How to Scrape Emails on the Web? [A Beginner’s Guide]

2.4 billion emails are sent every second, indicating how emails are a great source of information—especially for business. This led to the start of email address harvesting. 

Email scraping (or email address harvesting) is the process of gathering email addresses of potential clients from the Internet using automated tools. This method helps boost a company’s marketing and sales.

Read on to understand more about email scraping and learn how to scrape emails on the web in 8 simple steps. 

🔑  Key Takeaways

• Scraping is a valuable process to gather email addresses from the Internet for marketing and sales purposes.
• Always adhere to website rules and data privacy laws, obtain necessary permissions, and only scrape from authorized websites.
• Choose email scraping tools carefully, considering data source, quality, pricing, and user-friendliness.
• Explore popular email scraper tools like NimbleWay, Octoparse, or Bright Data.

What is Email Scraping?

If you want to reach out to potential customers, you can gather email addresses from different online sources and make a list. You can use that list to promote your product.

There are various methods to extract emails from websites. The easiest way is through email scrapers. These tools use URLs, keywords, or company names to locate email addresses. 

While harvesting email addresses is simple with tools you can easily find on the web, there are factors that you must be aware of. 

Things to Remember When Scraping Emails

To ensure you are scraping emails correctly, there are important things that you should keep in mind. Remember the following: 

	Some websites are against email scraping, while a few allow it under specific conditions. Only scrape from websites that authorize it.
	Always follow data privacy and protection laws when scraping emails. Ask for permission if necessary.
	Ensure that the collected email is accurate. Always verify the emails before using them.
	Choose the suitable email scraper that fits your requirements. Pick the right tools according to Where does it get its data from? Its data quality and accuracy Pricing How user-friendly it is

Steps to Scrape Emails on the Web

Scraping a website for emails is generally straightforward. The steps can vary depending on your preferred email scraping tool. 

Below is a guide on how to scrape emails using Octoparse web scraper: 

1. Create an Octoparse account. You can also sign up using Google or Microsoft account directly. 

2. Install the Octoparse app on your computer. Launch it once it’s installed. 

3. Search for a template that fits your scraping needs. You can also start with the Email & Social Media Links template.

4. Check the template. Click Try it to continue.

5. Enter the URLs of the websites you want to scrape email addresses from. 

6. Click the Start button to start scraping.

7. After scraping, export and save the file in your desired format.

8. Confirm the accuracy of the scraped data. 

Top 5 Email Scraper Tools

There are several tools available on the Internet that you can use to scrape email addresses from websites. Some of the best email scrapers are:

1. NimbleWay

Features

• Gathers email addresses from websites and social media platforms quickly
• Has a verification feature to ensure that email addresses are accurate

• Offers filtering options to let you select specific groups to scrape
• Helpful in finding potential clients

NimbleWay is a powerful scraping tool that allows you to select the sites or platforms you want to get emails from. It even lets you check if the scraped data is accurate.

However, NimbleWay is not the most budget-friendly option in the market. Its basic plan (Essential) costs $255 per month. Even so, you can still try and reach out to their sales team and ask for a free trial. 

2. Octoparse

Features

• Easy interface for creating tasks
• Can scrape data from different websites
• Data can be extracted locally or by cloud
• Supports other formats like Excel, CSV, and HTML
• Offers built-in templates for task automation

Octoparse has been a popular tool offering scraping services since March 2016. It is a go-to tool when you’re finding business emails and information. Its simple interface makes data handling easier. 

The drawback with using Octoparse is how it slows down when handling big scraping tasks. Customizing output data can also be challenging when using Octoparse.

3. ScraperBox

Features

• Verifies emails before adding them to your list
• Prevents websites from blocking you

• Extracts email addresses from websites faster
• Finds emails that are hidden inside links on a website

If you’re looking for a scraping tool that gets email addresses for you fast, ScraperBox is the answer. It uses different IP addresses and changes your ID while scraping. This feature prevents websites from blocking you, leading to getting the results faster. 

However, you should note that ScraperBox can send unwanted emails if the scraping process is not executed correctly.  

4. Bright Data

Features

• Can access email addresses from different sources to collect data without getting blocked
• Follows privacy regulations like GDPR 
• Comes with debugging tools 

Founded in 2014, Bright Data is a popular tool that allows businesses to get information from the Internet without getting blocked. It uses different IP addresses from data centers to avoid anti-scraping measures.

Bright Data works with more than 10 countries, making it a good choice for scraping projects related to global data. However, some users might find Bright Data expensive. It costs around $500 to $1000 per month.  

5. Skrapp.io

Features

• Finds and verifies emails of potential clients on social media and networking sites
• Saves the lists easily as a CSV file
• Free trial and budget-friendly plans

Skrapp.io helps you find and check emails of potential clients on websites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and AngelList. It can also integrate with tools like HubSpot.

However, Skrapp.io is limited to looking up emails and clients only. Also, its accuracy may not be guaranteed when scraping social media sites. 

Conclusion

Email scraping is a helpful way to get email addresses from websites for research and business purposes. Using special tools to gather data from the Internet makes the process easier.

However, there are some important things to consider before scraping emails from the web. You must adhere to privacy laws when scraping.

Choosing the right tool is crucial when scraping. There are different email scraping tools, and each of them possesses unique features. Choose the tool that fits your budget and works fine for you.

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By Harsha Kiran

Harsha Kiran is the founder and innovator of Techjury.net. He started it as a personal passion project in 2019 to share expertise in internet marketing and experiences with gadgets and it soon turned into a full-scale tech blog with specialization in security, privacy, web dev, and cloud computing.