Apify vs. Improvado

It is common practice for developers to search for REST endpoints on other websites in order to retrieve data from other websites in a structured format such as JSON. However, not all websites have built distinct REST APIs; in this situation, Apify is quite beneficial. The majority of the time, the data that an organization collects is what is considered to be of the utmost importance. In comparison to the other systems that are currently accessible, Apify makes it simple to supply clean data.

Incentivized

This solution helped us when we were stuck trying to explore data deeper and didn’t have enough resources to prepare data for further analysis. The software solves data integrity problems bringing more granularity to all insights. Integration with data visualization tools and well-arranged insights shows how each of the company’s marketing channels performs in real-time. Improvado is also useful for risk mitigation when launching or adjusting marketing strategies. It may also become a valuable tool for businesses, who are aiming at automation and the elimination of routine processes. ETL processes automation unleashes marketing analysts’ potential granting them more time for research of marketing reports.

• Fast response time, easy to talk to on human and technical level.
• Scalable solution capable of adding additional feature requirements.
• Well documented API, we are able to do some changes by ourselves.

• ETL processes. Once adjusted, Improvado never fails to streamline data from our advertisement platforms to the data warehouse.
• Variety of data sources. Improvado extracts data from over 200 sources, including both well-established platforms and the ones that are rapidly gaining momentum.
• Full-cycle support. Improvado provided us with a dedicated manager available 24/7. Any issues that arose during the product integration were settled in a matter of minutes.
• Flexibility and client-focused approach. After the integration, we adjusted our marketing campaign and needed new ad platforms to be integrated. The vendor allocated the development team ASAP to add new connectors to our existing network.
• Professional services package. The company doesn't provide dashboard views by default. However, we had no time to figure out how to do it ourselves, so we hired a team of Improvado's analysts that set everything up for us.

• Managing a big number of people and tasks.
• Larger scale monitoring system.
• Allow users to search and replace datasets by enhancing APIs.

Incentivized

• Improvado didn’t have all the integrations that we needed. However, they offered full coverage and quickly found ways to extract data from the sources we required.
• The user interface for BI tools may be confusing to inexperienced users. Personally, I didn't have any problems. However, some of the junior marketing specialists from my department needed more time to adapt to the UI. Otherwise, the interface is great.

I was very happy with the support I received from Apify. They are always ready to answer all your questions and help solve problems you have.

Although the purposes and aims of all three products vary widely, I have found Apify to be the most effective option for web scraping for academic purposes. As someone with only a few months' worths of experience with web scraping, I have found Apify's detailed blog posts and very friendly customer support invaluable in my research.

We chose Improvado for the following reasons:

• Their data transformation framework cleans, normalizes and prepares data for loading into our data visualization tool;
• We connected our CRM to our analytics tool and as ad account;
• Extensive social media reports - the marketing team can view our ads, posts, comments right from the dashboard.
• Scheduled reports and immediate data sync options help us to get the reports with the most accurate data at the time we need them;
• Google Ads auto-connect new ad accounts.

Our marketing team evaluated Funnel.io and has opted for Improvado because of the following drawbacks:

• With Funnel we’d have to set up an extraction process for each campaign and account manually;
• The more accounts you need to connect or integrations to use, the more you’ll pay;
• Limited data storage options;
• Complicated account export. We had to filter accounts to export through the custom filter rules.

• Data gathering process is fully automized with high relevance output.
• Data are up-to-date with minimum delay.
• We use extra time for better decision making process instead of report preparation.

• Increased ROI
• Improved cost of acquisition analysis
• Improved CPA, CPI, CPL report drawing process