Test Automation Tools That Scale: From Zero to 1.6M Users

Hey, what if building a better testing tool didn't require venture capital, just a strong community of testers willing to build it with you. Pretty cool, right? Well, you in for a treat because we have Sanjay Kumar, who is a QA tool creator. He creates everything. He's a community builder and he's the founder of SelectorsHub. You've probably heard of it. It's one of the most widely used tester productivity tools in the world. And without venture capital or external funding, Sanjay has built multiple free tools by working directly with the global QA community. And Today, more than 1.69 million testers rely on tools he's created to do the job better, faster and with a lot less friction. His mission is simple, he told me it's powerful. Build with testers, not for them, and prove that community can outperform capital. So stick around all the way to the end because Sanjay breaks down the exact community driven decisions that helped his tool scale to 1.369 million testers. Lessons you could apply Whether you're building tools, frameworks or influence inside your own organizations, you want to miss it, check it out. Hey Sanjay, welcome back to the guild.

Hey Joe, thank you. Thanks for having me here. It's been a quite long time.

Yeah, it's been a while. And as I mentioned, you're always creating new things. So for people that are familiar with you, maybe a little background your origin story. Like where do Selectors hub begin? Like what got you started on this whole awesomeness that you've been creating?

Sure, this. I began SelectorsHub, started SelectorsHub back in 2020 when Covid hits. So it was June and June 2020 and in July 2020 we have launched LecturesHub. It was completely community driven tool. So the, the first idea behind SelectorsHub was like I always wanted to create something that can help testers to learn and build their skills. Because whenever we talk about XPath and selectors tool, we always used to say that don't use an XPath tool because you will lose your learning skills. So the idea behind SelectorsHub was like build a tool, create a expert tool or selectors tool which will help in learning, not like losing any skills. So that was the very first initial idea because before SelectorsHub there was no smart editor for XPath and Selectors. So that's how we started with the very first tool SelectorsHub. And later on, like every year or month, you can say, or six months, we have been keeping adding more and more utilities, more tools and today now we have the entire ecosystem of SelectorsHub which is helping community QA, community testers and developers across the globe.

Very cool. Didn't you have a company before this that did something similar or you pivoted at some point?

Yes, yes, we, I had the previous one. The first one was the Crow path. And then yeah, so later after Crowpath I started this one, the fresh new selector sub. Because that time like people always used to say don't, don't, don't use this tool because you will lose this skill. People were very scared in interviews saying that and lots of couple of stuff was there and there was a story behind crowpath why I left. And also yeah, that was the old one. So now that is not existing anymore. So SelectorsHub is the new reality.

How do you help testers not be afraid of new tools or tool assistants or not feel guilty about using a tool for some reason? Sometimes people I'm great, I don't need a tool. Or they may feel bad about using one. What are your thoughts on that?

Yes, you can always do your work without tool. Like everything is possible. We have been always doing the things. But the tool is like something which will take you further, which will help you to save your time to do something more, to learn something more. Like today AI is there, so everything we are doing with the AI tools like we are able to do the coding faster. Like earlier stack overflow was there to help us while fixing some errors or encoding. I'm just taking an example. But today AI is there so we are like 100 times faster. We are doing the coding, debugging thing and writing the code faster, developing the app faster similarly. So it is always like, like if you are not using tool then also you can do the work. But if you are using the tools then you can do 10 times faster. If you will not use the tools, you will. You might left behind your competitor, your colleague may go even further and like they can do the things much, much better and they can learn because they can utilize their time. It's a very simple example. Like you, you if you write the code in notepad you can write it on Sublime or like very simple notepad you can write the code which is not any smart editor. But if you will write the same thing, same code in like Intellija or any pycharm versus code smart editor, that's where you do the coding faster. So you can do the things without tool but they will slow down.

So another thing I respect about you is you didn't chase funding or money and for Some reason a lot of people founders think that they need funding to be considered legitimate.

Yeah.

How do you get over that mindset? What are the benefits of not having to take take funding to do what you. What you do?

Absolutely. Like this question I always get whenever I meet any, meet any founder or someone who is like very much business mind. So very, I mean I have never been a business mind, I never had the business mind. So it was always my thought. Idea is always like you build a tool, get the users, get the people using, keep solving your users problem, keep solving your community problem. Capital and money automatically will flow in future or will be keep flowing, you will be keep getting with the same idea. We have been running the selector SERP now. It's been more than five years the show without any obstacle, without any financial problem. So the way we have been keep developing the new tools, keep supporting our community, we have been keep getting support back from the like pretty much all the testing companies out there in the testing community and from the users as well. So the idea was simple that we have to solve the people's problem and then automatically the funds and everything will be keep coming. Just if I have, if I would have been like business mind back I might have been thinking like much more about like raising the funds and capital. But this was never the idea from the day one of developing or innovating selectors of tools.

So yeah, so is this open source? Is this closed source? Is this like how does your model work?

Yeah, so most of the tools like okay, so most of the tools under SelectorsHub are the browser extensions. So they are by default like browse or open source, you have the code. So we have like we at SelectorsHub. I never had like that much strength to like manage the open source thing because when you do the open source thing, your code and all you have to like review the code, what need to be merged, what need not to. And in the testing community I feel like we never have seen like that much contribution from the code side. But from the testing perspective a lot more support is there from the testing community of course. So for that reason we never chose that model because we have been like keep on adding so many features, so many tools. So it was difficult with our strength to manage that open source community from our tools perspective. So that's why we didn't say that it is open source, but actually it is because you always has the browser extension code in your browser. But we have been like keep and keep on adding all the development from our side only. But yes, Testing community has been keep on helping us with the testing and giving the ideas about new features and all right.

So it has been a while since you've been on the show and you keep mentioning tools under SelectorsHub. Maybe you can give a breakdown. You can even share your screen if you had it. What are the tools? What does each one do so people can get a little understanding of what we're talking about here, the depth of what you have created here.

We have been keep on adding every year the features, not just the feature, the tools as well. Currently we have more than six, seven or eight tools I would say here you can see see that like this was the very first tool selectorshub itself the most famous one which has like already Cross more than 1.2 million downloads and active users of 500K SelectorsHub the XPath and Selectors plugin which also supports the Playwright native Playwright locators and all. Then later we launched the test Case Studio. This is the Recorder plugin which is the highest rated recorder plugin out there in Chrome Store. All five star till day Then the Check My Links we last year we launched this tool. In fact the Check My Links is much more famous than the SelectorsHub today. It's already been used by more than 100K testers. One of the best tool to find out the broken links on any web page. Just one click and you get the report of all the links tested automatically. You don't have to write this linear script or any sorts of like JavaScript or anything, just click and go. Then we launch the page load timer which is very helpful to get the auto alert whenever the performance of your web page goes down. So these tools are both these tools are very very helpful for your exploratory testing. Before giving thumbs up you make sure that your performance is not going to down, your SEO is not going to down. Then we added another tool, Auto Data Filler. It is very very helpful for your exploratory testing. While entering the data on any web page or anywhere in any form, you just right click on your field like this and you get the option of auto Data filler. And here you can fill any kind of date. You get the data right there in your fingertips just in one click and you can fill the data. So this is very very helpful. Just by one click you are able to enter the data in any any field, whatever types of data you want so that you can enter and you can do the testing like this. Then we have this testing daily. A very good tool to like you can say app. It is an app which is helpful to keep yourself updated with the latest software testing trends and feeds, meetups, updates like any webinar or any sorts of new YouTube videos are coming. You might have noticed that all of your YouTube videos or podcasts and everything used to get listed here automatically and then that. So this is the basically the feed, the latest software testing feed you automatically

get here in check out Automation Guild 2026 listed. I didn't do that. So how's it picked that up? Is it an RSS feed or something?

Yeah, yeah. It used to pick up through RSS feed as well as like. Like pretty much from all the YouTube channel. So your YouTube channel feed also like it will be appearing here. So every time if anybody opens new tab, the feed comes here like this you can search. I mean like if any new video might have come you will see all of them will be here. It also available as a mobile app. So like more than 50,000 testers already using. So we send the notification and all. So this is very, very.

Hold on. It's a mobile app or it's a browser that you can pull us up and on.

So it is available as a browser extension as well as the mobile app as well.

Oh cool.

Yeah, so both people can install and use it. It's a five star rated tool available on App Store, Android Play Store, both. So this is testing daily and then we have the auto test data. If somebody wants to generate lot of fake test data that also it used to help to generate just like single page web application to generate lot of fake test data. So one can generate. So this is another very very helpful tool. You can see that around 50,000 testers already used it to generate the fake test data just in simple three click in any format or anything. Then we also have this AI post creator which is an AI based tool which will help you basically to automatically generate the post. Like these days you might have seen like a lot of social media post and articles are being generated through AI. So you can set your prompt and it will automatically generate the post and it will give you auto alert as well that when you have to post. So this is also very, very helpful, much useful for the creators like us. Yeah, so these are couple of utilities which we have created. In fact like today itself we have created this tool automation tool Analyzer. This is not yet launched. I was supposed to launch next week. So what this tool does it basically you just enter your website URL. Like let's say for an example this autotestdata.com here you just have to enter this. There's a new tool I'm yet to launch this. And you click on analyze button. What it will do, it will analyze your web application and it will tell you which tool is better for testing whether the Playwright or Selenium and it will give you the score like this. So it's an AI based tool. It will analyze and it will give you the complete detailed report so you don't have to do the pocket you get automatically. So like this.

These. Hold on. So you're pointing to a web page based on the technology and the stack it picks up and lets you know which solution would work best for it.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Very cool.

Yeah, love it. So this is another tool which will solve basically the problem for the testers that you don't have to do the POC by your own all the details, stacks and everything. It will analyze for your website, whether your website has iframe, shadow, DOM or anything. And then based on that, which tool will support better for what perspective for what thing that you get everything perfect here and you don't have to do all sorts of like POC and going here and there and reading and all. So it will help you. Yeah. So this is another utility I've developed. Maybe like in next week or sometime we will launch this. So yeah so these, these are the couple of utilities we used to keep developing. There are many, many features and many, many things are there have gone inside it which we have done.

How do you make money though to keep this going? Because to do all this development it's just from sponsors and do you have paid plans for people are like this is really useful but I want to be a power user or an enterprise user. You must have a way for them to power up if they need to, right?

Absolutely, yes. So we do have like the first thing which you mentioned. Yes, we do get the sponsors and support from the testing community. Then we also have the Pro version of two tools like SelectorsHub Pro and Testcase Studio Pro. Because not every company, not every enterprise company used to accept the free tools and the free offering. So like that was the initial thought from where we got the idea of introducing the Pro version that many companies were like many users has reported us that they are not able to use the free tools inside their company for some or other reason. So that's where like we introduced the license version, the pro version. So yes we do have the two tools for the Pro version and like for check my links and page load time or other Thing like we have the support page where people can support us. So yeah, that's how like we get the funds to keep running the show.

Love it, love it, love it. Do you have a team or is this all on you?

Last time when you asked me this question, yes, I was alone. But now because there are so, so many tools. So yes, it's very difficult for me to alone develop all of them and manage them. So yes, now we have the team.

You know what I mean? You could go crazy. I would think just like releasing things, you poll your community and you know what they're using and therefore, you know, okay, this probably would be useful. How do you source what to actually spend your time on? Because you don't have infinite time, you probably have unlimited ideas. What do you know what to release?

Yes. So it's like of course I used to keep thinking, but what to create is like getting the idea from your user community. So we used to, you might have noticed that we used to keep hosting the meetups webinars and keep like connecting with our users. So our user feedback is a, is always the top priority. So we always take the user feedback and from their problems we used to create the solution. So if somebody has asked us like, can you add this feature? So we immediately take that feedback on the top priority and develop that. So that's how like it's user feedback. And yes, like we keep thinking like what problems people are discussing in LinkedIn. And whenever I see like so many people are talking about the same one thing, it's been like this tool, the analyzer tool automation tool. Analyzer. This one. I always keep saying, every other post you see these days on LinkedIn comparing Selenium playwright. Selenium Playwright. Which one is better? Which one is better? So that's where I got an idea. Why don't we have something which will automatically do this for you? And then this entire discussion of comparing two tools will stop there because every tool has its own uniqueness. So that's where like. So this is basically I used to get the idea from our users. Like in check my links, there were every feature is the community feedback. Like in Hyderabad meetup, NCR Meetup. So we used to keep having these meetups across the globe where we used to get like 400, 500 people in every meetups there. We used to get the feedback from the people. So that's how we used to keep adding the features in our tools and keep developing new tools. Whenever we see like lots of problems, like people, lots of people are facing the problem for same thing. And that's how we used to do. There's no rocket science, right?

Well there must be rocket science because how do you get like. Like getting your first 1000 users is hard. I have some free tools on my site. It's like a wasteland. Maybe the tools aren't good. How do you get to 1.69 million testers using your tools though? Guess the proof is in the tool. But like is there anything else you're doing? Like how do you get the word out?

Yes. So this is complete like mouth to mouth. Word, mouth word. Because we are not running any kind of like Google Ads or we don't have that much capital. Of course, like we don't have that capital that we can do the paid marketing and all. So it's like reviews, feedback and when you hit the solve the problem which is a basic problem. So so far like I used to say that we don't. We haven't developed anything related to AI or AI based or something like that. Pretty much all our tools are like solving very basic need. So all the ideas. If you see like all the tools of Slack this all a very basic problem which is actually a problem. Even if like AI comes or anything comes like every day these days people ask me like now AI is there your tools will who will use your tools and all I said like it is like a basic need like a bread and butter. Whatever comes you need this. So we have solved those basic problems. So for that region like they always are supposed to be used. So anybody who were like share with others, they just install and use. There is no nothing like every single tool. If you look at the selectorserv, you don't need the setup, you don't need to use them. Like page load timer, you just keep it installed automatically. It will be doing the job for you. Check my links. Just a single click required. No other setup. Test case Studio. Just a single click. It is required. It helps you with everything in your testing. So these are the like mouth of word user feedback and we used to keep doing the meetups and webinar and these are the free tools. So that's how we are able to build this community. And we have kept our user feedback always on the top priority. So whether you are a founder, whether you are a fresher, whether you are someone who has one or two year experience, if they have given any feedback, we take that on top. Right. And that's the reason like people share it with others talk about our tools. In fact like in Selenium conferences and all you will see, like creators used to present selectors up there, teaching selectors up there. Even I'm not there in those conferences. Then also that these tools reach there. So that's how like these have. They have. Like we have been able to build such a large community with the support of the community.

All right, there's a few things I want to dive in there. First thing that came to my mind though, how do you avoid knockoffs? It must be frustrating because you're like the underdog, you know, the small guy. How do you avoid people poaching or taking your idea and using AI to steal? I don't know if that happens. I just assume it must be difficult, you know, it must be frustrating. Have you seen that? How do you fight it? Do you care?

Yes. Like sometimes we feel like that what if, like somebody will copy your idea? Like long back it happened once that someone said, like, why don't you get it, get acquired with us? Like, we are a big company, we can just like get two developers and we can develop that overnight. I said like, why you will develop, Let me give you the code, you publish it. So it's not about the. It's not ever about developing any tool. It's not never about like idea. It's always about like how you have made people use your tool and then how you are maintaining the tool, how you are handling your user base and how you have built. So it's always that. And we have been like very, very serious about that. And we have like building that from day one. So it's never about like the code and all. Anybody can do that. Anybody can copy that. In fact, like we have got recently the slackers of patent as well. So that is also there. But it's still like some people will keep copying ideas and other stuff. So you cannot run behind each and every person that you don't create a copy of our tool or use our tool or whatever. So it's like what you have built, Nobody can do that overnight. Like, you see that Facebook acquired WhatsApp. Can't they develop that like Google used to acquire every day? Like so so many companies, it's never about the, like the development of the product. It's always about the user base and what brand you have developed. So for that brand and for that user base is the main capital, you can say, so nobody can copy. If you have built that, it's always yours. So of course like initial thousand users is like, anybody can get that, but after that, how much you can get so that's the always like every other day when we five years back, when I launch Lecter Sub every other month, every single month, somebody will tag me here and there. See, your competitor is here. Another X tool is in the market, another expert. And now you will be nowhere. I said like, okay, I don't care, I don't bother. So let's just focus and keep working hard.

Nice. So having over a million users as well, how do you handle tickets or requests or features? Because it's not open source. It was just you. Now you have a team. How do you prioritize or how do you do that?

Sleepless night so yes, this is like this is nothing like we have to. If it comes, we have to solve that. So if there are 10 tickets, we will have to solve all 10 tickets. Whether like it will depend on like which feature you want to take first, but we will do all of them. So. And yes, that's where like your blood used to go. And always sleepless nights whenever you get like more tickets, more feature requests or anything. Like any new feature update or something. Some compatibility issues comes with the browser or with any software. Like recently this playwright things came native playwright supports, we have to add for those. So it's always like like this manifest version three came. So all. All the tools of selector so we had to write it from the like scratch and then we have to add the support for all those tools with all the features. Migration for outside word it might not never come, but inside we had to rewrite all the code from the scratch supporting everything from the same way so that our user doesn't get bothered. So yes, it is always like we have to have to have to work on that.

So you didn't mention AI. You must get hit up a lot. Like AI is going to replace you. AI's going to replace me. Are they going to replace testers? What are your thoughts on AI and how do you see that affecting the testing market? Like is eventually we're just going to have an LLM that knows how to handle selectors. It doesn't matter. And everything becomes obsolete and we just sit around watch it go.

Yes, yes, absolutely. Like so how I see these things, whatever new tools. So this I also feel another AI is like another new tool which is 100 times faster and better than what we were having previous tool. So it is just another great tool which will help you in many ways to automate multiple, multiple processes. But still there will be some gaps, some processes which we will have to do, which some other tool will Fill So I don't see like the replacement for our basic tools. We have. I have been like meeting people talking people like what is happening in the ground reality. Yes, there are many tools they are doing the PoC, they are using the AI based tool. But still there is a requirement of like every tool what we have already out there in the market. Yes, there might be few things which will be upgrading which will need the upgrade because of AI. So it's another technology which has come up which will definitely bring the revolution and will automate a lot more processes, make things faster. So yes, but nothing is going to replace completely. We all will evolve with the new technology, with new. With these new things. So yes like you see that this auto healing was always there like Tricentis, Tosca, there were many codeless automation tool before was there also. But always like from the day when the SelectorsHub or other tools have been keep on running, keep on running even with those tools also you need the selectors of sometime when the AI tools will not be able to generate or they will do some kind of like they might generate some kind of absolute or whatever Amelix selectors or any sorts of things will be there. So yes, it will always be required some human intervention and then when it will take over we will also upgrade our tools as well. So everything will evolve basically. But it's good thing, like really amazing.

Absolutely. Okay Sanjay, before we go, is there one piece of actual advice you can give to someone to help them with their automation testing efforts? And what's the best way to find all these awesome tools?

You can find all these tools from selectorshub.com one place or you just hit any name of the selectors who tool selectorshub tool. Whichever you need, you will get it from the Google as well. But yeah, one place slacktushub.com you get all of them

and one piece of actual advice you can give to someone that they could put into place right now with automation.

As a creator, if you ask me, I always give the advice. If you have an idea about developing a tool, develop it. Don't think that whether that tool will be running so anybody will use or not. If you have an idea, that means that idea is going to solve problem. So if you are going to solve your problem then definitely there are millions of people will like you who will be having that problem. Just that you will have to find out after developing that tool who are those people who have the problem like you then just make your tool available to them and that's how you will grow and you will be able to make your tool make bigger and bigger awesome.

We'll have links to all this awesomeness down below. Thanks again for your automation awesomeness. The links to everything of value we covered in this episode. Head on over to testguild.com a579 and if the show has helped you in any way, why not rate it and review it in itunes? Reviews really help in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. So that's it for this episode of the Test Guild Automation Podcast. I'm Joe. My mission is to help you succeed with creating end to end full stack automation awesomeness. As always, test everything and keep the good Cheers. Hey, thank you for tuning in. It's incredible to connect with close to 400,000 followers across all our platforms and across over 40,000 email subscribers who are at the forefront of automation testing and DevOps. If you haven't yet, join our vibrant community@testguild.com where you become part of our elite circle driving innovation in software testing and automation. And if you're a tool provider or have a service looking to empower our guild with solutions that elevate skills and tackle real world challenges, we're excited to to collaborate. Visit testguild.info to explore how we can create transformative experiences together. Let's push the boundaries of what we can achieve. With hoots and lyres, the bards began their song A tune of knowledge, a melody of code through the air it spread like wildfire through the land Guiding tester showing the secrets to behold.