What are the disadvantages of SOAP web services?

As every good thing comes with some cost, SOAP also has few disadvantages attached to it. Below are few disadvantages:

• SOAP only uses XML. It doesn’t take other formats like JSON into consideration.
• There is a high possibility of coupling between client and server as SOAP is based on contract.
• Since it uses XML format, SOAP is considered to be a slow platform because the payload is large for a simple string message.
• Any change in server contract is reflected in client stub classes.
• SOAP is hard to test in browsers.
• SOAP clients do not hold any stateful references to remote objects.