Performance & Load Testing: What to Expect
A system that works perfectly with 10 concurrent users might collapse under 1,000. Performance and load testing ensures your system can handle the traffic demands of real-world usage.
Types of Performance Testing
- Load testing: Tests behaviour under expected normal load (e.g. your typical peak concurrent users)
- Stress testing: Tests behaviour under extreme load beyond expected peaks — to find the breaking point
- Spike testing: Tests behaviour under sudden large spikes in traffic (e.g. a marketing campaign launch)
- Soak testing: Tests behaviour over an extended period under normal load — to find memory leaks or performance degradation over time
When We Recommend Performance Testing
Performance testing is particularly important if:
- Your system will serve many concurrent users (typically 100+)
- You are running consumer-facing applications or e-commerce platforms
- You have a specific performance SLA (e.g. "pages must load in under 2 seconds")
- You expect significant traffic spikes (e.g. promotional campaigns, news features)
- You are operating in a regulated environment with performance requirements
What We Need From You
- Expected concurrent user numbers (normal and peak)
- Performance benchmarks or SLA requirements
- Any known high-traffic periods or planned campaigns
- Approval to run load tests against the staging environment (load tests can be resource-intensive)
Results and Optimisation
After testing, we share a performance report covering response times, throughput, error rates, and identified bottlenecks. We then implement optimisations (caching, query improvements, infrastructure scaling) and re-test until targets are met.