Which one is the best : Manual Testing or Automated Testing?

I think there is a need to educate QA managers about the benefits and limitations of automation.There is a need to separate the facts from the fictions. But here is the problem, in most cases consultants are brought in to fix problems of prior attempts instead of initial setup. At this point the managers have already learned (painfully) the pitfalls of automation. In order to avoid this painful experience I would recommend (most automation engineers will agree with me) to spend more time up front doing research about the styles and techniques of automation and find an architecture that fits the environment. There is no doubt that automation adds a great value to overall QA process but, short of knowledge and understanding about automation and lack of planning can also cause a nightmare. Automation has limitations and can be use for only few functionalities. Automation will be mostly useful for performance testing. So Manual and Automation both are equally benificial.

But in Agile process, since requirement keep on changing very frequently, manual testing is the best.

Well said sonia, manual testing is always the best and most satisfying way of testing. In automated testing we will be able to test only to some extent. But it is not the case in manual testing, we can test everything.

I believe both has its pros and cons: Manual testing has problems like what is type of exposure that person has towards the project, which will in-turn lead to foregoing couple of errors an automated testing does not have to worry about this it will conduct the test based on the inputs provided and that is the con itself - the inputs that are provided for the automated test are the inputs provided by a person?

Automation testing can never completley replace Manual testing.But Manual Testing is not possible in all scenarios,like say load testing of a webserver,code-profiling  etc.

But the relavant use cases and the relavant test vectors out of the infinite test possibilities need to be still verified manually.

No one would completely depend on automated testing for testing say your product's business logic.Manua Testing is imperitive there.....

Most of the companies uses Manual Testing as Automation Tools needs License and in manual testing we do Functional Testing, I think it is better.

Hey Sachin,

I support your views that Manual and Automation both are equally beneficial.in addition to that :-

Manual testing fills a gap in the testing repertoire and adds invaluably to the software development process.
# Manual test scripts gives testers something to use while awaiting the construction and debugging of automated scripts.
# Manual test scripts can be used to provide feedback to development teams in the form of a set of repeatable steps that lead to bugs or usability problems.
# If done thoroughly, manual test scripts can also form the basis for help or tutorial files for the application under test.

I agree with sasi that humans only make mistakes but i won't say that automated testing is better than manual testing because humans are the ones who has made these machines so if a human can make a mistake then so does a machine. So its better to test things manually rather than through machines.

Manual testing is the best way to test the application