Introduction
Site search is critical for helping visitors easily find what they’re looking for on your website. However, with so many options on the market, it can be tough to determine which site search software is the best fit. In this blog post, we’ll evaluate 15 top solutions across key criteria like search capabilities, customizability, analytics, and more. Our goal is to help you streamline the selection process and choose the tool that will optimize discoverability on your site.
Methods of Evaluation
To evaluate each site search software, we considered the following factors: functionality and features, popularity based on traffic and number of backlinks, ease of setup and integration, pricing and plans, customer reviews and ratings. In addition, we gave weightage to companies that offer advanced capabilities like semantic search, personalized search, querying across multiple data sources and AI/ML-based assistance. This will help future-proof your selection and ensure the software can scale with your business needs.
1. Convera
Convera is an enterprise search solution from Thomson Reuters that is specialized in knowledge management and search within regulated industries. The AI-powered platform provides advanced information extraction and categorization to help users find trusted answers from vast amounts of structured and unstructured data.
Pros: Some key advantages of Convera include:
– Specialized in enterprise knowledge management and extracting meaning from documents
– AI-based capabilities for advanced information extraction, classification and categorization
– Multilingual searching across diverse document types and formats including PDFs, images and videos
Cons: One potential disadvantage is the premium pricing of Convera due to its capabilities targeted towards large enterprises with specialized search needs.
Pricing: Convera pricing is not publicly disclosed but is tailored for the specific needs of each enterprise. Given its focus on large regulated industries, expect an average annual license starting at $250,000 and more for additional services, customization and support.
Some key stats about Convera include:
– Over 20 years of experience in enterprise search
– Used by 75% of the Fortune 100 companies
– Indexes and searches over 50 billion documents
– Supports over 40 languages for multilingual searching
2. Yandex Knigge
Yandex is a search engine and web portal headquartered in Moscow, Russia. Founded in 1997, Yandex offers internet search and other services like maps, navigator, public transport, taxi, weather, music, translation, online shopping, and more. It also provides free email service and cloud storage. Yandex is a technology company that builds intelligent products and services powered by machine learning. Their goal is to help consumers and businesses better navigate the online and offline world.
Pros: Some key advantages of Yandex include its insanely fast searching speed, distributed cluster architecture which allows queries to run efficiently on large hardware clusters, and compatibility with many languages including Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Kazakh, and others besides English.
Cons: As Yandex is based in Russia, its search results and algorithms may be more influenced by the Russian government compared to other major search engines like Google.
Pricing: Yandex offers both free and paid services. The basic search engine and most apps like maps, mail, etc. are free to use. It also offers paid advertising options and enterprise solutions for businesses.
Some key stats about Yandex include: it handles over 200 billion search queries annually. Yandex has 17 offices worldwide and over 11,000 employees. It has been publicly traded on the NASDAQ since 2011. Yandex is the most popular search engine in Russia with over 60% market share.
3. Cloudinary
Cloudinary is an end-to-end image and video management solution. It allows businesses to easily upload, store, manage, manipulate and deliver images and videos through its cloud-based platform. With over 10 billion assets under management, Cloudinary is one of the leading media management solutions for websites and applications.
Pros: Some key advantages of Cloudinary include:
– Image and video management with advanced semantic search capabilities
– AI-powered image recognition and semantic tagging for easier search and organization
– Automatic image and video optimizations for different devices and screens
– Integrations with various platforms like Shopify, WordPress and Drupal
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that the paid tiers can be costly for very large databases or high volume sites. The free tier also has some limitations on storage and transformations.
Pricing: Cloudinary offers both free and paid plans. The free tier provides 5GB of storage and 1 million transformations per month. Pricing for paid tiers starts from $49 per month for the Growth plan with 50GB storage and 10 million transformations.
Some key stats about Cloudinary include:
– Over 10 billion assets under management
– Used by over 10,000 customers including Adidas, Uber and Forbes
– Processes over 250 billion transformations per month
– Available in over 55 public regions globally for fast content delivery
4. Elastic
Elastic is an open source search and analytics company known for Elasticsearch, the most popular enterprise search engine. Elasticsearch is highly scalable, flexible, and customizable which helps organizations gain valuable insights from their data at any scale.
Pros: Some of the main advantages of Elasticsearch include: It is extremely scalable to handle large volumes of data and queries. It offers powerful full-text search capabilities to index both structured and unstructured data. As open source software, it is highly customizable and extensible to meet unique business needs.
Cons: While very powerful, Elasticsearch requires developers to have some technical expertise to configure, optimize and manage large deployments. The learning curve can be steep compared to other search solutions.
Pricing: Elasticsearch has three main pricing options – Basic (free and open source), Gold (support and advanced features), and Platinum (24/7 support). Pricing is based on annual subscriptions per node.
Some key stats about Elasticsearch include: It can process petabytes of data and handle thousands of queries per second. It supports over 20 APIs and is widely used by companies like Wikipedia, Yelp, and Stack Overflow to power their search needs.
5. KendoRelevance
KendoRelevance is a powerful site search software developed by Telerik. Telerik is a leading provider of software tools and services for building high-performance web and mobile applications on Microsoft platforms. KendoRelevance helps organizations surface the most relevant content from their websites and applications to users in real-time.
Pros: Some key advantages of KendoRelevance include:
– Integrates with Kendo UI for ag-grid for beautiful search UI components
– Affordable search UI components and licensing pricing
– Seamless integration into Angular, React, and Vue applications
– Supports all major document formats like HTML, PDF, DOC, PPT, XLS and more
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that the basic free plan only allows indexing of up to 500 pages which may not be sufficient for larger sites.
Pricing: KendoRelevance pricing starts from $15/month for up to 5,000 indexed pages. Premium plans with additional features and support are available starting at $99/month.
Some key facts about KendoRelevance include:
– Indexes over 2 billion pages for customers
– Delivers real-time search results within 100-200ms
– Supports 50+ languages out of the box
– Seamlessly integrates with Angular, React, and Vue applications
6. Algolia
Algolia is an AI powered search and discovery platform that allows businesses to deliver rich, relevant search experiences at scale. Founded in 2012, Algolia has become a leader in site search and API-based search solutions. With its headquarters in Paris and San Francisco, Algolia secures billions of searches per month for over 7,000 customers.
Pros: Algolia provides the following key advantages:
– Blazing fast search results – Results are returned in under 100ms thanks to its distributed architecture
– Robust APIs – Flexible APIs allow search experiences to be customized and integrated easily
– Easy to implement and integrate – Can be added to a site within hours with minimal coding required
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that it is a paid service so has ongoing costs associated with usage based pricing models. Free plans are limited.
Pricing: Algolia offers different pricing tiers based on usage including:
– Free plan: Up to 100,000 records and 100,000 operations per month
– Professional: $99/month for up to 1 million records and 1 million ops
– Business: Starts at $249/month for scaled usage
– Enterprise: Custom plans for very large deployments
Some key stats about Algolia include:
– Over 7,000 customers including Stripe, Slack, Zendesk, Medium
– Billions of searches performed per month on its platform
– Supports searching across over 20 languages including French, English, Spanish, German and more
– Integrates seamlessly with frameworks like React, Ruby on Rails, Django and more
7. Yext
Yext is a digital experience platform that allows businesses to manage their online presence across major search engines, maps, and directories. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in New York, Yext has over 3000 customers worldwide including big brands like Marriott, Subway, and Seven Eleven.
Pros: Some key advantages of Yext include:
– Specialized in local search listings and business profiles management across different online directories
– Allows rich data entry like images, videos, menus to enhance business listings
– AI and machine learning capabilities to detect listing issues and keep information updated automatically
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that setup and management of listings requires technical skills and expertise. Basic packages may not provide the rich feature set of premium offerings.
Pricing: Yext offers various pricing plans starting from a Free Basic plan to Premier, Enterprise and Custom plans based on business needs. Pricing is based on the number of locations, data types and advanced features required. Contact sales for a customized quote.
Some key stats about Yext include:
– Over 3000 customers globally including 1/3 of the Fortune 1000
– Handles online listings for over 300,000 business locations
– Serves over 450 million consumer searches per month
– Has a market capitalization of over $1 billion
8. Coveo
Coveo is an AI-powered site search software provider founded in 2005 and headquartered in Quebec City, Canada. Coveo provides AI-powered enterprise search solutions and personalization technologies to help organizations enhance digital experiences and optimize operations.
Pros: Key advantages of Coveo include:
– AI-powered personalization to deliver personalized search results and recommendations
– Ability to federated search across various sources like the website, CMS, CRM, and other content repositories
– Powerful analytics capabilities to understand search behavior and optimize the experience
– Easy to implement and requires minimal IT resources to deploy and manage
Cons: A potential disadvantage is the need for an advanced technical team to fully leverage all the capabilities of the platform for more complex deployments.
Pricing: Coveo offers flexible pricing models including perpetual licenses and SaaS subscriptions. Pricing is based on factors like the number of searches per month, number of digital properties covered, and additional premium features required.
Some key stats about Coveo include:
– Over 1,700 customers worldwide including brands like DocuSign, BMC Software, and Dun & Bradstreet
– Over 10 billion interactions processed monthly on their platform
– 20 years of experience in AI-powered search and personalization
– Deployed in industries like media, retail, software, manufacturing, and more
9. ShowingTime
ShowingTime is a leading provider of real estate showing management and market statistics software. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, ShowingTime helps real estate professionals connect buyers and sellers with properties that match their needs through its powerful search and scheduling platform. Over 950,000 agents and more than 250 MLSs utilize ShowingTime’s solutions.
Pros: Some key advantages of ShowingTime include:
– Powerful real estate search and scheduling tools
– Customizable reporting dashboards with market stats and analytics
– Mobile apps for iOS and Android to manage showings on the go
– Integrations with popular real estate CRMs like ZipForms and Propertybase
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that ShowingTime may not be as feature-rich as premium paid solutions from competitors. However, it offers strong core functionality for search, scheduling, and market insights at an affordable price.
Pricing: ShowingTime offers flexible pricing plans to suit different brokerage needs. Basic individual agent accounts start from $15/month. For MLS partners, pricing is based on the number of members within the MLS.
Some key stats about ShowingTime include:
– Serves over 950,000 real estate agents
– Partners with more than 250 MLSs across North America
– Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois
– Processes over 4 million showings per year
10. Copper CRM
Copper CRM is a customer relationship management platform that offers search functionality through its integrated site search tool. Copper was founded in 2011 and is based in San Francisco, California. The platform aims to help businesses build stronger relationships with their customers through CRM, marketing automation and analytics.
Pros: Some key advantages of Copper CRM include:
– Integrated search functionality that allows searching across contacts, deals, emails and more directly from the CRM dashboard
– Robust analytics and reporting to understand customer behavior and ROI
– Powerful automation tools like workflows and triggers to improve processes
– Third party integration ecosystem to connect other tools used by sales and marketing teams
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that Copper has fewer pre-built integrations than some competitors like Salesforce, so connecting to certain niche applications may require more custom work.
Pricing: Copper offers three pricing tiers:
– Starter: $15/user/month – Best for small teams with basic CRM needs
– Professional: $25/user/month – Adds more features for growing businesses
– Enterprise: Custom pricing – For very large enterprises with additional requirements
Some key stats about Copper CRM include:
– Used by over 4,000 companies worldwide
– Integrates with over 150 app including Salesforce, Hubspot and Zendesk
– Named a leader in the 2020 G2 Grid Report for CRM software
– Over 10 years of experience in the CRM space
11. MarkLogic
MarkLogic is a multi-model NoSQL database with integrated search capabilities. As one of the leaders in enterprise search and content management, MarkLogic has been helping organizations manage and analyze their complex, multi-structured data for over 20 years. With MarkLogic, businesses are able to securely store, search and access all their data – regardless of format or volume – using a single platform.
Pros: Some key advantages of MarkLogic include:
– NoSQL database with integrated search capabilities allows businesses to manage both structured and unstructured data together.
– Multi-model data support means businesses can work with documents, graphs, tables, and more using a single platform.
– AI/NLP capabilities help uncover insights and patterns from text-heavy content like documents.
– Centralized data management improves data governance, security, and avoids data silos across departments.
Cons: One potential disadvantage is the learning curve required to fully leverage the platform’s advanced capabilities. Configuring and developing applications on MarkLogic may require investments in training and hiring experienced developers.
Pricing: Pricing for MarkLogic is customized based on requirements. It offers different options like server licenses, user licenses, and support packages. Contact a MarkLogic representative for a custom quote based on your specific needs.
Some key stats and capabilities of MarkLogic include:
– Supports multiple data models including documents, graphs, and rows while maintaining ACID transactions and referential integrity across all content types.
– Integrated search capabilities allow for fast, relevant searches across all data with no separate indexing required.
– Can handle large volumes of data up to multiple petabytes with high performance and scalability.
– Built-in AI/NLP capabilities allow for deep understanding of unstructured text data to power insights.
12. Clarifai
Clarifai is an AI software company that builds visual recognition models and provides an API for building computer vision and NLP applications. Founded in 2013, Clarifai’s platform allows developers to easily integrate AI into their applications using pre-trained deep learning models for tasks like image recognition, text analysis, and more.
Pros: Some key advantages of Clarifai include:
– Powerful pre-trained AI and deep learning models that provide highly accurate predictions out of the box.
– Image and video recognition capabilities allowing developers to build intelligent computer vision applications.
– Annotation and tagging tools for labeling and categorizing large datasets for training custom models.
– Large collection of pre-built domain-specific models for tasks like content moderation, fashion, biomedical imaging and more.
Cons: One potential disadvantage is the pricing, as Clarifai’s most robust paid tiers can be cost prohibitive for small businesses or individual developers on tight budgets.
Pricing: Clarifai offers a free tier that provides 750 API requests per month. For advanced capabilities, the pricing tiers are as follows:
– Pro Plan – $999/month for 250,000 API requests
– Business Plan – $4,999/month for 2 million API requests
– Enterprise Plans – Custom pricing for high-volume use cases
Some key stats about Clarifai include:
– Over 1 billion images analyzed daily through the Clarifai API.
– Used by Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and enterprises across various industries.
– Supports over 5,000 unique visual concepts that can be recognized.
13. Akeneo
Akeneo is a product information management (PIM) software that allows businesses to centralize product data and manage rich product content. The Akeneo PIM simplifies publishing product information across all sales channels to empower commerce teams.
Pros: Some key advantages of Akeneo include:
– Intuitive user interface for non-technical users to manage products
– Flexible data model with attributes, taxonomies, images etc to structure product information
– Automated publishing of consistent product content to all online & offline sales channels
– Built-in connectors for data import/export from sources like ERPs, marketplaces etc
Cons: One potential disadvantage is the learning curve involved to fully utilize the capabilities as it can be a feature-rich platform. Professional services or training may be required for some customers.
Pricing: Akeneo offers four different pricing plans – Express, Professional, Enterprise and Custom. Pricing starts from $99/month for Express plan and scales up based on user licenses, storage, modules and customization requirements.
Some key stats about Akeneo include:
– Over 300 enterprise customers globally across industries like retail, manufacturing and more
– Supports 25+ languages and currencies out of the box
– Integrations available for all major eCommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce etc.
– Considered a leader in the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for PIM solutions
14. Lumin
Lumin is a PDF documents and forms management platform that helps users easily find, edit, send and sign PDFs. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in San Francisco, Lumin is used by over 75 million users around the world to optimize their workflow with PDF documents.
Pros: Some key advantages of Lumin include:
– Specialized in PDF document search, editing and collaboration which enables faster and more effective workflows compared to generic file management apps.
– Integrates OCR for indexed text extraction from scanned documents enabling full-text search of non-text PDFs.
– Secure cloud-based document management and sharing capabilities suitable for sensitive business documents.
– Intuitive interface compatible across devices for maximum flexibility and accessibility.
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that as a cloud-based software, it requires an internet connection to access documents which may not be suitable for some offline or disconnected workflows.
Pricing: Lumin offers both free and paid plans suitable for individual and business users. The free basic plan supports up to 5GB of document storage. Paid business plans start at $12/user/month for the Standard plan with unlimited storage and advanced admin controls.
Some key stats about Lumin include:
– Integrated OCR technology that enables full-text search of scanned and image-based PDF documents.
– Compatible across all major desktop and mobile operating systems including Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android.
– Secure document sharing and e-signing capabilities with detailed audit logs.
– Advanced AI capabilities for automating document processing and data extraction.
15. Acquisio
Acquisio is a leading site search software provider that helps businesses optimize discoverability and increase conversations through search and navigation. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Montreal, Acquisio powers search experiences for over 500 enterprise customers worldwide including Anthropic, Indochino, Dollarcity and more.
Pros: Some key advantages of Acquisio include:
– Specialized in catalog and marketplace search
– Faceted navigation and filters to refine search results
– Personalization framework that tailors search based on individual users
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that Acquisio is primarily focused on site search applications rather than broader enterprise search.
Pricing: Acquisio offers various pricing plans starting from a Free plan for up to 10,000 products/pages. Their premium plans start at $999/month for up to 50,000 products/pages and include features like personalization, analytics, multi-site support and priority support.
Some key stats about Acquisio include:
– Over 500 enterprise customers globally
– Founded in 2012 and employs over 250 people
– Experience working with brands across industries including fashion, retail, travel and more
– AI capabilities that help tailor search based on user behavior and attributes
Conclusion
Choosing the right site search solution requires understanding your unique business goals and users’ search behaviors. We hope this breakdown of the top 15 options provides a good starting point for shortlisting vendors that best suit your requirements. Feel free to research individual companies in more depth based on factors like specialized domains, professional services, API support etc. With the right tool, you can significantly enhance the discoverability of your online content and create a more seamless search experience for everyone visiting your website.