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Import.io

Score8.7 out of 10

5 Reviews and Ratings

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What is Import.io?

Import.io is a website data importing or web scraping service, from the company of the same name headquartered in Saratoga. In February 2019 Import.io acquired Connnotate, another web scraping service. Connotate is now part of Import.io.

Categories & Use Cases

Reviews

What users are saying about Import.io.
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Review

Incentivized
Verified User
Engineer in Customer Service (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I mainly used import.io to refresh feeds used for digital marketing through Google Adwords and other similar digital strategies. It's basically a scraper that you can set up in minutes without having to learn or maintain any code. With a desktop application, it was initially free. Before translating, we used the Import.io service to crawl a website for meta tags.

Pros

  • When it comes to scraping data from large URL lists, it's very effective and precise.
  • It promised to be extremely simple to use, with no coding required.
  • Crawls and scrapes pages based on patterns you specify through examples.
  • Scrapes a specific section of a website.

Cons

  • It necessitates coding for the specific task at hand. It stated that this would not be the case.
  • Since it recently went cloud-only, a desktop application needs to be reintroduced.
  • When compared to other open source competitors, additional scraping features would be nice to see.
  • This used to be free and very useful, so pricing needs to be addressed right away.

Most Important Features

  • Data collection & Collaboration within the team.

Return on Investment

  • It really helped to collect large chunks of data from the web.
  • When compared to writing a script from scratch, it is very simple to use for creating a web agent.

Alternatives Considered

Octoparse

Other Software Used

Octoparse, Apify, Dundas BI

The essential scraper for dummies

Incentivized
Verified User
Employee in Marketing (201-500 employees employees)

Pros

  • Scrapes specific parts of webpages
  • Crawls pages and scrapes based on patterns you specify via examples
  • Very effective and accurate when it comes to scraping data of large URL lists

Cons

  • Pricing needs to be addressed immediately , this use to be free and so helpful
  • A desktop application needs to be reintroduced since it recently went all cloud based
  • Additional scraping features would be nice to see when compared to other open source competitors

Return on Investment

  • Reduced time spent manually scraping data
  • Allowed my teams to become more proactive rather than reactive
  • Allowed us to expand our digital marketing capabilities on an older website

Alternatives Considered

portia, agenty, extracty and webscraper.io

Other Software Used

Octoparse, Parse.ly, RapidMiner Studio, Mozenda, DeepCrawl, BoothCrawler

Overselling leads to underperformance and way too expensive

Verified User
Director in Customer Service (1-10 employees employees)

Pros

  • It promised to be super easy to use - no coding needed at all.

Cons

  • It requires coding for the exact thing we needed it to do. It promised this was not the case.

Return on Investment

  • We lost time firstly because we were not able to use the tool as it was promised. The tool does NOT allow users to get data without coding or training.
  • Their SAAS business model resulted in a gross over-payment. What should have been a one-off thing ended up being a two month subscription to a way too expensive service that did not deliver. It was almost impossible to get out of the contract.

Use of Connotate for research

Incentivized
Verified User
Contributor in Research & Development (1001-5000 employees employees)

Pros

  • Data collection.
  • Collaboration with a team.

Cons

  • Stability. software frequently crashed previously.
  • Training. Students had a had time understanding how to use the tool, and then where to use it.

Return on Investment

  • Helped collect data for thesis work.
  • Many students opted not to use the tool because it was too difficult or buggy for them.