The world of business is a highly competitive place, and if you want to succeed in your industry, you have to keep up with everything that happens. Staying up-to-date on all the news and updates is crucial for staying competitive.
But the amount of information available on the web is simply outrageous.
In fact global internet traffic stroke 1.1 zettabytes (one zettabyte is equal to 36,000 years of HD videos) at the end of 2016. This number is estimated to be over 2.3 zettabytes by 2020.
Another research revealed that the world would be creating 163 zettabytes of data a year by 2025. So is it rational to say that this enormous amount of information can be scraped and analyzed on regular basis? Of course, not, unless it’s done by a professional web scraping service provider.
As the demand for web scraping services increases, so does the number of companies that provide web crawling and web scraping. The dilemma is how to choose the best service that offers web scraping at a reasonable price.
In this article, we will guide you on how to choose a cost-efficient web scraping service, what to consider when applying to them and the benefits of working with web scraping services.
Working with a Web Scraping Service: Benefits
Working with a team of web crawling professionals can offer a bunch of advantages to your company.
We will list 4 most important ones:
Accurate and consistent data
First and foremost, web scraping service is always associated with consistency.
The company delivers your data on regular basis or as frequently as needed. The benefit of working with a service is that the professionals working in these companies can handle the huge amount of data that is currently available on the web.
They data crawl all the relevant information and then, the crawled data is nicely put in your preferred format and handled to you. If you need data on regular basis, you won’t be able to scrape so much information. Or you will have to spend all your spare time conducting data crawling.
Time-efficiency
When you conduct all the work by yourself, you need to put a lot of effort and time into the work.
You simply won’t be able to concentrate on your main job, as most of your time will be devoted to data crawling. Working with web scraping services will let you focus on your most important tasks, as the company will deliver you with data. So working with a web scraping service is time-efficient for your business.
Ready-to-use data
Web scraping services data crawl all the needed information and put it into your wanted format.
Having an organized data in your preferred format, you’ll be able to use it for your needs: analyze the data and make further conclusions based on the analysis. Having a ready-to-use data under your hand is very efficient for your company’s growth.
No legal issue
Web scraping basically means downloading the data available on other websites and using the information for personal needs. Of course, using data that doesn’t belong to you can get you into a problem if we get to the legal side of scraping.
So why is it better to outsource web crawling? Simply because people working in web scraping service companies are well aware of all the legal requirements and limitations of scraping. If you do the job by yourself, you need to cautiously learn all the relevant laws.
Industries That Benefit Most Out of Web Scraping
All companies need data. However, there are some industries that benefit from data scraping more than others do. Here’s a list of these industries:
1. Real Estate
Real estate companies need regular and updated data about their potential customers’ contacts. Such companies usually have data of customer profiles with people’s phone numbers and email addresses.
2. Travel Agencies
Travel companies always promise customers to offer them the best traveling options: hotels, tickets, guides, and historical or other places to visit at the lowest possible prices. Without regularly updated information, such companies won’t be able to stay competitive.
3. E-commerce
Online shops need web scraping mostly to collect data on their competitors: prices, inventory, reviews etc. All of this information is analyzed to create more competitive strategies.
4. Finance
Finance companies deal with an enormous amount of data on regular basis. In this sector, the most important factor is to collect accurate data. So it’s important to outsource the work to a professional team of scrapers.
There are so many more companies that need data, such as human resource agencies, research companies, news magazines or marketers.
Thereby, the list is not limited to these industries only.
How to Figure Out the Most Cost-Effective Web Scraping Service for You?
There are currently many companies that offer web scraping services. So how to find a company that offers a great service but at an affordable price?
Firstly, we need to consider some important factors about the data you need.
What is the size of your project?
The amount of data you need based on the size of your project is very important.
You need to understand how much pricing matters to you and how much of a concern it is.
Also, you need to understand the distinction between price and cost. If pricing is your main concern in undertaking the data project you have, then going with a web scraping service will be the most cost-effective way to do the job. With a big data project, choosing to work with a web scraping service will be more cost-effective in any case.
How regularly do you need data?
Another important thing to consider is how frequently you need an updated sheet of crawled data. If you need regular data on monthly, weekly, or even daily basis, there’s no doubt that you should work with a team of trained programmers.
Working with web scraping services is way more cost-efficient if you have a long-term contract with them. Most companies charge much higher for a one-time service only. On the other hand, if they deliver you data on monthly basis and charge you a monthly fee, then the price is also set-up accordingly.
What technology does the web scraping service use?
When you compare web scraping services to choose the most affordable one, don’t look at their prices only.
Look deeper to find out for what reason the specific company offers that prices. The technology used by the web scraping service also is essential for pricing.
- For example, does the company get the crawled data by software or manually?
- How the company handles CAPTCHA restrictions?
- How much of the work is automated?
So make sure that you ask all the questions you’re interested in and don’t concentrate on the pricing part only.
Before making the final choice, make sure to research the industry to understand the average prices of web scraping. Also, ask the companies to provide you with information regarding what exactly their packages offer.
Compare the advantages and disadvantages of each company’s package for your industry, as well as evaluate the prices of the scraping company based on the package of data they provide.
It’s better to work with companies that have an established number of loyal customers in your industry that they work with. It’s the best indicator that the company is packed with a team of professionals.
What Else to Consider When Applying to A Web Scraping Service?
So how to finalize your decision regarding the web scraping service provider?
- There are some companies that specialize in providing data on specific industries only. Make sure to find out whether or not the company has previous experience of data crawling in your industry.
- Also, it’s important to find out how many clients the company currently works with, and how many of them are long-term clients. Thereby, you can understand if the company has loyal customers and how much satisfied their clients are.
Some technical things to consider are the timing and the format in which data is delivered.
- When you order a service, ask for the timeframes the company delivers data.
- The timeframes are a crucial factor because you want to have consistent data as fast as possible.
- The company must be able to handle all the authentication or other coding issues. Also, the company must provide the data in the most fitting and convenient way to you.
- Formatting is also an important factor. You want to have the data in a usable format, in order to be able to make reasonable decisions and analysis.
- Last, but not least, when it comes to pricing, try to stick with a company that has a more flexible pricing strategy. Companies with complicated pricing structures usually have shady hidden costs. So working with a company that has a transparent and easy to understand pricing strategy gives more confidence that unexpected costs won’t arise. The pricing plan must give you a rough understanding of how much money you are going to spend on a service with no additional effort.
Singing with a web scraping service find out the following:
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pricing structure
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the number of current clients
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industries they data crawl
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what they offer in their package
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technology they use
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pricing structure
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timeframes of delivering data
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the format in which data is handed to you
First Time Working with a Web Scraping Service? Choose Wisely
By now, you must already understand the benefits web scraping services offer, as well as the main advantages you get by outsourcing the data crawling process to a third party.
You save a lot of time, money, while at the same time you get data that is accurate, up-to-date and ready-to-use.
If it is your first time working with a web scraping service, then we suggest you try out the service with DataHen. DataHen is a professional web scraping service company. The founders of our company have worked with big enterprises like Coca-Cola, Dell, Microsoft, AT&T, Nokia, and others.
We offer high-quality service that is software free. We create a customized approach based on your specific data needs, as we are not limited by any authentication or other coding issues.
Simply choose the type of file, be it an image, text or any other type of data. We will retrieve the information and handle it to you in the format you want and at the time you want.
DataHen offers web scraping services at an affordable price compared to the industry averages. Both the set-up cost and the monthly costs are affordable for small to middle-sized businesses. We charge you only for the data scraped. As our services are automated, our costs are lower than usual.
So we believe that budgets shouldn’t be a constraint.
Send us a free quote letting us know your needs such as URLs, formats, and budget. Our Data Scraping Services will deliver you the best quality data in the shortest time frames!