In fact, they offer many possibilities, including price monitoring. This group of services is perfect for retailers and large companies that need basic functionality, and price monitoring will be an added bonus.
Also, all existing services for tracking competitors' prices can be divided into parsers and SaaS services. Parsers simply collect data from the sites you specify (it can be not only the price), and SaaS services, in addition to collecting competitors' prices, provide functionality for analyzing the collected information.
If you operate in a highly competitive niche and plan to implement a competitive pricing strategy in your business, you need a highly specialized service. Ideally, a SaaS solution, which will have enough functionality to analyze the information received.
Figuratively speaking, a parser is the initial stage in the evolution of SaaS services (although development may not happen for some companies).
The main disadvantages of parsers:
- laboriousness of manual and inaccurate automatic comparison of goods;
- the need to customize the parser for each individual site (in some cases, this task falls on the shoulders of the user);
- problems with bypassing the protection of sites from parsing;
- lack or paucity of functionality for analyzing the collected data.
Plus - the lower cost of using parsers, compared to SaaS services.
Pros of SaaS services:
Plug and Play technology - “plug and play (work)”;
effective functionality for analyzing the received data;
recommendations for pricing.
The downside is the higher cost per use compared to most parsers.
In addition, a platform for analyzing competitors' prices can be created for the Russian-speaking segment or be a foreign development. Of course, if you sell products all over the world or in certain countries abroad, choose an overseas service. Otherwise, stop at the Russian language.
In this material, we have prepared a list of completely different parsers and services so that you can determine the degree of importance of their functions for your business and choose the most suitable one for yourself.
1. uXprice
This is a cloud-based SaaS service for monitoring the prices of competitors on the Internet, so it is easy and convenient to work with it. To start tracking prices, you just need to link to your product feed.
A product feed is a special file with data about all products and their attributes. As a rule, it is created to run ads on different advertising platforms. This can be a Google Merchant feed, Facebook or Yandex. Supported file formats - XML, CSV, YML, TSV, XLS, XLSX.
Competitor search and comparisonyour products with competitors' products automatically. But there is also manual control at the stage of adding competitors to the tracking list or removing them. This verification ensures the accuracy of the data obtained.
The service monitors only advertised goods , which excludes the likelihood of getting into statistics not actual prices for goods (not updated prices or prices from already non-working, “abandoned” online stores). Based on the monitoring results, all statistics are structured and available in the personal account.
In particular, the following indicators will be available to you for each product :
- the number of competitors advertising the same product on the Internet;
- your price position;
- average market price;
- minimum and maximum prices in the market;
- difference from the average price as a percentage;
- recommended price.
To calculate the recommended price, you can use the standard formula of the service developers, or change it to suit your own needs. There is also sorting by category and general statistics for the entire assortment in the form of graphs.
Benefits
- automatic matching of goods;
- data relevance (only advertised products are tracked);
- fixed cost of 1 check;
- availability of analytics and API;
- there are recommendations for the price.
Disadvantages. To use the service, you need to provide a link to the feed, which not everyone has.
The cost of using the service depends on the amount of replenishment (for replenishment from $ 300, the price of 1 check is $ 0.035). Money is transferred to checks and is available for 12 months, during which checks are removed as they are used. One check is a collection of all competitors for 1 product. There can be from 1 to 400, but the cost remains fixed. If no competitors were found when checking, then no fee will be charged.
2. Xmlatafeed
This is the most common price parser in the classical sense, without additional functionality in terms of price analysis. In fact, at the output you receive a file with information on prices downloaded from the site on the competitor's site. The cost of the service will depend on the number of competing websites (the parser will be individually configured for each of them).
The resulting file will contain the following data:
- manufacturer;
- product category;
- Product Name;
- price;
- old price;
- link to the product;
- update date.
Comparison of such data from several sites (in different documents) with your assortment, purchase price and the question of forming your own price - all this is your concern.
Here is an example of such parsing of goods from the site of a crossroads store:
What to do with this information further is your "pain".
In parallel, the platform offers to use the ad clicks protection service. There is no publicly available price.
3. Elbuz
This is not a highly specialized price parser or SaaS service, but a whole system for automating routine processes when creating online stores. Among the extensive list of possibilities is monitoring the prices of competitors.
According to the developers' promises, the parser monitors the prices on the sites you specified around the clock, and when they change, it sends you a notification. At the same time, if you wish, the prices on your website can also be changed automatically.
Here are some more benefits:
- formation of a consolidated document for all competitors with prices and availability in XLS, XML, CSV format;
- the ability to form your own price based on logical conditions in relation to competitors' prices;
- the parser works in a browser, there is always access from any PC.
To summarize , ElbuzGroup is a pretty interesting platform for start-up stores, but there are a few worrisome points. In particular, this is a listed, but not confirmed partnership with Microsoft, Amazon and Google. It is clear, after all, that this was done with the aim of “gaining its own price,” and the probability of a parser's partnership with these companies is zero. Also worrying are the complaints of former customers about the transfer of information from their sites to other online stores.
The cost must be requested individually, it is not publicly available.
4. Pricecop
This Ukrainian service is designed for manufacturing companies that need to track dumping sellers. PriceCop regularly provides up-to-date information on prices for the manufacturer's goods and is quite easy to use.
The advantages of this service also include:
- reports with the ability to filter data and sort;
- nomenclature management;
- saving the history of price changes;
- the ability to build charts;
- availability of API integration;
- sending out automatic dumping messages.
The cost is also not disclosed, it must be requested individually.
5. Catalogloader
This is also a comprehensive solution for online stores, which helps to control the availability of goods in stock, track competitors' prices and make constant revaluations faster. The main focus is on simplifying the work with suppliers.
Possibilities for using the service:
- automatic download of products from the supplier's website and their regular updates;
- processing of prices of suppliers and competitors;
- development of parsers and parsing of online stores;
- tracking prices on competitors' websites.
As you can see, Catalogloader offers both parsing writing and price monitoring as a service. The latter option involves collecting competitors' prices presented in Yandex.Market. And here there can be many competitors for each product, while finding one competitor is considered a check.
The cost of finding 1 competitor (1 check) depends on the top-up amount. The tariff for 1 month is from 4,900 rubles.
At the same time, the Catalogloader employees themselves recommend at least selectively checking the prices found by their service in order to confirm their relevance. It is advised to do this through calls from "left" phones or fake pre-orders for goods. And if the range of goods is not small, then such recommendations are discouraging.
6. Pricecontrol
If you have your own brand and need to track the prices of your products in other online stores - this service is for you.
All the company's activities are aimed at making life easier for the owners of trademarks:
- search for products under your brand on the Internet;
- parsing prices for these goods from all sites selling it;
- combating infringers of intellectual property rights and removing goods from sale (if necessary);
- participation in court cases.
You will receive the final report in XLSX format. At the same time, it should be noted that the service staff will independently perform both the individual settings of the parsing for each site, and the comparison of your products with the assortment of the online store. Which, no doubt, will significantly save you time. Although a manual check is also recommended.
Also, employees are worried about the objectivity of the data, for which they carry out monthly updating of stores. This is necessary to avoid errors in reports caused by periodic changes on the websites of online stores, which are parsed. It is also worth noting that the service is ready to track not only online store sites, but also prices on price aggregators and marketplaces.
There is no information on the cost in the public domain, it is asked to check with the manager.
7. Metacommerce
Since the company monitors prices not only on the Internet, but also in offline points of sale, it declares itself as a multi-channel service. Data on all competitors is displayed in one report, which can be viewed in the personal account of the service, or downloaded. It is also possible to connect to the API.
If you have a large assortment, Metacommerce will automatically categorize it. The frequency of tracking sellers can be adjusted (if necessary, it can be several times a day). Also, employees declare their super abilities in the field of bypassing protection against parsing, which promises the correctness of the data.
The principle of operation of the Metacommerce service is based on a product description system based on 12 parameters. First, the user needs to create cards for all their products according to these 12 parameters, and then the algorithm will search for competitors on the Internet using them. Moreover, the list of competitors will include not only identical, but also similar products. This whole process is quite laborious and requires constant human participation and control.
The cost of using the service is also not disclosed, since it will be different for each project, depending on the number of products, competitors and tasks for them.
8. Priceva
The service collects data on the prices of competitors and declares the possibility of automatic revaluation of your products, depending on the prices of competitors. It is possible to distinguish goods by color, size and other parameters, while the comparison is automatic, but without manual control, there is also nowhere.
It may be advantageous for you to have historical data for the year on prices for your goods. This option is also there, although practice shows that the thing is practically useless.
All reports are in Excel format, there is the possibility of API integration and E-mail notifications about price changes.
The service does not hide its tariffs and you can find them on the website in the Tariffs section (from 7,000 to 56,000 rubles per month).
9. Z-PRICE
The service provides different opportunities for brands and online stores.
For brands, these are standard services for collecting prices, comparing with RRC and sending letters to violators. Everything is extremely convenient - you download the price list from the RRP and get information about price deviations for each of the goods and in each of the online stores. The history of price changes is saved.
Z-PRICE carefully monitors the offered promotions, discounts and gifts, and in case of deviations from the RRC service managers will call out to the offending stores. Price monitoring can be done every 2 hours, which is convenient for identifying sellers who like to understate prices at night.
An additional bonus is the ability to integrate data from the service into the admin panel of the site, upload them in different formats, and customize standard and individual reports.
As for online stores , Z-PRICE will parse the prices of your competitors, and, if necessary, will provide you with accumulated statistics on changes in prices for goods for each competitor.
The disadvantages are the same restrictions as for other parsers - you need to pay extra for parsing each additional competitor. As well as questions about the relevance of the prices provided: how well parsing bypasses protection when deliberately false numbers are “mixed” into prices.
The minimum cost for using the service is UAH 7,000 (this is for 1,000 products, and up to 5 sites for monitoring).
ten.PriceTraXer An
uncomplicated parser, it is impossible to discover its distinctive features and advantages without testing. The site contains information-instructions for using and solving problems that arise along the way, but no details about the benefits of using. Good or bad - you judge.
So, by registering on the site, you will receive a link to the program that must be downloaded and installed on your computer. To start monitoring, you need to enter the names of your products and their SKUs, as well as provide links to competing products in online stores. The results can be downloaded in XLSX and CSV format.
The cost depends on the period of use, the longer the period is paid, the cheaper the cost is. Start - from 900 rubles for 1 week. The number of sites for scraping during the paid period is not limited. But everyone who has ever parsed something understands that it will not be possible to take full advantage of this opportunity. It takes too much time to configure the parser and analyze the received data. And the more parsed sites, the more difficult it is to correlate this data and analyze the results.
11. Allrival
This is a site parser, including one that offers and parses the prices of competitors. Prices are tracked according to the standard scheme:
- you provide links to competing sites that have the same products as you (this can also be price lists);
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In general, there are many great ideas, but they are inconveniently implemented. For example, it is very bad that there is no possibility of comparing products in one window. Errors in comparing products are also frightening. Indeed, without this, there can be no accuracy in price recommendations.
The cost of use is from 3,000 to 20,000 rubles per month.
12. Ncrawler
Positions itself as a service for analytics and price monitoring of competitors on the Internet. Narrow specialization - focus on sellers of auto parts. 200 stores are already in the service database and are available for analysis.
The service will also be useful for manufacturers and official distributors, as it makes it possible to analyze the market as a whole and find similar competing products.
Benefits:
- in-depth work with a commodity matrix;
- the ability to automatically change prices in stores;
- API availability.
To start monitoring, you need to upload your price list or provide a link to the site. The service claims that in order to search for competitors, they already have sparsino 100,000 (!) Online stores in their database. Competitors to track can be selected from a list or added manually.
We did not check this beautiful number, but the base is really very large, as a result of which the service takes a very long time to process data, hangs and freezes. Data protection issues and the relevance of the prices received are not mentioned. Either they are successfully solved and silent, or they are simply not paid attention to.
13. Konkurenta
This is another portal for tracking and analyzing competitors' prices. The developers say that the parser scans almost any site, and prices are updated automatically from once a day to 12 times (every 2 hours).
Benefits:
- tracking discounts, promotions and other tempting offers from sellers;
- identification of new products on competitors' websites.
Working with the service takes place in such a way that to each link to your product you need to add links to the same product on the websites of your competitors. On the one hand, this eliminates the need for auto matching and errors in it. But on the other hand, this is a very long and complicated process, which is not much different from manual price monitoring.
The minimum package of services for a month costs from $ 100. But updates more often than once a day, tracking of unique selling propositions (USP) and new products on competitors' websites are already separate services that are evaluated additionally.
For example , you have an online store with 5,000 products. Monitoring prices on 5 competitor sites with tracking new products and 20 USPs will cost $ 300 per month.
14. Proanalytics
The service provides the ability to collect data on competitors' quotations, analyze and structure them. There is functionality for manual and automatic checking of prices for identical and similar competitors' products. In particular, there is additionally functionality for assessing the deviation from the average price and you can view price changes for 6 months (if statistics for this period have already been accumulated).
Benefits
- determination of the “shelf share” taking into account the category of goods;
- sending notifications when price changes are required;
- the ability to track changes in advertising banners on competitors' sites;
- API availability.
As an additional service, the service offers the collection of reviews for your products from all sites selling it. There is also the possibility of individual implementation of the dynamic pricing scenario.
The service is able to track prices for an assortment of 250 to 30,000 items. For example, the cost for a store with 5,000 products and 10 competitors in one city, price monitoring will cost 15,702 rubles per month.
15. Marketparser
This is a project for parsing information from different sites, including marketplaces and price aggregators. The parser regularly monitors a permanent list of sites, and then provides data from this database to its clients. If necessary, sites can be added to this list by leaving a request to the developers. Time to set up is an average of two days.
Also, the creators of the platform promise functionality for automatic updating of prices and availability of goods. Marketparser can also help you gather information from product descriptions on competitor websites.
The pride of this service is the high speed of data search and processing. And this is a really big plus, since the work of many services for monitoring prices of competitors is very slow.
To monitor prices through this service, you must provide a list of your products, which will be used to search for competitors. Based on the results obtained and when compared with purchase prices, you get the optimal retail price for sale. If you wish, you can immediately upload it to your website or price aggregator.
Feature:monitoring is carried out for individual cities (the price will also depend on the number of cities).
The cost of use is from 6,900 rubles per month (up to 5 cities and up to 35,000 checks).
16. Pricing
Helps manufacturers and authorized distributors to track the prices of their products, and monitor the implementation of the RRP policy. Price monitoring can be carried out daily, and, if necessary, several times a day (up to one per hour). The results are structured in the report. Additionally, it is possible to analyze them for the previous period. Thus, using the service, you will always be aware of the prices of your goods and will be able to control third-party sellers.
The costmonitoring will depend on the number of items in the range, the selected monitoring frequency, the number of cities and the required functionality. Therefore, you can find out only by making an individual request on the website.
17. Zoomos
This is a cloud-based SaaS service that offers several types of services: filling your site with goods (photos, descriptions, prices), tracking RRP for distributors, as well as monitoring competitors' prices in online stores.
For online stores, the service will help automate the setting of a mark-up on their goods, depending on the prices of wholesale suppliers and the prices of competitors.
Benefits:
- automatic update;
- automatic unloading of goods to trading floors;
- unlimited number of products for analysis;
- processing of any types of price lists in various currencies
- availability of the program wherever there is Internet.
To get started in the Zoomos service, you need to upload your price list, and then the price list of your suppliers. The comparison of products in these prices will be automatic. Then the service generates a price and availability update file for the store and sets up the rules for pricing.
Of the shortcomings. Often there is more than one supplier, so there are many price lists, and not all of them are needed. Then it is necessary to form a general price list for all suppliers. At the same time, the prices both in your price list and in the price list of suppliers must be updated manually each time. Additional features are priced separately (minimum download cost $ 0.001 per item).
The costuse of the Zoomos service will depend on the frequency of updates (price for one update is $ 2), as well as on the number of sites to monitor.
18. Adsstate
This platform works with advertisers and sites and applications that have many sellers. The bottom line is that Adsstate is hosting ads on hundreds of price aggregators around the world with a fixed price per sale.
We included this platform in our list only because it additionally cooperates with different services comparing your prices with the prices of competitors on the same price aggregators. This is a great idea, as price is the most important metric for users who visit price aggregators.
Thus, Adsstate tries to create an ecosystem for merchants who want (and can) sell their products all over the world. Of course, you can use Adsstate to access price aggregators in your own country. But here you need to assess the economic feasibility of such a decision. Perhaps it will be more profitable to do this without an intermediary.
19. Wiser
This is a foreign service for tracking competitors' prices, protecting brands and implementing dynamic pricing strategies. He knows how to collect prices from online store sites, as well as from price aggregators.
Benefits
- the service distinguishes between products with different SKUs, as well as size, color, etc .;
- the ability to compare your price for a product at different levels: category, brand, product;
- segmented price analytics for brands and categories;
- availability of the recommended price.
The last advantage is one of the main, as it makes it possible not only to get a list of competitors' prices, but also analytics, as well as recommendations for optimal prices. Wiser also announces the possibility of creating your own pricing rules and the possibility of managing prices on different trading platforms (for example, on its website and on the website of the price aggregator).
Dynamic pricing is only available to sellers in the US, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Italy, France, the UK and Germany. This is a separate service that requires the integration of competitor pricing data into separate Wiser Dynamic Pricing software.
Also, since the service is foreign, developers often have difficulties with setting up parsing of sites in the post-Soviet space.
The cost of using the service must be requested individually, it is not publicly available.
20. Price2spy
This is an online service for monitoring the prices of competitors for e-commerce projects of various sizes. On the market since 2011, parsing is configured individually for each client. There is a possibility to control the RRC.
The service works standard. First, register and specify the sites on which you want to track prices. Then you need to independently or using the service to compare your products with those on the competitors' website. In the future, you will receive up-to-date information on the prices of your competitors - notifications to your mail.
I am also pleased with the availability of reports on price comparison and the possibility of adjusting prices according to your own rules and strategies.
Benefits
- managing multiple stores;
- predictive pricing;
- analytics for assessing profitability;
- API availability.
Of the shortcomings. According to customer reviews, it takes a lot of time to manually match products and reconfigure the parser after changes on competitors' sites. Sometimes the prices are wrong (which needs to be checked manually), or the service doesn't find them. Also, users lack the available automatic price reports.
The cost of using the service is from $ 20 (100 products), but there are many additional options that are priced separately.
21. Competera Competera
markets itself as a cloud-based pricing platform for offline and online merchants. As you can imagine, it's not just about price tracking, but about the availability of serious functionality for making price decisions.
Although it is not entirely correct to call Competera a SaaS service, since it is not a ready-made solution for any client, but a platform that individually adjusts to each client. This could be a plus if it was simple, fast and affordable. But this is not the case. This is why Competera only works with large national sellers who can afford to pay for its services.
If you are one of them, then using the platform promises the following benefits:
- collection of prices from the sites you specified (up to 3 ex);
- competitive analytics;
- demand-based pricing;
- efficient pricing based on artificial intelligence.
Competera's pricing recommendations are based on demand, taking into account the popularity of brands and the wishes of the retailer. The cost of using the platform is not disclosed, it can be requested individually. But if you are not an omnichannel retailer, you won't be able to use the platform.
22. RETAILIQA
This is a multitasking platform for commerce in different areas: pharmacy retail, fuel retail, financial sector, restaurant business, delivery services, car dealerships and service stations, etc. Since there are so many different types of business, price monitoring itself is different for each of them. ...
To monitor the prices of competitors, RETAILIQA offers automation of price collection in offline points of sale (in those where there is no way to find out the price on the Internet). Such price monitoring will be carried out using tablets, and for the convenience of price comparison, the final data is structured in a pivot table.
Additionally, RETAILIQA employees will collect prices for everyday goods, data about promotions and new products of competitors, become secret shoppers to evaluate the service.
It is difficult to say something specific about the advantages and disadvantages, since this platform has too much scope. But it should be noted that RETAILIQA is located on the territory of the Russian Federation, and since the monitoring does not take place online, but offline, this narrows the geography of using this platform to one country.
23. Netrivals The
service promises to find your competitors and provide information on their prices so that you can set competitive prices for your products and get the maximum profit from your sales.
By specifying its site and the sites of competitors, the service will produce daily updates of prices for goods. You will clearly see the scan results in your personal account of the service.
The service also makes it possible to compare the price change graphs of competitors with their own dynamics. This will allow you to consider patterns and trends in competitors' pricing strategies and use this information as a competitive advantage.
Pros:
- there is a search by categories (by elements with common characteristics);
- API availability.
In addition, the service claims the ability to set up dynamic pricing - the automatic change of your prices depending on the prices of competitors based on predefined rules (taking into account the minimum allowable markup).
Disadvantages. According to reviews, the service is good at collecting data, but it has an inconvenient interface and resource-intensive data processing.
24. Prisync
This is another software that allows you to track prices and use a dynamic pricing strategy based on competitors' prices and the cost of purchasing goods.
To use the service, you need to add links to your products and to the products of your competitors. Based on the monitoring results, you will have access to data on prices, and after the accumulation of statistics, and historical data on price dynamics. It is possible to control the RRC for manufacturers and brands.
Benefits
- monitoring of the minimum advertised price on the Internet;
- price change alerts;
- the presence of a competitor's price search for each product, category and brand.
Disadvantages. Most of all, users complain about the low speed of loading pages of the service, the inability to track some sites, inaccurate data on prices and problems with links (adding and replacing them).
25. Intelligencenode The
service offers to set up retail trade for clients “on the machine” and will help in tracking RRP violations. The developers also declare the availability of dynamic pricing opportunities on the Amazon platform and the use of artificial intelligence technologies.
To get started, you need to specify the sites for monitoring and the categories that will need to be parsed. When artificial intelligence technologies with deep learning are enabled, the process of automated pricing decisions will be launched with minimal human intervention and maximum flexibility.
Benefits
- fast data refresh rate;
- detailed analytics at the macro and micro levels;
- market analysis in real time;
- assortment planning;
- API availability.
The Intelligencenode functionality also helps to determine the advisability of choosing prices at different levels (minimum, medium or high), predicting sales and profits.
Disadvantages. As practice shows, artificial intelligence technologies take a long time to learn before they can show good results. At the very least, this can be seen in the learning rate of smart campaigns in Google Ads. It is highly doubtful that the Intelligencenode developers have done anything better than the Google developers.
The service works with companies from the USA, Great Britain, Italy, India, Spain and China. The cost must be requested individually.
conclusions
The effectiveness of online sales directly depends on the competitiveness of prices, so tracking the prices of other sellers is a top priority. The best way to do it quickly and get accurate data is to use parsing or SaaS services.
Parsing programs were the first solutions to problems in this area, and their capabilities do not meet the needs of today's e-commerce representatives. Therefore, they have been replaced by modern cloud SaaS services. They are distinguished by greater speed, accuracy in comparing goods, and most importantly, by the presence of powerful functionality for analyzing the collected data. The use of such services makes it possible to increase sales and profits.
When choosing a service for monitoring the prices of competitors in the Russian-speaking segment, it is better to choose products of domestic developers. They are better adapted to the specifics of the market and will always be able to provide you with prompt support on all emerging issues.