RedLine13 Just Got Real

RedLine13 started from a need to support 50,000 users registering in minutes.   The load testing market has been full of large, expensive, closed, and locked-down providers.   There was no way for RunSignUp to scale without a large investment for initially a point in time need.  Stephen Sigwart and Bob Bickel decided they needed to build something quick for their business.  Afterwards, they realized they had something special – easy, inexpensive, and rapid load testing.   Getting together with Rich Friedman they decided that this could be launched into an online service with support for open source projects such as JMeter and Gatling.  Now fast forward.

Until recently RedLine13 has been a side project to determine if there was something that others could use.   We have realized that mission with over 1,500 users and 18,000 load tests run.  To determine if this is also something a business could be built upon, we introduced a low-cost subscription and have continued to see a lot of adoption.

What’s next for us?

1. More time on RedLine13. Rich has gone from side project support to almost full-time support.   While he will still do some consulting for a few select companies (MeetMe where he is still enamored with the technology team, RunSignUp where he is going docker crazy, and others) he is now full time wearing many hats.
2. Features.  We are building the roadmap based on customer feedback.   Get on board as a customer and drive the roadmap for (Almost) free load testing.

Where do we fit?

We have now worked with many companies and have learned a lot.  One surprising item is how and where we fit with other services.  Our goal is not to be the enterprise load testing tool, but we understand for many there is a need for high-end capabilities.  (Almost) free load testing is not the slogan for that kind of company.

Some customers are sandwiching us between tools like Soasta, HP LoadRunner,  Blazemeter and their need for quick, repeatable, and cheap load testing.  We are fine with this and think there is a strong need.  Plug us in with Jenkins so you can test day in and day out.

Recent Blog Posts

A recent talk at FOSSCon 2015 gave rise to a series of blog posts.

1. Common Sense of Load Testing
2. What we measure with Load Testing
3. Simple Load Testing Process
4. Joys and pain of load testing
5. When do we load test
6. Scaling load tests old way
7. Scaling load tests new way
8. How we monitor the results
9. Review of the Open Source Load Testing Tools such as JMeter, Gatling, The Grinder, and many others.
10. Why integrate load testing with continuous delivery tools such as Jenkins

New Features and Website

We are working on improving the site around (Almost) Free Load Testing.  With each iteration, we hope to provide improved knowledge and ease-of-use.   Here are some updates we deployed.

• Trail Maps
• Knowledgebase
• Gatling Update with multiple feeder files with ability to split or expand
• API Updates
• Jenkins Plugin Update
• JMeter Plugin Support updated

 Customer Feedback

Have some feedback, please drop us a note.   Here is some customer feedback we have received.

“Bam! Now that’s what I call response time :)”

“Redline13 was a huge asset to us, specifically for the purpose of load testing the new photo system we are using. We built tests using JMeter and used Redline13 to hammer our servers. Through that testing, we uncovered a variety of issues that we were able to iron out pre-production. This was the first time we’d done anything like that, and I attribute much of the success we’ve had with our new photo system to the testing we did using JMeter and your service. We are really proud of how well our photo system is performing this summer.”

“I USE REDLINE WHENEVER I NEED TO PERFORM SOME REALLY HEAVY TESTS.”

“THANKS FOR THE SUPPORT, YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME.”

“AFTER LEAVING OOOOO AND JOINING A SMALL COMPANY WITH NOT QUITE THE SAME BUDGET “FREEDOMS” I’VE BEEN SOMEWHAT GAPPED FOR LOAD TESTING UNTIL NOW.”