Become Blazemeter fan as long as it has free offer and 100% JMeter compatibility.

Barely, we have launched our applications without load testing. Load testing for an application is one of the most important key part to measure its performance. However, there are so many important factors those should be considered for every successful load testing outcomes. To find out  the bottleneck is and what is causing it, we have to aware of followings:

• Load testing environment,
• Select compatible tool to generate load testing,
• Tool's configuration properly,
• Hardware response
• Software response
• Blackboard configuration
• Network response,
• Server capacity,
• Proper scenario...

Have to focus on following application parameters, specially:

• Number of connections,
• Response time,
• Transaction times
• Assertions
• Throughput...

I have tried to perform load testing with the following tools - JMeter, Grinder, Microsoft Application Center Test (ACT), Load testing applications of Visual Studio, Agileload, LoadRunner and so on. BTW, recently, I am very much fan of Blazemeter as long as it's been free. As it's 100% JMeter compatible so I can reuse my scripts to perform load testing in Blazemeter (the load testing Cloud).

During  in time constraints, even we may generate JMeter scripts swiftly by using Blazemeter Chrome Extension. (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/blazemeter-the-load-testi/mbopgmdnpcbohhpnfglgohlbhfongabi). Really, its simplify Load testing in a great extent!

Some Tools: http://community.blazemeter.com/knowledgebase/topics/11667-developer-tools