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I am about to roll out search on Shepherd.com and looking at using Algolia. I've been impressed with Algolia on Hacker News... Is anyone else using them? What

by bwb 5y ago

I am about to roll out search on Shepherd.com and looking at using Algolia. I've been impressed with Algolia on Hacker News... Is anyone else using them? What are your impressions so far? Much appreciated

thefounder 5y ago
It's easy to use and setup. If pricing and closed source is OK with you then it's worth it. We've used them few years ago and then switched to ES. Think of it like of pre-docker Heroku.
- oakfr 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, what made you choose ES over Algolia?
  - kirubakaran 5y ago
    From the comment, I guess "pricing and closed source" became not OK
  - thefounder 5y ago
    As @kirubakaran said it was the price and the closed source license. If search becomes a very important part of your business you better own it rather than outsource it. Algolia is great to get started but it doesn't make sense at scale. If you have large indexes it's just too expensive.
    - jabo 5y ago
      What did the migration effort look like when moving from Algolia to ElasticSearch? Also, were you able to replicate the same user experience?
ushakov 5y ago
i’m using MeiliSearch, which is a open source alternative worth giving a look https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch
- gervwyk 5y ago
  Did not know about MeiliSearch. Looks really great! Thanks for sharing.
jabo 5y ago
I work on an open source alternative to Algolia called Typesense. Algolia is a great product but can get quite expensive at even moderate scale. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard this from Algolia users switching over… I recently put together this comparison page, comparing a few search engines, including Algolia, you might find interesting: https://typesense.org/typesense-vs-algolia-vs-elasticsearch-vs-meilisearch/ https://typesense.org/typesense-vs-algolia-vs-elasticsearch-...
- notdang 5y ago
  It's missing the most important thing:speed. We moved to Algolia mainly because of this. Elastic Search and Solr could not compete.
  - jabo 5y ago
    Oh yes. Speed is an important point. ElasticSearch & Solr use disk-first indexing (with RAM as just a cache), whereas Algolia and Typesense use a RAM-first approach where the entire index is stored in memory. This is what makes Algolia/Typesense return results much much faster than ES/Solr, and lets you build search-as-you-type experiences for each keystroke. I was thinking about adding a row about speed to the comparison matrix, but couldn't find a way to express the comparison clearly... Imagine a row that said: Search Speed | Super-fast | Super-fast | Slow? ... That felt a little off. So I resorted to just mentioning primary index location as a proxy. Open to suggestions on how to express this succinctly.
    - NicoJuicy 5y ago
      Why not place the main algorithm for speed of search, so users can lookup the difference on another page.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      What index sizes are we talking about? If it's a few hundred gigs there's always the possibility of putting the entire ElasticSearch index into a ramdisk, or even just leaving lots of "free" RAM meaning the underlying OS will use it to speed up I/O transparently. Bare-metal machines with insane RAM sizes are a thing, and at massive scale could make sense. I've had great success at a client where simply upgrading a DB to an instance with enough RAM to fit 80% of the entire data set fixed all performance problems and significantly reduced I/O "pressure" at least for reads (writes were never a problem).
kqr 5y ago
Big up-front disclaimer: my job is making software at Loop54 and my salary comes from happy customers of our service. One of our goals is similar to yours: browsing an online store should be like walking around in a physical store. The navigation system on the site should be as adept as a knowledgeable store employee in helping you find exactly what you're looking for. At Loop54 many of our customers come from Algolia. It's very popular, and nobody ever gets fired for buying Algolia. In that sense, it's a safe option. On the other hand, customers come to us from Algolia because Algolia requires a bit of hand-holding and it still doesn't quite seem to get what users are really looking for. When our prospects run randomised controlled trials, our search consistently seems to give users what they want better than Algolia does, with less effort. I can ask about specific numbers if you want. However, another strength of Algolia that Loop54 is currently behind in is in the surrounding tooling. For better or worse, with Algolia, you'll have more knobs and levers to play with (and you'll need them much more often!) We do have one or two customers that have a majority of books in their product catalogues, and we know there are some unique challenges that come with that domain. Loop54 is a very competent, but smaller player. If you think it's interesting, it's worth talking to us. I can't evaluate how good a fit your site would be for us, but that's why we have people who do that for a living! Edit: I should also say that yes, Loop54 is even more expensive. You shouldn't blindly trust us (or any other provider.) I would strongly suggest running a randomised controlled trial to see whether any expense at all is worth it in your case. I say this in part because I'm a man of science and believe in experiments to measure things, but also out of self-interest; anyone can throw out impressive marketing, but our search truly shines when put to the test against the alternatives.
- Redsquare 5y ago
  I am sorry but https://www.loop54.com/pricing https://www.loop54.com/pricing is just totally snied. No monetary information whatsoever. Why even blag me to a pricing page with less than zero pricing honesty.
  - kqr 5y ago
    You're absolutely right, of course. We're in the process of fixing that. The TL;DR is that we're offering customers more flexibility than the tiered model suggests. Consequently there's a large variability in what customers pay. A number on the pricing page turned out to be more misleading than helpful for our target audience. The long-term solution is creating a more flexible pricing model that can be very transparent. We are working on that. (Though as you know, generic, modular solutions take a while to get just right, unfortunately.) We didn't think a short-term solution was needed, but based on your comment, that might be worth reconsidering. The best I can think of is a 90 % range of what customers actually end up paying for each tier. What suggestions do you have?
gervwyk 5y ago
We have it configured for https://docs.lowdefy.com https://docs.lowdefy.com Really happy with the service it provides and the ease of implementation. Note that because the docs can take a few seconds to load, the their crawler times out and misses some content some of the time. With better page performance this should not be an issue. (We are actively working on some cool ideas to make Lowdefy apps super fast)
ch4s3 5y ago
I know a health tech company that uses it to power typeahead for prescribing drugs. It worked super well the last time I saw it in action.
thundergolfer 5y ago
Using them for a side project. Very impressed with their developer experience. Their React instant-search plugin is great, and very easy to add. Their documentation is great. Their admin UI is great.

by bwb 5y ago

thefounder 5y ago

It's easy to use and setup. If pricing and closed source is OK with you then it's worth it. We've used them few years ago and then switched to ES. Think of it like of pre-docker Heroku.

oakfr 5y ago
Out of curiosity, what made you choose ES over Algolia?
- kirubakaran 5y ago
  From the comment, I guess "pricing and closed source" became not OK
- thefounder 5y ago
  As @kirubakaran said it was the price and the closed source license. If search becomes a very important part of your business you better own it rather than outsource it. Algolia is great to get started but it doesn't make sense at scale. If you have large indexes it's just too expensive.
  - jabo 5y ago
    What did the migration effort look like when moving from Algolia to ElasticSearch? Also, were you able to replicate the same user experience?

ushakov 5y ago

i’m using MeiliSearch, which is a open source alternative worth giving a look https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch

gervwyk 5y ago
Did not know about MeiliSearch. Looks really great! Thanks for sharing.

jabo 5y ago

I work on an open source alternative to Algolia called Typesense. Algolia is a great product but can get quite expensive at even moderate scale. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard this from Algolia users switching over… I recently put together this comparison page, comparing a few search engines, including Algolia, you might find interesting: https://typesense.org/typesense-vs-algolia-vs-elasticsearch-vs-meilisearch/ https://typesense.org/typesense-vs-algolia-vs-elasticsearch-...

notdang 5y ago
It's missing the most important thing:speed. We moved to Algolia mainly because of this. Elastic Search and Solr could not compete.
- jabo 5y ago
  Oh yes. Speed is an important point. ElasticSearch & Solr use disk-first indexing (with RAM as just a cache), whereas Algolia and Typesense use a RAM-first approach where the entire index is stored in memory. This is what makes Algolia/Typesense return results much much faster than ES/Solr, and lets you build search-as-you-type experiences for each keystroke. I was thinking about adding a row about speed to the comparison matrix, but couldn't find a way to express the comparison clearly... Imagine a row that said: Search Speed | Super-fast | Super-fast | Slow? ... That felt a little off. So I resorted to just mentioning primary index location as a proxy. Open to suggestions on how to express this succinctly.
  - NicoJuicy 5y ago
    Why not place the main algorithm for speed of search, so users can lookup the difference on another page.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    What index sizes are we talking about? If it's a few hundred gigs there's always the possibility of putting the entire ElasticSearch index into a ramdisk, or even just leaving lots of "free" RAM meaning the underlying OS will use it to speed up I/O transparently. Bare-metal machines with insane RAM sizes are a thing, and at massive scale could make sense. I've had great success at a client where simply upgrading a DB to an instance with enough RAM to fit 80% of the entire data set fixed all performance problems and significantly reduced I/O "pressure" at least for reads (writes were never a problem).

kqr 5y ago

Big up-front disclaimer: my job is making software at Loop54 and my salary comes from happy customers of our service. One of our goals is similar to yours: browsing an online store should be like walking around in a physical store. The navigation system on the site should be as adept as a knowledgeable store employee in helping you find exactly what you're looking for. At Loop54 many of our customers come from Algolia. It's very popular, and nobody ever gets fired for buying Algolia. In that sense, it's a safe option. On the other hand, customers come to us from Algolia because Algolia requires a bit of hand-holding and it still doesn't quite seem to get what users are really looking for. When our prospects run randomised controlled trials, our search consistently seems to give users what they want better than Algolia does, with less effort. I can ask about specific numbers if you want. However, another strength of Algolia that Loop54 is currently behind in is in the surrounding tooling. For better or worse, with Algolia, you'll have more knobs and levers to play with (and you'll need them much more often!) We do have one or two customers that have a majority of books in their product catalogues, and we know there are some unique challenges that come with that domain. Loop54 is a very competent, but smaller player. If you think it's interesting, it's worth talking to us. I can't evaluate how good a fit your site would be for us, but that's why we have people who do that for a living! Edit: I should also say that yes, Loop54 is even more expensive. You shouldn't blindly trust us (or any other provider.) I would strongly suggest running a randomised controlled trial to see whether any expense at all is worth it in your case. I say this in part because I'm a man of science and believe in experiments to measure things, but also out of self-interest; anyone can throw out impressive marketing, but our search truly shines when put to the test against the alternatives.

Redsquare 5y ago
I am sorry but https://www.loop54.com/pricing https://www.loop54.com/pricing is just totally snied. No monetary information whatsoever. Why even blag me to a pricing page with less than zero pricing honesty.
- kqr 5y ago
  You're absolutely right, of course. We're in the process of fixing that. The TL;DR is that we're offering customers more flexibility than the tiered model suggests. Consequently there's a large variability in what customers pay. A number on the pricing page turned out to be more misleading than helpful for our target audience. The long-term solution is creating a more flexible pricing model that can be very transparent. We are working on that. (Though as you know, generic, modular solutions take a while to get just right, unfortunately.) We didn't think a short-term solution was needed, but based on your comment, that might be worth reconsidering. The best I can think of is a 90 % range of what customers actually end up paying for each tier. What suggestions do you have?

gervwyk 5y ago

We have it configured for https://docs.lowdefy.com https://docs.lowdefy.com Really happy with the service it provides and the ease of implementation. Note that because the docs can take a few seconds to load, the their crawler times out and misses some content some of the time. With better page performance this should not be an issue. (We are actively working on some cool ideas to make Lowdefy apps super fast)

ch4s3 5y ago

I know a health tech company that uses it to power typeahead for prescribing drugs. It worked super well the last time I saw it in action.

thundergolfer 5y ago

Using them for a side project. Very impressed with their developer experience. Their React instant-search plugin is great, and very easy to add. Their documentation is great. Their admin UI is great.