New research by Decodo.com has revealed the top challenges businesses face when trying to collect or access the sorts of data they need from outside their business, with budget limitations, technical hurdles, and infrastructure gaps ranking as the most common barriers holding them back.
This survey, conducted amongst 1,000 decision-makers, found that:
| Have you ever experienced any barriers stopping your business from collecting or accessing the data you need? | % of businesses that voted |
| Budget or resource constraints | 37% |
| IP blocks or geo-restrictions | 33% |
| Lack of technical expertize | 32% |
| Poor data quality or inconsistency | 29% |
| Captchas and anti-bot measures | 29% |
| Limited internal infrastructure | 29% |
| Lack of suitable tools or software | 24% |
| Unreliable data sources | 22% |
| Unclear ROI or business case | 16% |
Budget constraints remain the top challenge
“Budget and resource constraints remain the biggest obstacles for businesses trying to scale their data operations. While high-quality data often comes at a cost, choosing a trusted provider ensures safer, more reliable solutions that pay off in the long run.
“One easy way to save money without losing quality is by comparing providers. We suggest choosing a provider that offers rotating residential IPs instead of large, cheap pools because this helps prevent your requests from getting blocked and saves you time. Good providers also offer built-in error handling and support, so your team spends less time fixing issues. Start small with affordable tools and only scale up as your data needs grow — it’s a tested approach to successfully keeping costs and resources under control.” – Vaidotas Juknys, Head of Commerce at Decodo.
Anti-bot tech is a growing obstacle for data teams
As anti-bot protections become more sophisticated, technical barriers are becoming increasingly common. Roughly a third of businesses (33%) say IP blocks, geo-restrictions, and CAPTCHAs are the biggest issues they face when trying to collect public web data.
“Roughly a third of companies from our research cite IP blocks, geo-restrictions, and CAPTCHAs as the top technical barriers to collecting public web data. These challenges are only growing as anti-bot measures become more advanced. We’ve developed a robust approach to overcome these limitations – leveraging proxy networks combined with intelligent web scrapers to reliably access public data at scale, without getting blocked.” – Vaidotas Juknys.
How can companies overcome IP blocks, geo-restrictions, and Captchas without putting their operations or ethics at risk?
“Overcoming IP blocks, geo-restrictions, and CAPTCHAs requires a combination of smart technology and global infrastructure. It’s not just about bypassing roadblocks – it’s about doing it right.
“We’ve seen companies get blocked or flagged because they’re using outdated tools, unreliable free proxies or aggressive scraping tactics. That’s risky. At Decodo, we use proxies with ethically-sourced IPs that simulate real user behavior and distribute requests in a way that’s both effective and compliant. That said, we respect the rules set by websites, including their robots.txt files, and never aim to overwhelm or exploit them. Our goal is to responsibly access publicly available data at scale, aligning with anti-bot principles for ethical, non-disruptive automation. Decodo’s goal is to make public data accessible without breaking trust or harming website stability.
“Our all-in-one web scraper is designed to adapt to complex anti-bot systems. It can detect and respond to CAPTCHAs automatically, rotate IPs intelligently, and access 195+ global locations, all while keeping the user’s identity secure and operations under control.
“When it comes to public web data, being fast isn’t enough — you also need to be smart. Every data-driven business relies on quality data, but with anti-bot protections becoming more sophisticated, collecting that data isn’t as simple as it used to be. Fortunately, web scrapers have evolved too. Using proxies, they can bypass CAPTCHAs and unlock access to region-restricted content. This powerful combo also saves users hours of manual work and offers a cost-effective alternative to buying multiple expensive datasets.” – Justinas Tamaševičius, Head of Engineering at Decodo.
Why using outdated tools could harm your operations
Decodo’s experts warn that using outdated scraping tools or unreliable proxy services not only increases the chances of being blocked, but they can also put a company’s operations – and reputation – at risk. Instead, they recommend scalable, compliant tools that are designed to work with global restrictions and anti-bot protocols.
More information on how businesses are using data in 2025 can be found in their report on-site: decodo.com/blog/how-companies-use-external-data-in-the-us
