"WARNING"

WARNING, DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!! If a company can't offer you a free platform service of their product WITHOUT a.) giving you a time limitation (extremely limited in this case) and b.) b for the 'BIG' one, wanting your credit card / bank account info to get that so-called free access. run for the hills!! DO NOT give them ANY access to your financials until they have EARNED that information with full unlimited FREE usage of a product that makes you want their paid for serves.

"I was in need of a large amount of data…"

I was in need of a large amount of data from a website that was complicated to retrieve. Though the information is available for public consumption there isn't functionality to download or export the volume of data I needed. I tried Octoparse understanding it could likely retrieve what I needed, but even though there was no coding involved (which is a huge benefit), I imagined there would be a learning curve to create the custome process I would require to reach and then retrieve the data desired. I was correct, that even though I came close, I was missing a step or two to successfully complete my task. I was very pleased with the support received even though I wasn't on a paid plan. I asked a few questions throughout the week and various individuals lent a hand. An individual named Evan was my most consistent contact and made me feel that we would achieve the final result I was hoping for, which we did in a shorter amount of time than expected. To top it off he made me truly feel that if there was anything else I needed, to never hesitate to reach out, and not once was I pushed a service plan. They were merely legitimately there to help, maybe with the confidence they have in their product, knowing those that need will grow into what they need when the time is right. Having given Octoparse a test run with a real world necessity gave me the opportunity to experience their great platform and service. Thank you so much Octoparse. You came through where no one else did.

"Difficult to build an extraction of data that are structured in a nested way"

I just tried Octoparse and it seems to not meet expectations. It seems that it allows me to login or even autologin using precreated cookies and navigate through the website until I reach the page that I need to extract data. However once I reach there I cannot easily identify all the elements of a list and I cannot create a kind of tree structure.

Because extracted data need to be like so:

Items in a list

extract all items from the list

Visit each item of the list

Get all subitems of the item

Extract all short descriptions of the subitems

Click each subitem to expand the drawer on the right

Extract all information from this drawer


It seems that octoparse has an issue helping you build this nested logic

"This is a scam- do not use"

This is a scam. Absolutely do not get involved with this company.

Despite cancelling and requesting deletion of my personal details, a substantial amount of money was removed from my account. Under no circumstances give your credit card or PayPal information to this website.

I am currently attempting to resolve through my bank's fraud department, and it looks like I will be successful (proving that Octoparse does in fact use illegal practices).

I am based in Europe, so luckily I can also file a GDPR complaint. Hopefully this company can be prevented from operating over here at least.

"Deserve zero stars"

Deserve zero stars. Try cancelling that free account? Good luck. The instructions provided are incorrect - the function to cancel does not exist. Shady business practices.
The software is interesting but I wanted to test it versus building custom Python extraction -- it won't do what I need so will proceed with the latter. But the inability to test before you buy (the onsite bot is useless) is pretty suss in 2024.
Avoid.

"I mean it works for me perfectly"

I have been playing around with their software for an hour now. Had to learn the tricks, read some manuals, but now I know how to scrape only that data that I need from ecom websites. It works, it's a great tool. Have no clue about their refund policy since the free plan's 10k data export limit is much more than I need, so I'm using it for free. I'm satisfied.

"Octoparse helped me a lot"

Octoparse helped me a lot, I can get all the information accurately, very fantastic, this tool has brought great convenience to my work. I'm glad I discovered it, which has doubled my work efficiency and data resources.

"Flexible and Affordable"

Octoparse is my go-to for ecommerce web scraping. It's easily tailored for most websites, they have great tutorials, and the support is quick to respond. I've used multiple scrapers and found that this is the only one that meets my needs. It's always improving with each update.

"Very user-friendly design"

Very user-friendly design. I can create the scraper for any website I want and design every detail based on my requirements.

"UX is a disaster"

I cannot even get started with the product.
Very buggy, terrible UX.