The software is much easier to use, visually appealing, and on going customer support as well as tutorials have been created with the user in mind. Octoparse Web Scraper Experience: I have been looking professional web scraper for about two months now. I did try so many software's. Some was hidden mist! Most did not work at all. Then I did end up to get Octoparse web scraper! Wau! That cloud base software was exactly what I was looking for! This software really works. Software works even with some of the complex website. I definitely recommend! I use Octoparse on a daily basis and at my organization. There is no smoother way of web scraping! The software has never given me any issues. I think nobody can find better software to scrape data from web. Software It works exactly as expected. Octoparse is easy to use interface no experience scrapping websites is needed - but can do a lot. Octoparse software It has enabled me to ingest a large number of data point and focus my time on statistical analysis vs. data collection. It has safe me some much time! Same jobs would take me hours before and now data is collected in few minutes! When I need a quick way to grab structured web data, Octoparse software will be my first choice. It took time to learn the tool, but when you master it - there are lot's of powerful features. In just few days I managed to extract product information from thousands of products with very little effort! Using Octoparse to scrape a lot of data we needed was MUCH faster than custom building any solution. The user interface is intuitive, pricing very reasonable, and support was outstanding! To put it simply, if you've ever found a website where you wished that you could copy/paste hundreds of records from. Then Octoparse is your solution. It can automatically collect complete content structures such as product catalogs or search results. It's very user-friendly, yet sophisticated enough to extract data from highly dynamic websites. Octoparse software is data extraction tool that anyone can use to get data from the web. You'll never have to write a web scraper again and can easily create APIs from websites that don't have them. Octoparse software can handle interactive maps, calendars, search, forums, nested comments, infinite scrolling, authentication, dropdowns, forms, Javascript, Ajax and much more. Octoparse software is really the tool for your company!

I went to their website and I was instantly cached with its modern and beautiful look, I downloaded the software and signed for a free plan (then a Pro free trial) in few clicks, the software interface was even better and gave me confidence, but first I had to go see if they had any tutorials and I was surprised by the amount and depth of their courses, from articles with GIF images to video tutorials to troubleshooting and technical support.
Here are the most important features that I never found elsewhere:
- Cloud extraction: you can let their cloud servers (6 for Standard plan & 14 for Pro plan) extract any amount of data 24/7 with IP rotation!
- Easy to learn & implement but at the same time gives you advanced features like using conditional branches and writing your own XPATH expressions, its like writing a script!
- Extremely lightweight on the system and the built-in browser is stable. The other softwares use internet explorer! And they consume a lot of CPU and RAM.
Now for the criticism, what needs to be added or improved:
- You absolutely need to make a Linux version for this piece of art because most people will buy VPSs or dedicated servers to extract data and those with Linux are cheaper, moreover Linux is lighter than Windows in scraping and browsing in general.
- You should add a periodic auto export option (export every 1000 row or so) during the local extraction to avoid data loss in case of computer shutdown or Octoparse crush.
- For the auto IP rotation: Octoparse prompt for a username & password whenever he switch to a proxy that needs authentication, can you unable adding proxies in this format; IP: Port, Username, Password because most good proxies come with authentication and its annoying to fill it every time it rotates
- You should add an auto user agent rotator to your browser because some sites will block it if they suspect crawling.
In overall I give Octoparse 8.5/10, its a dream coming true for me!