Let's look at the similarities and differences between two major mail parsers on the market - Zapier Email Parser and Parseur.
Do you receive many emails that you need to extract data from? Chances are that you have been looking for an email parser to help and stumbled across Zapier Email Parser. Maybe you also heard of Parseur and wonder what is the best mail parser in 2024. Is Parseur an alternative to Zapier Parser?
Parseur vs Zapier Parser in a Nutshell
The table below summarizes the differences between Zapier Parser and Parseur. Read on for a detailed comparison.
 Zapier Email Parser |
 Parseur |
|
|---|---|---|
| Setup | Template-based Point & Click |
AI-based Template-based |
| Email display | Text only | With formatting(like in your email client) |
| Parsing reliability | OK | Great |
| Multi-layout support | No | Yes, auto |
| Attachment parsing | No | Yes |
| Metadata parsing | No | Yes |
| Table parsing | No | Yes |
| Web page parsing | No | Yes |
| Automatic parsing | No | Yes, hundreds of layouts supported |
| Spreadsheet merging | No | Yes, auto |
| Post processing | via multi-step Zap | Yes |
| Integrations | Zapier | Download Webhook Zapier Google Sheets Power Automate Make |
| Retention Policy | No | Yes, up to 1 year |
| Mailboxes per account | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| API | No | Yes |
| Notifications | No | Email and Webhooks |
| Logs | No | Yes, detailed |
| Support | Online documentation | Online Documentation Chat |
| GDPR Compliance | Yes, data hosted in the US | Yes, data hosted in the EU |
What is an email parser?
Emails come in all shapes and layouts. There are virtually no limitations on the look and content of an email. And that's a problem when you want to feed data coming from an email to another app or system, because machines like data properly structured in order to process it. And email is not designed for structured data.
That's where Email parsers can help. Etymologically, the verb To parse comes from the Latin pars which meant the plural of part. So a parser's job is to identify parts of information. An email parser converts emails into structured data. For example, with an email parser, you can extract lead information from marketing emails and add them to your CRM. Or you can set up a workflow to manage email inquiries about houses for sales for your real estate agency. Or you can automate the management of your purchase invoices.
By leveraging business automation, email parsers remove inefficiencies of manual data entry of your emails. It saves you time, it improves your data quality and increases reliability. Ultimately an email parser saves money to your business. If you want to dive deeper into emails parsers, read our What is an email parser? article.
What are Zapier Email Parser main features?
Zapier Email Parser is an email parsing tool that is great for extracting data from simple text emails with cleanly delimited data. What's good about Zapier Parser is that it is free! So, it's perfect to dip your first toe into email parsing. Zapier Email Parser is fairly easy to use. You create a mailbox and forward an email you want to parse. Zapier displays your email converted into text, you point and click the data you are interested in and all emails you send afterward with the exact same layout are parsed.
Zapier Parser tries really hard to get some data out of your emails. Sometimes, it means that you will get the data you asked for even if the email layout is different. Unfortunately, it also means that sometimes, Zapier Email Parser will get the wrong data, which can mess with your workflow down the line.
If all you need is parsing some simple text emails with similar basic layouts, Zapier Parser is a very fine choice. Also, because of the limited feature set, Zapier Parser is quite easy to get ahold of and it can integrate with the full range of applications supported by Zapier.
On the other hand, sometimes you need more firepower from your email parser, like rich layout email support, table support or post-processing, etc. In these situations, Parseur is a great alternative to Zapier Email Parser.
Zapier actually suggested Parseur, said it was much more robust than their parsing engine.
- Annie B., PennyMac
What are Parseur main features?
Parseur is a powerful email parsing solution that aims at keeping a simple point & click approach like Zapier Email Parser but provides a whole range of additional features to cater to the most advanced use cases. Let's review some of these features.
Rich HTML email parsing
Parseur is the only email parsing tool that displays emails as they appear in your favorite email client with formatting, colors, pictures, tables, etc. Because of that unique feature, Parseur is able to better understand the data you want to extract from the email. And that also means it is easy to create templates, as you see the same email layout you're used to.
Outstanding parsing reliability
Parser aims at ensuring the parsed data is the one you ask for. It will not extract data that is totally different from the ones in your original template so that it won't corrupt your processing pipeline down the road. Parseur's parsing engine is very reliable and will get you consistent, parsed data every time.
Multi-layout support
If you don't control the source of the email you parse, you can never be certain that the email will not change at some point. Therefore, it is essential to quickly support any new email layout while still maintaining the old layout for backward compatibility. Additionally, on occasion, you may wish to consolidate parsed data from various platforms. For instance, while parsing orders from various food delivery platforms for a restaurant, it would be beneficial to collect all of these orders in a single mailbox and have the email parser recognize how to extract data from each order. With Parseur, creating a new template for each new email type is all that is necessary when it arrives. You do not need to create any routing rules; Parseur will reliably and automatically identify the correct template for every email.
Metadata parsing
On top of extracting data from email content, Parseur can also extract metadata such as From, To, CC, BCC fields, the email subject or date and time. Parseur can also automatically extract the last reply from an email conversation, which makes it a great tool to sync emails with a ticketing tool, for example. Read more about parsing email metadata in Parseur.
Point and click table parsing
Extracting tabular data from emails is a very common use case. For example, when extracting data from an invoice, you can often have a different number of items on your invoice. Or when extracting results from Google Alerts, the number of alerts will be different in each email. You could be creating templates for each combination of results but that will soon prove time-consuming. Instead, Parseur lets you extract tables and repetitive data just by pointing and clicking, even for the most complex tabular layouts. Read more about parsing tabular data in emails with Parseur.
Beyond emails: document and attachment parsing
Sometimes the data you want to extract is not an email, but a PDF, a spreadsheet or an email attachment. Parseur can extract data from the most common attachments including .txt, .html, .rtf, .doc, .docx, .docm, .pdf, xml, etc. Parseur also supports automatic parsing and consolidation of spreadsheets in CSV or Excel. Read more about working with attachments using Parseur.
Ready-made templates: dozens of emails layouts supported
Parseur comes loaded with a set of ready-made templates for many industries:
- Food Delivery (Grubhub, Doordash, Eat24)
- Real Estate (Zillow, Trulia)
- Google Alerts
- Accommodation Booking (Airbnb, Priceline)
- E-commerce (Amazon, Zara, C&A)
All you have to do is create a new mailbox and forward an email. If it is one of our supported layouts, it will be parsed automatically.
Multiple data export and integrations for every use case
With Parseur, you can directly download your parsed data as CSV, Excel, or JSON. Or you can send webhooks to your application in real-time.
Parseur also integrates with Zapier using an instant integration (data is sent in real-time after an email is parsed). Zapier is the leader application connector service that allows your parsed data to be sent to thousands of applications and CRM like Salesforce, Zoho, Slack, AirTable, SmartSheet, and many more.
Parseur also integrates with:
Other Parseur highlights
- Post-Processing and data formatting: Parseur lets you convert parsed data into different formats, including date, time, number, text. Read more about formatting parsed data.
- Web page parsing via URL: Parseur can download and parse a web page from a URL in a document.
- Re-run document parsing: you can re-run a document to parse in a click. You can also re-run parsing on your whole mailbox in a click.
- Send a document via API: you don't need to forward documents by email. You can also submit them directly via the API.
- Manage account mailboxes and templates via API: automate your mailbox management using Parseur API.
- Logs for control and audit: review logs detailing what happened at each step of the parsing.
- Notifications when something goes wrong: get notifications by email or via webhook when an email could not be parsed.
- Privacy conscious and GDPR compliant: Parseur takes your privacy seriously and is GDPR compliant. Your data is hosted in a highly secure and redundant facility in the European Union.
- Chat Support: you don't have to wait days to get an answer to a simple question. Talk with the support team using the chatbox.
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