The path to a new feature or application is often paved with dependencies. Delays caused by incomplete or unstable APIs, and the high costs of using production services, can easily put a stop to development. This is a common pain point for both software development teams and their team leads.
Hoverfly Cloud provides a powerful solution to these challenges by allowing you to simulate entire service ecosystems. This process, known as service virtualisation, lets teams work in parallel and eliminate bottlenecks. For example, front-end teams can begin work on user interfaces before back-end APIs are even complete. You can also quickly validate product ideas by creating a mock API to demonstrate functionality to stakeholders without waiting for a live back end.
The power of Hoverfly Cloud is in it’s easy to use API simulation modes, which give you fine-tuned control over your testing environment. With this versatility, you can use Capture Mode to record real API traffic for offline testing, Simulate Mode to replay pre-recorded responses, or Spy Mode as a hybrid approach that provides a safety net by falling back to the real API for unrecognised requests. Combine Simulate mode with CSV data sources to have your API simulations respond with data that you control. You can also use Passthrough Mode for direct interaction with the real API without interference, which is ideal for observing live behaviour.
Instead of spending time and resources setting up a complex, real-world test environment, you can use Hoverfly Cloud to test data in any system that communicates via HTTP. The platform redefines the way you approach system assessment by allowing you to create reusable, low-latency simulations that reliably simulate failures, inject errors, and replicate production environments.
This not only ensures that your applications meet functional requirements and are bug-free but also provides a way to test how your system behaves in response to unexpected behaviour from dependent APIs. For QA managers and their teams, this means higher confidence in the product’s reliability and robust test coverage, even when APIs are unavailable or rate-limited.
By giving your developers the ability to decide when to deploy changes to their environment, Hoverfly Cloud frees them to focus on creating solutions, not on managing the complexities of incomplete downstream services. This approach is a must for those working in complex microservice architectures, where managing dependencies can become a task in itself. For more information, you can also explore our technical documentation and read our article on why API simulation matters in modern software development.