Comparing Scraping Software to DIY Scraping Tools

In case, if you need to scrape data from website, there are two options that you can take into consideration –

• Utilizing a DIY web scraping platforms (like extract.io, mozenda)
• By hiring a developer that will write the code to scrape data.

Here, with this post, we are going to take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of both the techniques. Let us begin.

DIY Platforms

Platforms like extract.io, Mozenda, and so on are exceptionally well known face in the field of web scarping. They are huge organizations and spent a large amount of money on marketing, promotions, and so forth, that is the reason why they are popular.

If the below mentioned conditions are true, you can scrape website with software. Let us look at them –

• If a website is fairly easy, you can scrape website with software.
• If you have enough time to learn how to scrape website with software.
• You can scrape website with software if the data is not large (like thousands of pages). It will cost you much.
• You can scrape website with software, if your requirements are simple, you just want to scrape data and export it to csv.

Custom web crawlers

Custom web crawlers can do anything that you require. You just need to be able to locate a dependable developer who can develop web crawlers and prepare a requirements document that will help the developer to understand your requirements. There is a long list of things, such as, it is cheap, fast, time saving and so forth that can be achieved with the custom built scraper, which you cannot achieve while trying to scrape website with software.

Wrapping Up

DIY platforms works good with straightforward data scraping, however they have extremely restricted features and needs you to invest time and energy in learning how to scrape website with software.

Custom web crawlers can do anything, there is no restriction, no need to learn any software, just locate a good professional web scraping company to create scraper for you, let them know your requirements and get the required data.