Top Web Scraping Services For Your Ecommerce Store

What is the most important aspect of a successful ecommerce website? While someone thinks it is high quality goods and services, the others insist that the key to success is related to precisely planned marketing. And there is a plethora of other thoughts and opinions that are right to some extent.

Here at Firebear, we think that the only way to run a successful ecommerce store involves combining everything from obvious vital aspects to the smallest not-so-obvious details creating a robust system that copes with modern market requirements and surmounts unpredictable difficulties. To create this kind of an ecommerce website, you should analyse a good deal of information.

And among tons of existing methods, today we shed light on ecommerce web scraping. It doesn’t matter whether you use Magento or any other ecommerce platform, since the following ecommerce web scraping tutorial can be equally used with all of them. So, what are the most reliable solutions?

Tools & Services

• Import.io
• Diffbot
• Dexi.io
• Portia
• Extracty
• Scrapy
• Parsehub

These are top 7 ecommerce web scraping tools and services and below we describe them in the closest details, but before going any further, let’s tell a few words about web scraping itself.

Web Scraping

The term “web scraping” has several synonyms. Perhaps, you are already familiar with this process but know its another name. So, the two other popular names are “web harvesting” and “web data extraction”. All three aliases are quite self-explanatory showing that you we have to deal with extracting data from all possible websites. Is this legal? Of course, yes, because web scraping is used to collect only visible information that is displayed to store visitors. No private data is stolen, so there are no reasons to be afraid for your reputation or any law violations.

Web scraping is a form or copying which can be performed manually, but more often it is related to automated processes in which specific data is gathered from the web. Next, it is saved in a database or spreadsheet for further analysis or other usages. If you want to know more about web scraping, check this Wikipedia article. But what about ecommerce web scraping?

Ecommerce Web Scraping

Ecommerce web scraping is a kind of data scraping related to the ecommerce segment of the web. If you want to get all possible information about goods and services available on a competitor’s website, use ecommerce web scraping. Of course, you can copy and paste all data into a spreadsheet manually, but this process is attended by the risk of wasting tons of time and effort, especially if you have several competitors with a plethora of goods.

Magento Web Scraping

What about Magento web scraping or even Magento 2 web scraping? As mentioned above, the core tools are universal, so you can use them to perform web scraping for any ecommerce platform. But there are some providers who specialize in the Magento platform. For instance, you can easily dig the following 3 Magento web scraping tools:

• ScrapingBot
• Product Data Scraping Service by Fishpig
• Mydataprovider
• Datacol Magento Extractor

Let’s take a look at each one.

ScrapingBot

ScrapingBot makes competitive intelligence more efficient by offering a scraping API, able to collect reliably the data relevant to businesses

Competitive intelligence is an extremely time-consuming task that cannot be avoided if you want to know where your place on your target market is.  With the increased amount of data created every day, new jobs have appeared to collect, organize and analyze that information. For those who can’t hire a data analyst full time, there are ways to do it yourself, and more importantly, to do it fast and efficiently. Although you cannot avoid it, you can significantly reduce the time you spend on it using ScrapingBot. 

The ScrapingBot API was launched in October 2019. It is already popular in more than 20 countries. Scraping-Bot API lets you collect relevant data from your competitors, your current or potential customers and any major actor in your sector. As a result, you can easily identify your risk and opportunities, and adapt your strategy based on those observations in particular in the retail sector, in particular, your Magento 2-based e-commerce business.

 Get ScrapingBot

Product Data Scraping Service by Fishpig

Fishpig is a reliable provider of Magento extensions known in the whole ecosystem. The company offers a unique Magento web scraping tool that allows you to copy data from any website in any format and save it right into your Magento ecommerce storefront. The service can even scrape images (think of thousands product images and how you copy them manually)!

Furthermore, you can use Product Data Scraping Service by Fishpig to migrate from your old ecommerce website to a brand new one which is based on Magento. Alternatively, you can leverage our digests dedicated to Magento import/export and extensions described there: The Best Improved Import/Export Extensions for Magento & The Best Improved Import/Export Extensions for Magento 2.

While it takes 1 week to add a certain amount of products to Magento manually and start selling them, you can get all the necessary product data instantly with Fishpig. How expensive is this procedure? Unfortunately, no certain price is listed. We only know that it depends on the volume of work. Hit the following link for further information:

Magento Product Data Scraping Service by Fishpig

Mydataprovider

Mydataprovider is another Magento-oriented web scraping service. The company allows you to extract ecommerce data from other websites and add it right to the Magento CMS. Note that Magento has a specific set of requirements that are fully considered in case of the Mydataprovider Magento web scraping solution.

With the service, you will easily get the following data types:

• SKU;
• Name;
• Price;
• Full & Short Description;
• Product Images;
• Features;
• Variants for Complex Products.

Again, nothing is mentioned about the price. Follow this link for more information:

Mydataprovider Magento Web Scraping

Datacol Magento Extractor

Another way to implement fully automated ecommerce data extraction to Magento is offered by Datacol. The corresponding tool utilizes the already familiar resources: it copies data from other websites and saves it as a CSV file. Next, that file is imported right into your Magento installation. Note that Datacol works with other ecommerce platforms equally well. Thus, you can perform ecommerce web scraping for PrestaShop, Oscommerce, Opencart, and other platforms. Besides, it is possible to save collected data in several formats or even move it right to a database. The price of Datacol Magento Extractor starts at $29. More information is available here:

Datacol Magento Extractor

Ecommerce Web Scraping Tools & Services

Now, when you are familiar with the Magento-specific web scraping services and tools, let’s return to the list of solutions provided above.

Import.io

With this web scraping service, you will instantly turn every web page into data. The tool is among the most powerful solutions that a currently available on the market. Buy using Import.io, you will collect all the necessary data within just a few clicks, so let’s discover its features.

First of all, it is full automation. There is no need to perform lots of manual work before the tool starts to work. the Import.io web scraping service works seamlessly and feels like magic.

And you don’t need to be a tech savvy to give it a go. No coding is required to run Import.io. Furthermore, the service offers an intuitive point and click interface, so even a child will master it.

Seamless scalability should be also mentioned. Import.io instantly extracts information from 1k pages – this looks really impressive! And you create a schedule for scraping!

Also note that there is no need to install the software, since everything is available in the cloud.

Other notable features are:

• Support for Javascript pages;
• Support for paginated sources;
• Support for data behind the login;
• Record searches to access data;
• Set XPath and RegEx.

There are three pricing plans available with Import.io: Essential, Professional, and Enterprise. The first one costs $249 per month when billed annually and offers 50k queries per month. For the Professional plan, Import.io charges $399 per month on a yearly basis and lets you perform 100k queries per month. As for the Enterprise plan, it costs $799 and offers 400k queries, so you get the lowest cost per query.

Get / Buy Import.io Web Scraping Service

Diffbot

Diffbot is another reliable web scraping service that you can use in your ecommerce needs. It is accurate, precise, and cost-effective. Diffbot structures data with “better-than-human-level” accuracy. You can get information from any website and a language is not a trouble.

While people always miss something, Diffbot will turn every page into a piece of information, so nothing will be lost. Automatic APIs of this service retrieve every possible data from every page. Why is Diffbot cost-effective? Because you don’t need to hire a team of specialists and spend weeks and months collecting the precise data – the tool will do everything within minutes by crawling entire sites automatically.

With Diffbot, you can extract the following types of data:

• Articles;
• Discussions;
• Images;
• Products;
• Videos.

Diffbot offers 5 Plans: 14-day Trial, Startup, Plus, Professional, and Enterprise. The first one is totally free and offers 10k calls with the speed of 1 call per second. The Startup plan costs $299 per month. For this money, you get 250k monthly calls and with the speed of 5 calls per second (Import.io provides only 50k calls for $249). In case you choose Plus, your price will be $899 and you will get 1m calls per month as fast as 25 calls per second. 250k index searches are included. As for the Professional plan, it costs $3999 per month and offers 5m calls, 1m global index searches, and 50 calls per second. The price of the Enterprise plan is individual for each customer. The plan provides 5m+ monthly calls, 1m+ global index searches, and unlimited calls per second. The more data u use – the more you save per each call.

Get / Buy Diffbot Web Scraping Service

Dexi

Dexi.io is a complex web data processing tool for professionals. Its war-cry is “Extract, Enrich & Connect” and it is proven with the RPA tool – a tool for data extraction and robotic process automation. Thus, Dexi.io allows you extract data from any web page transforming it according to your needs.

As for data enrichment, Dexi.io offers the visual data pipe tool that can be used for normalizing, transforming, and enriching data. Besides, this web scraping service allows to build an engine that will handle all your data sources combining all information in one place.

Next, you can connect the enriched data to your destination. All platforms are supported, so Dexi.io can be a great Magento web scraping solution. You can connect the platform to your store within just a few clicks.

Dexi.io offers 3 plans – Free, Professional, and Enteprise. The Professional plan costs $99 per months. For this money, you get unlimited execution time, full feature access, and prioritized online support. The Enterprise plan is fully customizable.

It seems that Dexi.io offers more limited opportunities than the two aforementioned solutions, but it is also much cheaper. For more information hit the link below:

Get / Buy Dexi.io Web Scraping Tool

Portia

Portia is famous for its user-friendly interface. To use it, no coding skills are required, but this feature is common to core web scraping tools. As for the interface, it allows you to create scraping templates by choosing what page elements should be processed in order to collect data. Next, Portia creates a spider that that gets all the treasures.

You can manage all your spiders as well as watch them run. All collected data can be downloaded. Alternatively, you can share it with the world.

It is also necessary to mention that Portia runs in a web browser, so you don’t need to install any additional software. Besides, it is completely open source solution. It means that you can use Portia for free all least for low volumes of work. Building a spider and analyzing limited amounts of pages do not cost anything. So, you get the following out of charge:

• Unlimited team members, projects, and requests;
• 24 hour max job run time;
• Single concurrent crawl;
• Weekly data retention.

For just $9 per month, you can add 1 Scrapy cloud unit that consists of 1 GB of RAM and 1 concurrent crawl. Besides, you get the ability to run jobs during a period that is longer than 24 hours and get 120 days of data retention. For further information, follow this link:

Get / Buy Portia Web Scraping Software

Extracty

If you are a developer who looks for the fastest way to create a web scraper or a tech-savvy ecommerce merchant who want to optimize a daily routine, pay attention to Extracty. With Extracty, you will effortlessly create dynamic web spiders extracting data from any page or website. The latest information is provided in JSON.

Extracty is all about cloud scraping, so there is no need to install software or perform work on a server. The tool is highly scalable – it is only necessary to deploy your endpoints. Besides it is absolutely secure and reliable. But what about the development part?

All scrapers are 99% ready, so you only have to specify what elements they should analyse. Here, a bit of JavaScript coding is required. Click elements you want to extract and the tool will generate a matching selector. Next, you specify actions to be executed. And if you need and advances web scraper, you can implement your own business logic by customizing the existing code.

Extracty is fully open source, so you can use it for free. Visit the official website for more information:

Get Extracty Web Scraping Software

Scrapy

Scrapy is another project that allows you to create custom tools for web scraping. Build, run, and unleashed your own web spiders that will bring all the necessary ecommerce information back. Note that Scrapinghub – the creator of Portia – is the largest company sponsoring Scrapy development. The tool itself is an application framework designed to implement web site crawling and structured data extracting. Collected data can be used for a wide range of apps and platforms. Hit this link for more information:

Get Scrapy Web Scraping Framework

Parsehub

As for Parsehub, it allows you to create a database without writing code. The principle behind this web scraping tool is quite simple: you download a desktop application, choose a website to get data from, and access it via Excel, JSON, or API. The tool interact with all common forms of page content as well as AJAX, forms, and dropdowns. All data is collected on Parsehub servers.

A short tutorial:

1. Open a website;
2. Start clicking around (there is no need to code);
3. Wait while machine learning relationship engine screens the page and understands its hierarchy.
4. Get the data.

Parsehub is extremely powerful, since it provides the ability to collect data from millions of pages. You can enter thousands of keywords and links and they won’t be a problem for the tool. ParseHub will automatically search through them, providing the precious information.

Parsehub offers 5 plans:

• Everyone (Free) – 5 public projects, 5 pages per minute, 200 pages per run;
• Standard ($89) – 20 private projects, 20 pages per minute, 10k pages per run;
• Professional ($449) –  120 private projects, 120 pages per minute, unlimited pages per run;
• Enterprise – unlimited project, customizable scraping speed, unlimited pages per run.

Download / Buy Parsehub Web Scraping Tool

For more ecommerce web scraping tools and services follow this link: Who are the competitors to import.io?. There, you will find a discussion on Quora dedicated to web scraping and business competition.

Final Words

As you can see, there are different web scraping services and tools that can satisfy all possible ecommerce needs. If you are looking for Magento specific solutions, you can freely use them. If you need to create a custom scraper, there are frameworks that will help you achieve this goal. If you need a totally free service, you can easily find one. The same is about the most powerful enterprise-level web scraping platforms. Thus, ecommerce and Magento web scraping can be fully leveraged in order to create a successful ecommerce store.