Please feel free to contact us via phone or email for more detailed information about LoadStorm.com.

What does it do?

LoadStorm™ is a web-based load testing tool for simulating what users do with a web site or web application. You use it to build tests that send requests to your server in the same way that a user's browser sends requests to your server. But these tests are executed by our automated systems rather than by a user, so they can be done repeatedly and in large numbers simultaneously. They can also be built using our tool in such a way as to simulate a large number of different users with unique logins and different tasks to perform.

Do I need it?

Experience certainly guides architecture and planning for software systems. But, important decisions are best made by experienced people guided by facts. LoadStorm™ will help to provide those facts. Here are a few questions that software developers or their managers sometimes ask:

• Do you need to see how your application runs in a controlled multi-user situation?
• Do you need to prove that it will work with hundreds or thousands of users at the same time?
• Will there be any problems that we run into after hours or days of continual use?
• How will it work when your database grows to 100s of megabytes, gigabytes or terrabytes?
• What effect will a hardware upgrade have on our system? Will it double capacity, multiply it by 5 or be more like 10%?

These questions are impossible to answer with manual testers (people) but are the kinds of things that LoadStorm™ will help you understand and analyze. LoadStorm provides a small but important subset of automated testing for web-based software applications. Automated testing is a great use of technology, but it is certainly not necessary with many types of software. It can waste lots of time and sometimes even give a false sense of quality or progress for web projects. If your project will likely have only a small number of users, or you are willing to deal with the problems of growth after they are discovered, then refer us to a friend and keep us in mind for some future project.

Why not let our users test the system's capacity?

For some projects, this is an acceptable approach. For some internal applications, apps that are very simple or realistically will expect light traffic, the best plan may be to get it done as quickly as possible. You have to ask yourself what is the risk of the application not working at some point. For many businesses, getting a large influx of new users is the peak of success, and that success would be shattered by having the new users unable to use the system, unable to buy your product and unhappy with your company.

How does it work?

It works great! You want a few more details? LoadStorm™ is a truly distributed application that leverages the power of Amazon Web Services to scale on demand with processing power and bandwidth as needed to test the largest software projects. To you, our customers, it looks like a nice, modern web application running on a server. As you crank up the testing load to hundreds or thousands of virtual users, LoadStorm is seamlessly adding machines from Amazon's server farm to handle the processing. When your tests are done and the extra machines are not needed, they are turned off to wait for another day. Thanks to Amazon for putting together this great package of services including S3, EC2, SQS and others.

How much does it cost?

Free, $30/month, or $200/month. It depends on how many simulated users you need for testing. LoadStorm™ works because it makes high-end load testing capabilities cost effective for smaller development shops. We have a fully functional version that can be used for trial and building tests for free that will only simulate a few users. The full system is a monthly subscription with pricing that corresponds to the number of tests, simulated users, bandwidth and storage desired.

Compared to most commercial automated test tools, the cost structure for LoadStorm™ is very different. Commercial tools are usually sold as a software license fee plus yearly maintenance. For load testing, a license is needed for the development software, then additional licenses are needed for "test runners" or the "virtual users" to run the tests in large numbers. These additional licenses are sold by the number of users which you need to decide prior to purchasing. Additional computers are then needed to run the tests along with sufficient networking capacity. With LoadStorm™, the cost is very low to start with, and ramps up predictably as you require more test load. We take care of all the servers and networking.

Who are you guys?

Roger Campbell, Scott Price and a few others have been wanting a product like this for years and finally decided to build it. We live and work in New Mexico, Colorado, and New Zealand.