, you can easily link items in TFS to ReQtest. Bugs entered in ReQtest can automatically be entered into TFS and vice versa.

ReQtest competitor 2 – Atlassian Jira

Jira’s strength is issue management, rather than being a complete requirements and test management tool. You can configure Jira to be almost everything, but you have to configure it a lot to get anywhere close to what Reqtest already is out of the box.

Although Jira is simpler than ReQtest it is far more complicated to configure. While Jira is cheaper than ReQtest it has fewer capabilities and is weaker when it comes to planning, managing and following up on tests. The learning curve for Jira is steeper and end-users often think the interface is far too complicated.

Jira is extendable through the use of plugins, but if you need more plugins the cost increases rapidly.

Put simply, since ReQtest is focused on test management, ReQtest is better at test planning, test execution and following up on testing including bug reporting. Additionally, through ReQtest Connect, it is possible to link Jira to ReQtest so you don’t have to reproduce work.

ReQtest competitor 3 – The big vendors

For a while during the 90s and early noughties, very few tools apart from those by big vendors were around. However, in today’s day and age, vendors such as HP and IBM and their products are not primary competitors of ReQtest’s anymore. They are of interest mostly to their existing customers who use the tool suites for test automation or performance testing and who have over the years placed significant investment in physical rack-space, staff training and other requirements which are part and parcel of using such platforms.

In conclusion –

Choosing the right tool depends on the environment and future tool requirements. If you need a specialized tool for requirements and testing ReQtest is normally a perfect fit. If for any reason you need other tools, you can link always link them to ReQtest using ReQtest Connect so as to avoid duplicate work.

By comparison to its competitors, ReQtest offers much higher usability and easier customization. This is especially important when some of the testing is performed by non-technical users or acceptance testers, which is often the case. Since ReQtest is built for online collaboration it is easy to use regardless of how the project is geographically distributed.