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Algolia VS Elasticsearch

Compare the tactical differences between Algolia and Elasticsearch to see which approach is best for meeting your needs.

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Overview

While both companies are industry leaders in search, they offer dramatically different playbooks. One key difference is that Algolia is a Cloud-native, purpose-built, managed service that increases developer productivity 5x vs. Elastic’s software that can be hosted in the Cloud.

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  • Cloud native: scalable, agile, and easy to roll out
  • Simplifies every step of the search development process, including indexing, relevance tuning, building user interfaces, and analyzing search trends
  • Designed specifically to create great consumer experiences

Elasticsearch

  • Powerful software built primarily for power users focused on log and end-point search use cases
  • Requires more back-end search expertise and development time to handle speed, scalability, and global needs
  • Very flexible, but more parts of the search stack must be coded by developers

Search Indexing

How you build your data architecture impacts how quickly users can search through it to find content. Companies need to keep the user experience at the forefront, and that means creating a simple, accessible infrastructure for current and future success.

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  • Worry free, low maintenance, and delivers performance to scale
  • Better organizes large data volumes (for example, product SKUs)
  • Easy configurability helps teams fine-tune for a better search experience

Elasticsearch

  • More complex approach to index management
  • Requires advanced planning, expertise, and optimization
  • Clients must already know their search needs and how they’ll evolve

Search Relevance

Align search results with user behavior and business objectives. Search results need to accurately reflect what users are seeking; Digital, web and IT teams need the ability to adjust their tools, which enables greater customization - to achieve optimal user and business outcomes.

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  • Built on transparent search rules that are simple and easy to manage
  • Utilizes business insights to improve accuracy of search results order
  • Integrates with AI to help engineers fine-tune search performance

Elasticsearch

  • Algorithms are more complex, unpredictable, and harder to control
  • Optimizing one set of search results may hurt others, potentially cutting into revenue
  • It’s hard to see where changes make the biggest impact

Front end

Building out search tools comes down to one goal: create search with customers in mind. Teams that prioritize their own convenience over the user experience will feel it in the pocketbook.

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  • Comes prebuilt with 6 rich UI libraries
  • Fully customizable and features built-in security
  • Delivers a consumer-grade search experience

Elasticsearch

  • Offers only one basic UI library
  • Requires investment in an additional layer of security
  • Limited UX features limit analytical insights and opportunity for optimization

Personalization

Providing curated results to deliver more individualized experiences is critical for engagement. Customers expect access to relevant content faster than ever, and that means using the right tools to proactively filter out what they’re not looking for.

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  • Leverages AI to create a more personalized user experience
  • Built-in integrations with Relevance and Analytics
  • Instantly implements changes up to 100x faster than alternatives

Elasticsearch

  • Build-it-yourself model requires extensive coding
  • Implementation is always reliant on development team speed and search expertise
  • May take weeks for developers to build sophisticated tools

Analytics

Collecting mountains of data doesn’t help if you don’t have a plan for how to analyze, visualize and optimize based on the usage patterns. Take the essential step to maximize search efficacy based on user behavior metrics.

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  • Bolsters search experience with preloaded user and performance insights
  • Leverages KPIs to optimize search and discovery
  • Surfaces opportunities to improve the search experience

Elasticsearch

  • Requires data engineering to extract information and build visualizations
  • Success predicated on do-it-yourself reporting tools
  • No business insights provided; additional tools needed

Overview

While both companies are industry leaders in search, they offer dramatically different playbooks. One key difference is that Algolia is a Cloud-native, purpose-built, managed service that increases developer productivity 5x vs. Elastic’s software that can be hosted in the Cloud.

Get started today
  • Cloud native: scalable, agile, and easy to roll out
  • Simplifies every step of the search development process, including indexing, relevance tuning, building user interfaces, and analyzing search trends
  • Designed specifically to create great consumer experiences

Elasticsearch

  • Powerful software built primarily for power users focused on log and end-point search use cases
  • Requires more back-end search expertise and development time to handle speed, scalability, and global needs
  • Very flexible, but more parts of the search stack must be coded by developers
  • Worry free, low maintenance, and delivers performance to scale
  • Better organizes large data volumes (for example, product SKUs)
  • Easy configurability helps teams fine-tune for a better search experience

Elasticsearch

  • More complex approach to index management
  • Requires advanced planning, expertise, and optimization
  • Clients must already know their search needs and how they’ll evolve
  • Built on transparent search rules that are simple and easy to manage
  • Utilizes business insights to improve accuracy of search results order
  • Integrates with AI to help engineers fine-tune search performance

Elasticsearch

  • Algorithms are more complex, unpredictable, and harder to control
  • Optimizing one set of search results may hurt others, potentially cutting into revenue
  • It’s hard to see where changes make the biggest impact
  • Comes prebuilt with 6 rich UI libraries
  • Fully customizable and features built-in security
  • Delivers a consumer-grade search experience

Elasticsearch

  • Offers only one basic UI library
  • Requires investment in an additional layer of security
  • Limited UX features limit analytical insights and opportunity for optimization
  • Leverages AI to create a more personalized user experience
  • Built-in integrations with Relevance and Analytics
  • Instantly implements changes up to 100x faster than alternatives

Elasticsearch

  • Build-it-yourself model requires extensive coding
  • Implementation is always reliant on development team speed and search expertise
  • May take weeks for developers to build sophisticated tools
  • Bolsters search experience with preloaded user and performance insights
  • Leverages KPIs to optimize search and discovery
  • Surfaces opportunities to improve the search experience

Elasticsearch

  • Requires data engineering to extract information and build visualizations
  • Success predicated on do-it-yourself reporting tools
  • No business insights provided; additional tools needed

Learn a CTO’s perspective on Algolia vs. Elasticsearch.

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