Fortra’s Automate vs. Octoparse

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Fortra’s Automate
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Fortra's Automate (formerly HelpSystems Automate) is a robotic process automation platform for desktop applications. According to the vendor, it offers the ability to automate almost any business process, and no technical expertise is required—IT and business users alike can understand the drag-and-drop interface.N/A
Octoparse
Score 6.3 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Octoparse is a free web scraping software that turns unstructured or semi-structured data from any website into structured datasets, no coding needed. Extracted data can be exported as API, CSV, Excel, HTML, TXT, or into a database. It’s a free tool for data analysis and mining. Scraping the web on a large scale simultaneously, based on distributed computing, is the most powerful feature of
$89
per month
Pricing
Fortra’s AutomateOctoparse
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Standard Plan
$89
per month
Standard Plan
$890
per year
Professional Plan
$890
per month
Professional Plan
$1,890
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Fortra’s AutomateOctoparse
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptional$89 per month
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
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Medium-sized Companies
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User Ratings
Fortra’s AutomateOctoparse
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(4 ratings)
6.4
(4 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Fortra’s AutomateOctoparse
Likelihood to Recommend
Fortra
It's great for repetitive or regularly scheduled activities like reports or file transfers. However, it's not so good for on-demand activities. It doesn't support task shortcuts to run specific tasks. If it did it would be perfect.
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Octopus Data Inc
Octoparse is utilized to scratch item information from sites and programming projects that don't give XML or API and import them in web based businessAdditionally, it has solid capabilities to extract data from various types of sites, which is truly splendid. However it is not suitable to be used only in the free version as the features and usecases are limited.The user woould not face issues in implementation in the premium version. Implemetion specificallly in web-crawling does not require octoparse completely,but scrapping data, yes.
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Pros
Fortra
  • Very detailed task builder. Easy to read step by step a task's operation even if you don't have much programming knowledge.
  • Scheduling for automation jobs is very flexible. Allows us to create all kinds of job schedules as needed.
  • Organization of jobs, tasks, conditions is done well. Allows us to easily manage our items.
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Octopus Data Inc
  • user design is easy to understand compared to other automation tools
  • the support team is helpful, they really answer
  • the software can get data into spreadsheets, and in a large number
  • there is a free plan to start
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Cons
Fortra
  • A reporting capability on tasks: enabled, disabled, by folder, by trigger, etc. Currently there is none.
  • An "OR" in their conditional statements - currently there is only "AND".
  • Some kind of temporary backup when changing a task - separate from the current back up/restore functionality (which works well).
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Octopus Data Inc
  • Haven't had any issues with the program or company. But there's certainly a learning curve. More tutorial videos wouldn't hurt.
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Usability
Fortra
It's just very easy to use, extremely versatile, and very reliable. It's hard to find use cases where it won't work.
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Octopus Data Inc
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Fortra
Support is very helpful and responsive, although using the tool is very user-friendly, so I hardly use the service.
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Octopus Data Inc
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Fortra
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Octopus Data Inc
Other similar products like webautomation.io and webscarpper.io were tried and implemented along with Octoparse. Thier trial versions have much more limited features. The complexity while using Octoparse is relatively low and much more effecient and powerful to implement as compared to other softwares. Also usecases are quick to learn and implement.
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Return on Investment
Fortra
  • It's been a net positive as AutoMate requires less eyes on specific tasks so that people can focus attention elsewhere and do more analysis.
  • Less manual work also decreases the chances of mistakes and/or missed jobs. Since Automate can schedule everything, send email notifications, etc., there is less time wasted.
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Octopus Data Inc
  • it gives profound database for my research and make the whole process a lot more easier. the power of automation!
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ScreenShots

Fortra’s Automate Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of

Octoparse Screenshots

Screenshot of Export Data Extracted in OctoparseScreenshot of Design Workflow to Crawl Web DataScreenshot of Design Workflow to Crawl Web Data 2Screenshot of Octoparse InterfaceScreenshot of Octoparse Website