Algolia vs. Elasticsearch

Let’s face it. Your site visitors are already search experts, and so are you. We’ve all been training ourselves for years on top-of-the-line search capabilities from tech giants like Google and Amazon. Thanks to these industry titans, we instantly know when search is effective. And when it’s not.

When search functions perfectly and powerfully, we don’t even notice it. The results can be so accurate, it feels like search is reading our minds. 

It’s not magic, but hard-won with great technology. With Google, it’s blazing fast, search-as-you-type results. 

With Amazon, it’s semantic auto-suggest and dynamic enhancements to ease discovery across its vast and growing catalog.

We refer to this type of search as consumer-grade search. It connects people with products, content, and key pieces of structured data. It’s fast, reliable, works on multiple platforms, and provides highly relevant results. 

A business imperative to meet sky-high expectations

Wherever users are, they expect consumer-grade search on par with the world’s best. From online shopping to business applications, to content discovery, people want intuitive results, fast.

Businesses expect more from search, too. They’re learning that every millisecond impacts consumer behaviour. Even the tiniest differences in latency can lead to lost sales. A study by Deloitte showed that speed correlates to more views, increased spend, and higher conversion rates. Slow loading times, in contrast, frustrate visitors and drive them away, leaving empty or abandoned carts behind. 

To succeed, organizations need to keep pace with their users. The problem is, built-in search options on monolithic ecommerce platforms just aren’t cutting it anymore. They can be slow,  expensive to customize, and frustrating to configure. The same can be said of open source options like Elasticsearch. As Forrester Research has shown, they are overly complex and labor intensive. 

Raising the bar with Algolia

Algolia was designed for consumer-grade search from the get-go. It’s the world’s only API-first hybrid search engine built for the modern technology stack. The next section will dig deeper into what that means for your search technology investment, as compared to Elasticsearch.

It’s actually one of the best investments we could’ve made as a company.

Global director of ecommerce CRM, luxury sportswear