Challenges or Limitation of Selenium Tool

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Selenium is one of the popular Web Automation tool. There are many benefits of Selenium but still it's not a perfect tool, it has several limitations as well, let's discuss those one by one:

  • No Direct Support: Selenium has less Documentation & Support compared to tools like QTP because Selenium is an open source tool. Since Selenium is open source software, you have to rely on community forums to get your technical issues resolved. No one is responsible for new features usage; they may or may not work properly.
  • Browser Update Issues: Challenges occur if you have updated the browser without testing. Sometimes, scripts automatically fail when you update browser. Also, you need to update browser driver most of the time on browser version update. There is possibility that updated versions have issues as well. 
  • Web Automation Only: Selenium does not support Windows and Mobile automation. It can’t handle window popups. Even 3rd party tool like AutoIT, Winium and Java robot class is not much compatible along with web automation. Also, We can't perform automation tests on web services like SOAP or REST using Selenium for API testing you need separate tool like REST Assured.
  • Captcha or Bar Code or Fingerprints: Can’t be automated.
  • Dynamic IDs: Need good understanding of website structure because if xpath/css not selected properly. Script will fail even with minor code update.
  • No Built-In Reporting: Depend on 3rd party tools. Selenium does not have any inbuilt reporting capability; you have to rely on plug-ins like JUnit, TestNG, Extent or Allure for test reports.
  • Ajax/JavaScripts/PopUp Handling: Not very good mechanism to handle popup ajax and JavaScript. Selenium does not provide advance support for application build on Angular.
  • No Image Testing & Bitmap Comparison: There is no support for bitmap comparison of images. It is not possible to perform testing on images. We need to integrate Selenium with Sikuli or tool like ImageMagick for image based testing.
  • No Object Repository: It does not have built-in Object Repository like UFT/QTP to maintain objects/elements in centralized location. However, we can overcome this limitation using Page Object Model.
  • Skills Requirement: You should know at least one of the supported programming languages to create tests scripts in Selenium WebDriver.There is significant knowledge, experience, and technical skill needed to operate Selenium and its dependent frameworks such as WebDriverIO, Protractor, and others.
  • No Test Management Tool Integration: No built in support for test management tools like TestLink or ALM.
  • Not Easy to Set up Test Environment: Selenium users do not find it easy to set up a test environment compared to the licensed tools like UFT.
  • No automation of Audio or Video: Does not support automation of audio or video content.