Algolia vs Constructor

	Algolia	Constructor
Overview While Algolia and Constructor were founded around the same time, the technologies, capabilities, and approach to market are very different. Algolia has more than 17,000 customers, global customer support, 99.999% availability, and tremendous product depth. Constructor is a boutique solution for ecommerce with reportedly not much more than 100 customers.	17,000+ enterprise and SMB customers Worldwide support and service with comprehensive menu of service options and <10 minutes response to P0 issues Free trial and usage tier Usage based pricing 99.999% availability API-first design with language-based API libraries and SDKs, extensive documentation, and 5+ million developer community Other products for Recommendations, Merchandising, Personalization, Dynamic Reranking, Browse, and more. 35 Gartner Peer Reviews (Average 4.4 out of 5) – highest of all search vendors	Ecommerce focus with reportedly less than 100 customers Complex deployment. No self-service free trial. Requires support for initial configuration and scaling Limited API Also offers tooling for recommendations, merchandising, personalization, quizzes, and more, but many lack the maturity of Algolia (e.g., there is no personalization A/B testing)
AI AI can improve search result relevance, ranking, and revenue. With the release of Algolia Neural Search, customers have complete control over the AI algorithms which combine both keyword and vector search results for every query.	AI-native AI Search with end-to-end AI processing with both keywords and vectors ensuring the most relevant retrieval at scale. AI Search Better retrieval assists ranking; additional reinforcement learning with dynamic re-ranking to optimize results and ROI. AI-powered query categorization, recommendations, and personalization boosted by industry’s only AI powered automatic query categorization.	Constructor uses vector embeddings as a failover method for when they provide a null keyword result. Because only some search results have AI applied, dynamic reranking is working on sub-optimized results.
API Algolia is an API-first company which can connect with any headless or composable commerce solution. Constructor has a more limited API that often requires workarounds.	Algolia is an API-first company with complete set of REST API and language specific APIs More than 5 million developers in the Algolia developer community Free Code Exchange with tools, front-end and UI components for integrating different solutions with Algolia.	Constructor has a limited API and customers report the need to use CSV feeds to sync data into Constructor on a daily scale. Daily sync will not work for BOPIS and other time-sensitive use cases. Customers have said there is no access to on-demand API call logs.
Search Algolia offers the world’s most performant search for any catalog — no matter how frequently it’s updated or new variations are added.	World’s fastest search engine with combined keyword and AI results for each and every query Changes to the search index are reflected instantly in search results Result transparency and easy-to-update and A/B test search algorithm to boost or bury results	Constructor is designed for product search for customers with an infrequently changing catalog or inventory. Lacks complete transparency for rules performance.
Merchandising Both Constructor and Algolia offer merchandising capabilities, but only Algolia offers non-technical users an easy-to-use solution out of the box.	Free Merchandising Studio with complete functionality for Merchandisers to manage campaigns without developer support. Automate workflows and dynamic results. Curate and pin results, modify results for ranking. Full A/B testing and analytics on how shoppers are responding to different strategies. Complete transparency for merchandisers to understand how and why results are ranked from personalization, geo, and other settings.	Dashboard for business users to merchandise the results, but most advanced configurations of Constructor must be done by support or professional services Information on the internally calculated values for records is visible, but not the detailed ordering of results. There are no APIs to build custom merchandising dashboard for advanced use cases.
Analytics Both companies offer similar search and discovery metrics, but Algolia has a more complete set of metrics available out-of-the-box.	Null results, poor results, usage analytics, search behavior, and other metrics. Provides targeted analytics designed to fine-tune search performance Integrate with your website analytics solution Algolia’s Radar leverages customers' data layers to offer superior ROI analysis	Analytics to provide insight into how customers are using a customer’s site Users have commented on poor analytics usability and the need for a better break out of search vs browse analytics Available “beacon” tracker to measure some aspects of ROI before/after with Constructor AI search Dashboard provides some analytics for non-technical users, but customers must request other reports from Constructor for a complete picture

Algolia

Constructor

Overview

While Algolia and Constructor were founded around the same time, the technologies, capabilities, and approach to market are very different. Algolia has more than 17,000 customers, global customer support, 99.999% availability, and tremendous product depth. Constructor is a boutique solution for ecommerce with reportedly not much more than 100 customers.

17,000+ enterprise and SMB customers

Worldwide support and service with comprehensive menu of service options and <10 minutes response to P0 issues

Free trial and usage tier

Usage based pricing

99.999% availability

API-first design with language-based API libraries and SDKs, extensive documentation, and 5+ million developer community

Other products for Recommendations, Merchandising, Personalization, Dynamic Reranking, Browse, and more.

35 Gartner Peer Reviews (Average 4.4 out of 5) – highest of all search vendors

Ecommerce focus with reportedly less than 100 customers

Complex deployment. No self-service free trial. Requires support for initial configuration and scaling

Limited API

Also offers tooling for recommendations, merchandising, personalization, quizzes, and more, but many lack the maturity of Algolia (e.g., there is no personalization A/B testing)

AI

AI can improve search result relevance, ranking, and revenue. With the release of Algolia Neural Search, customers have complete control over the AI algorithms which combine both keyword and vector search results for every query.

AI-native AI Search with end-to-end AI processing with both keywords and vectors ensuring the most relevant retrieval at scale.

AI Search

Better retrieval assists ranking; additional reinforcement learning with dynamic re-ranking to optimize results and ROI.

AI-powered query categorization, recommendations, and personalization boosted by industry’s only AI powered automatic query categorization.

Constructor uses vector embeddings as a failover method for when they provide a null keyword result.

Because only some search results have AI applied, dynamic reranking is working on sub-optimized results.

API

Algolia is an API-first company which can connect with any headless or composable commerce solution. Constructor has a more limited API that often requires workarounds.

Algolia is an API-first company with complete set of REST API and language specific APIs

More than 5 million developers in the Algolia developer community

Free Code Exchange with tools, front-end and UI components for integrating different solutions with Algolia.

Constructor has a limited API and customers report the need to use CSV feeds to sync data into Constructor on a daily scale.

Daily sync will not work for BOPIS and other time-sensitive use cases.

Customers have said there is no access to on-demand API call logs.

Search

Algolia offers the world’s most performant search for any catalog — no matter how frequently it’s updated or new variations are added.

World’s fastest search engine with combined keyword and AI results for each and every query

Changes to the search index are reflected instantly in search results

Result transparency and easy-to-update and A/B test search algorithm to boost or bury results

Constructor is designed for product search for customers with an infrequently changing catalog or inventory.

Lacks complete transparency for rules performance.

Merchandising

Both Constructor and Algolia offer merchandising capabilities, but only Algolia offers non-technical users an easy-to-use solution out of the box.

Free Merchandising Studio with complete functionality for Merchandisers to manage campaigns without developer support.

Automate workflows and dynamic results. Curate and pin results, modify results for ranking.

Full A/B testing and analytics on how shoppers are responding to different strategies.

Complete transparency for merchandisers to understand how and why results are ranked from personalization, geo, and other settings.

Dashboard for business users to merchandise the results, but most advanced configurations of Constructor must be done by support or professional services

Information on the internally calculated values for records is visible, but not the detailed ordering of results.

There are no APIs to build custom merchandising dashboard for advanced use cases.

Analytics

Both companies offer similar search and discovery metrics, but Algolia has a more complete set of metrics available out-of-the-box.

Null results, poor results, usage analytics, search behavior, and other metrics.

Provides targeted analytics designed to fine-tune search performance

Integrate with your website analytics solution

Algolia’s Radar leverages customers' data layers to offer superior ROI analysis

Analytics to provide insight into how customers are using a customer’s site

Users have commented on poor analytics usability and the need for a better break out of search vs browse analytics

Available “beacon” tracker to measure some aspects of ROI before/after with Constructor AI search

Dashboard provides some analytics for non-technical users, but customers must request other reports from Constructor for a complete picture

Overview

AI

API

Search

Merchandising

Analytics

Search that understands

An award-winning solution

Gartner®

Inc 5000

G2 Award

Enable anyone to build great Search & Discovery

Try the AI search that understands