Limitations of Selenium
Selenium is an open-source testing tool. It is functional on all web browsers and supports browser automation.
However, there are certain limitations of using the selenium testing tool.
Limitations of Selenium testing
Needs expertise and resources: Selenium and its dependent frameworks such as Protractor, WebDriverIO etc. need significant knowledge and technical skills to operate. Having an in-depth knowledge of the Selenium framework architecture is necessary to use the tool efficiently.
Maintenance and scalability: Testing done through Selenium tools is often challenging as minor UI changes lead to breaking of the tests. A test engineer need to have years of experience to debug and maintain the tests. Though Selenium allows testing on multiple browsers, the speed and volume of testing is limited.
Limited lab: The Selenium Grid is used to execute multiple tests across various browser types, OS, and devices. It is necessary to obtain IT approval to use the Selenium Grid. Moreover, this Grid is less secure than more flexible and powerful cloud-based labs.
Reporting: Report generation is an essential aspect of software testing as it helps teams to improve the product features. Selenium does not support report generation. This leaves no other option for testers but to depend on external tools to get the test reports.
Limitations of selenium web driver
• Selenium does not provide support for desktop applications.
• To manage the various resources that come with Selenium it is necessary to have an expert team within the organisation.
• The maintenance heavy framework of Selenium makes it difficult for organisations to upgrade along with the growth of the organisations.
• There are no supportive libraries to resolve any technical issues. A test engineer need to depend on the community forums to resolve any issues.
• There is no provision in Selenium to perform automation tests on web services like SOAP and REST.
• Selenium lacks the functionality to test image based applications. It is necessary to test image quality and resolution to measure the speed and accuracy of a webpage. Due to the lack of this functionality in Selenium testers often use other test automation tools to test image based web applications.
• Mobile app testing through Selenium is not possible. Testers perform testing of android and iOS apps by using the Appium with the help of a WebDriver Protocol.
• Any dynamic changes made to the web page are handled with dynamic CSS selectors or dynamic XPath to make it work.
• The pop-up windows are handled by AutoIT in Selenium.
Limitations of selenium ide
• It supports HTML language only.
• It does not allow parameterization, i,e. reading the file from external file and running the script is not possible.
• Looping and conditional statements are not supported by Selenium.
• The IDE does not support database testing and error handling.
• A built-in repository to maintain objects/elements in centralized location is not available in Selenium.
Challenges and limitations of selenium webdriver
• Regression testing is not possible with Selenium testing.
• There is no facility to record static actions.
• Re-testing can also be not performed through Selenium.
• It is a time taking process to create new test environment in Selenium when compared to vendor tools like RFT, UFT, and Skill test.
• Usage of any new features does not provide the guarantee that they will work properly.
• There is no testing tool integration in Selenium.
• It is not accurate while dealing with dynamic web elements.
• It does not automate barcodes and captcha.
• It is a time taking process to resolve sync and page load issues in Selenium.
