TrustRadius Insights for Postman are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Fast API calls: Many users have found the fast API calls feature to be very useful for HTTP protocol and restful service testing, with several reviewers mentioning its efficiency and time-saving capabilities.
Free and open-source tool: The fact that the software is a free and open-source tool has added to its appeal, as mentioned by multiple users. They appreciate the accessibility and affordability of the software.
Collaboration features: Several users have appreciated the ability to share API connections, create collections of API calls, and collaborate seamlessly with teammates. This universal feature of the software has been praised for enhancing teamwork and facilitating collaboration regardless of location.
Postman helps us not only use APIs, but to save setups, workspaces, preferences, etc. This means we can adopt 'personas' when interacting with an API to test various use cases where certain permissions or roles are being used. Being able to share these workspaces and templates means people can publish and pull a standard setup for each type of API we work with.
Pros
Postman allows you to create unique workspaces = This means you can have one workspace for one vendor (E.g. GoogleMaps, Atlassian Marketplace etc.) or you can set up your workspace to be agnostic of vendor and instead use it as a 'persona' E.g. a local terminal, a service account on Airflow etc.
Sharing setups - Being able to share workspaces, settings, credentials, API calls and more means we can set up templates and distribute them to developers easily. It also means vendors can provide Postman templates to help get its users started.
Showing the API code that's generated - Postman is good at bringing a UI to what is essentially a terminal or code based set of instructions. Though this can mask what's actually going on behind the hood, there's an option to see what's actually being generated and cURL'd.
Visualise AI - Visualising the response of an API can be hard at times, however the integrated AI feature can help display the response in a table or graph. The table feature is particularly helpful for looking at non structured data in a structured way.
Cons
Postman can hide too much - Though the UI makes it easier to interact with APIs, it can sometimes what's happening behind the scenes. You can see what its' cURL'ing in some cases. But for some setups this isn't always enough.
Varying levels of settings and parameters - Postman is very customisable in terms of setting the scope of variables and credentials. This is very powerful, but can ultimately make it quite hard to see everything you need in one place. There are some times where a credential is being used or a variable is being grabbed from somewhere and I have no idea where it's coming from.
Postman nomenclature - Due to its complexity and customisability Postman uses a lot of its own nomenclature and naming conventions. Workspaces, environments, collections etc. It can be a bit overwhelming at the start and navigating the different layers with the new names to understand can mean getting set up can be slow.
Likelihood to Recommend
Postman is good for organising your API credentials, vendor settings, environments etc. It's also a good way of getting stared with APIs as you get to use a GUI which can help you understand what we mean by a 'body' or 'bearer token'. I think people generally gravitate towards GUI tools for getting started in a new technology area.
Postman is what we use to test our API systems. We have a variety of public and private API systems, all of which are tested by my team using Postman. We've created separate collections for each, such as Smoke tests, which we run at each test deployment and Functional tests. These tests are continually updated (collection). My issue is that it lacks database connectivity, either relational or trendy-document databases like MongoDB. I have no choice but to export data from these databases and feed it into Postman. This is the only manual step a user must take; the rest of our tests are entirely automated.
Pros
Postman API allows you to access data in your Postman account using code. Execute all of the standard CRUD operations on your collections, environments, mocks, and other objects.
Postman used to be a platform where people worked alone and independently tested APIs. Working together has never been easier with features like commenting, forking, branching, pull requests, tagging, and more.
In the Pre-request and Test script tabs of Postman, you can use a set of external libraries. These libraries make life easier for developers by providing functionality that isn't always available in JavaScript.
Cons
Wherever you need to automate tests that involve database verification or rely on data from databases, Postman is less suitable.
Postman's disc usage is extremely high, and it occasionally causes the computer to fade.
It doesn't have the ability to generate random data. To achieve randomness in my tests, I've been working around scripts.
Likelihood to Recommend
When dealing with a collection of requests, it's common to run them in the order they were received. Other times, skipping or repeating certain requests is beneficial. The mailman arrives. The method SetNextRequest. You can programmatically choose which requests run and in what order by using conditional logic in the Pre-request or Tests tabs.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Customer Service (Computer Software company, 201-500 employees)
We're using Postman for testing of our API systems. We've got many different API systems, public and private, and all those systems are tested by my team using Postman. We've created different collections for each, as Smoke tests, that we run at each test-deploy and then we also have Functional tests collection. We're continuously maintaining these tests (collection). The problem I've is that it lacks the connectivity with databases, either relation or trendy-document DB like MongoDB/ CosmosDB. I have to rely on exporting data from these DBs and to feed it in Postman. This is the only manual step a user has to perform, otherwise our tests are based fully on automation.
Pros
Loading APIs (Just put the URL and hit send, if it doesn't require security token)
N-level of organizing collections into folders/ sub-folders
Sharing the collection across team
Create documentation, adding examples for each scenario
Run Feature
Assertion scripts snippets are really helpful in tests
Environments can be organized as per users' need.
Cons
Database connectivity - To get data directly from DBs (traditional plus new like MongoDB or CosmosDB)
Data Generator - Random data generator like email, names, zip/postal codes, addresses, mobile number. Although there's a public API but it has limits.
Likelihood to Recommend
Postman is well suited where APIs are involved. I've been testing many backend systems and are well organized into many tests like Smoke for each system and then functional tests as well. Along with that I've few created monitors for production-critical endpoints/API-methods.
Postman is less appropriate where you need to automate your tests that involves verification from databases or depends on data from databases. Also, it lacks functionality to generate random data. I've been using work around using scripts to achieve randomness in my tests.
I am working in the company as a Test Automation Engineer. I am using Postman for testing different services in different environments. I basically use this tool to test REST requests. My job is to test various services for the organization, do regression testing, smoke testing, functional testing, and much more. All of my business problems are addressed by this product. I love the simple, nice UI it has. It is a very useful and user-friendly tool for making API calls. Postman has many features I like. It keeps the history of your last used requests and this helps in re-using those requests if you want to. It also allows you to maintain your own workspace. [Postman] has folders to make your work easy, it's easy to share with your colleagues, and also allows me to save the request info in my local machine. I think the most important feature is it's free to use. Overall, I find this tool very helpful. It's a good platform for user testing services.
Pros
It helps with testing different services easily
Load time of the application is very quick
Useful product for making API calls
Cons
It should allow for easier use when many tabs are open at the same time
Sometimes loading the collections in JSON format is not easily done
While testing SOAP APIs there is definitely some room for improving the user's experience
Likelihood to Recommend
Scenarios where [Postman] is best suited: It is best used for making API rest calls. It is easy to use. [Postman] allows you to maintain your own workspace/collection of new or repeated requests. Scenarios where [Postman] is not best suited: Sometimes JSON files are difficult to import, so it needs improvement in that respect. It is not good support for SOAP API calls.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (Computer Software company, 10,001+ employees)
Postman is used to testing our backend talking to through the API, simulating several 100 use cases directly on the backend.
Pros
Use to use, thanks to snippets and in line IDE.
Quick test runner.
Headless running in deployment pipeline.
Cons
Autocomplete in IDE.
Folderwise selection of Requests to run in test runner.
Copying requests through drag'n'drop.
Linking of requests to, so that not every copy has to be maintained.
Get support.
Likelihood to Recommend
Postman is very good for easy entry into testing. Thanks to snippets it is easy to use, but also provides a lot [of] possibilities for testing thanks to the in-line editor. Easy to use on multiple environments (versioning) thanks to sets of environment variables. The Collections view can get very full with time and it is not possible to reuse or link requests so that they have always been copied and maintained manually for each copy if changes have to be applied.
VU
Verified User
Team Lead in Quality Assurance (Computer Software company, 51-200 employees)
I am a software developer working for an enterprise-level company. I work on developing software using Java and Kotlin for developing restful web services. In order to test those web services, we use Postman for testing the behavior of services. In my organization, most of the developers use Postman for testing purposes. It is a very good tool to use, as it can be understood very easily and supports different formats like JSON XML.
Pros
It has a group environment through which different teams can integrate and work together.
Easy to switch between different modes i.e JSON XML. Authenticating using different protocols is easy.
Pricing is also very comfortable.
Cons
Enterprise version is easy to setup and use but the number of requests is limited. I feel it would be great if there were more requests.
Pricing for enterprise should be less.
I don't have any more complaints as it is very good tool.
Likelihood to Recommend
I don't think there are very good alternates to Postman, as of now at least. It is the industry-standard tool and is very easy to use. I recommend every developer start using Postman because it will reduce development time significantly. I don't have complaints apart from that.
Postman is used by our software development teams, quality assurance teams, as well as our site reliability team. We use it to test API endpoints that we develop, as well as for calling APIs that we interact daily with, such as Microsoft Azure's API. We also use it for building collections of API endpoints that you can call for a specific API. We circulate the collection to teams who need to call that API so they can get onboarded with the API quickly.
Pros
Execute HTTP requests seamlessly using a lightweight client.
Configure HTTP request headers and body payloads easily.
Cons
The user interface is complicated, especially when you need to dig into one of the many settings.
I don't know where else Postman can perform better. So far, I haven't had many issues with Postman other than the learning curve.
Likelihood to Recommend
Getting started with Postman is relatively easy, which is what I like about the software. Digging into one of the many settings presents a bit of a learning curve, but it is nothing too tricky. I like the collection features because I don't need to dig into documentation on what endpoints are available for a specific API. Or what configurations I need to make to call a particular endpoint; I load the collections for an API I'm interested in, select the endpoint I am interested in and configure the minimum that is required for that endpoint to make a successful call.
Postman is being used by our software development team to test multiple APIs we develop internally. Postman allows the development team to see responses to our APIs for troubleshooting purposes. It also allows us to create API documentation on the fly, easily, organically through the process of testing API endpoints.
Pros
Submit API requests and view responses without the need for a browser or browser extensions.
Archive and group API requests by type, application, or any way you see fit.
Cons
The documentation produced is useful, but it could provide more information.
Sharing the documentation could be made easier.
Likelihood to Recommend
Postman lends itself to testing APIs. Teams that develop web applications using RESTful APIs would benefit greatly from using Postman and its features, that are designed for repeatability and troubleshooting. Developers can install extensions into browsers that allow them to see, effectively, the same things Postman does, but it would be difficult to find a one-stop-shop of features specifically designed to see the interaction of user requests with the web application. Postman is a must if you're developing a web application that leverages an API in any way.
