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The issue with Algolia is that they have insane technology but it is mostly used only to search documentation. They are struggling to sell their techno to peo

by polote 5y ago

The issue with Algolia is that they have insane technology but it is mostly used only to search documentation. They are struggling to sell their techno to people who need them deeply, for a lot of reasons. But one of them is that they are a tricky choice. It is not a database technology, so not a developer choice but also their technology is only useful to developers. As a result they have to try to sell their product when you need a search but no developers are working on it. That's how you end up powering external and internal documentation portals. That's really a waste of resource

CharlesW 5y ago
> But one of them is that they are a tricky choice. How so? (What you follow that statement with doesn't seem to explain it.) When I took a close look at Algolia for a project it seemed straightforward as a choice, but the cost would've been completely out-of-wack in comparison to what I was spending for the rest of the tech stack. This aligns with what a contributor to Typesense mentions in the comments, which is that what they hear from many potential Algolia customers is that it's "a great product but can get quite expensive at even moderate scale".
negrit 5y ago
I disagree. I'm a early Algolia adopter(and an engineer) and as an engineer they are a no-brainer for me. Search is really hard even with the best elasticsearch libraries. IMO the biggest blocker with algolia is the price. It's really hard to get company buy-in because leadership don't get it: "Just build it"
- Wintereise 5y ago
  Agreed. The pricing gets crazy fast when you're not really in control of your record / query count, like the typical SaaS dealing with customer data. It feels tailored to first party use.
jabo 5y ago
> The issue with Algolia is that they have insane technology but it is mostly used only to search documentation. This is a really interesting side-effect of what Algolia was probably trying to do: use documentation search to spread brand awareness, but then ironically, because of their (successful IMO) strategy, the product is being perceived as mostly being used primarily for documentation search.

by polote 5y ago

CharlesW 5y ago

> But one of them is that they are a tricky choice. How so? (What you follow that statement with doesn't seem to explain it.) When I took a close look at Algolia for a project it seemed straightforward as a choice, but the cost would've been completely out-of-wack in comparison to what I was spending for the rest of the tech stack. This aligns with what a contributor to Typesense mentions in the comments, which is that what they hear from many potential Algolia customers is that it's "a great product but can get quite expensive at even moderate scale".

negrit 5y ago

I disagree. I'm a early Algolia adopter(and an engineer) and as an engineer they are a no-brainer for me. Search is really hard even with the best elasticsearch libraries. IMO the biggest blocker with algolia is the price. It's really hard to get company buy-in because leadership don't get it: "Just build it"

Wintereise 5y ago
Agreed. The pricing gets crazy fast when you're not really in control of your record / query count, like the typical SaaS dealing with customer data. It feels tailored to first party use.

jabo 5y ago

> The issue with Algolia is that they have insane technology but it is mostly used only to search documentation. This is a really interesting side-effect of what Algolia was probably trying to do: use documentation search to spread brand awareness, but then ironically, because of their (successful IMO) strategy, the product is being perceived as mostly being used primarily for documentation search.