EL-MOUETS A.

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!