Algolia vs. Swiftype vs. AddSearch

We often get asked how AddSearch compares with other search platforms, in particular, Swiftype and Algolia.

All three search providers differ considerably in their features and search tools, benefits, costs, and implementation.

To help answer your questions, we’ll take a closer look at these platforms and help you find the right solution for your website.

Take a look at the table below for a quick glimpse at the main differences between the three platforms:

	AddSearch Premium	Swiftype PRO	Algolia Premium
Pricing	From $499/month	From $744/month	From $750/month
Search queries	100,000 / month	100,000 / month	100,000 / month
Analytics history	1 year	6 months	30 days
Dedicated Developer & UX Designer ⓘImplementing your search solution for you
Live Chat Support ⓘFriendly and fast email and livechat support
Search API ⓘCreate unique result pages, queries for related content, search functionality for mobile apps and more.
Search results management ⓘSite area tool to adjust results by URL patterns. Pinned results tool to curate search results by keyword
Search filters ⓘPossibility to filter search results by domain name, URL paths, or custom meta tags
Synonyms ⓘYour company sells trousers, but some of your users call them ‘pants’ or ‘slacks’. AddSearch allows you to specify certain words as synonyms that should produce the same search results.
Multilingual website and language-specific features ⓘSupport for multilingual websites and support for language-specific stemming to support different word formats, suchs as plurals
Search suggestions autocomplete ⓘAutocomplete to suggest search terms to your users. Able to learn suggestions from your search data
Search suggestions autocomplete ⓘAutocomplete to suggest search terms to your users. Able to learn suggestions from your search data
Promotions ⓘCreate and manage promotional banners to be shown with your search results

Compare by

• Features and Tools
• Setup and implementation
• Support
• Pricing

Feature and Tools: Algolia vs. Swiftype vs. AddSearch

AddSearch, Swiftype, and Algolia all provide extensive tools for managing and understanding your search results. Let’s dive deeper into this functionality.

Manage search results

Both AddSearch and Swiftype provide you with a powerful result management toolset, including ranking adjustments and typo tolerance for any plan. Synonyms, promotional banners, and search suggestion autocomplete are included starting from the Professional package at AddSearch.

Algolia, on the other hand, gives access to synonyms for all plans but limits result management features, such as boosting particular search results, only to the premium customers.

Analytics

All three provide advanced analytics options, giving access to top searches, no click, and low CTRs searches. AddSearch new Pro analytics feature top keywords by URLs and top URLs by keywords. Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics integrations are available for anyone with a Professional plan or higher.

Analytics Retention

At AddSearch for Premium Package, we provide 365 days access to search analytics history. Swiftype retention is limited to 6 months and on Algolia it’s 90 days.

Search UI

Both AddSearch and Swiftype provide ready-made UI’s that can be implemented right away or customized. If you want to have 100% control over your results view, you can use traditional REST API along with an easy-to-use and state-of-the-art Search UI library. Using these tools, you can also integrate the search into mobile applications or existing implementations and build new features on top of those. Algolia provides a developer toolset, including a building blocks library. The search UI can be coded with these tools’ help.

User Management

AddSearch has an advanced user management tool that allows you to manage which user can access which domain. This feature is especially useful for digital agencies and enterprises that monitor multiple domains and have different people requiring access. Swiftype offers user management for each individual index. Algolia has 6 permission accesses for team members of each individual index.

Personalization

Search personalization is used to show selected search results depending on previous user history and is supported by Algolia and AddSearch. Relevant search results for each of your users can be very different depending on the user’s status and previous web-behavior. AddSearch Personalization gives you a robust toolset for building a personalized search experience tailored to your website visitors and aimed at your business needs.

Swiftype doesn’t have any similar feature available.

Setup and Implementation: AddSearch vs. Swiftype vs. Algolia

Search setup is the major difference between the three platforms. The setup is simple and fast for AddSearch. Swiftype and Algolia’s implementation could become a complex and long project and can not be done without developers’ help.
AddSearch is platform-agnostic, which means that it can crawl any content on any CMS. At the same time, Swiftype has certain limitations to the website’s platform, including an inability to crawl AJAX and JavaScript websites or certain private websites.

Algolia implementation

Algolia’s implementation is very different from AddSearch and Swiftype. While AddSearch and Swiftype both crawl content from your website, you need to push content to Algolia to have it indexed. For that, a developer has to create a script that connects their own platform with Algolia’s system. Algolia recently added the ability to crawl to their product but you have to pay a premium to get it activated.

For Premium customers, AddSearch goes the extra mile to make sure each implementation is a success by having dedicated implementation engineer and UX designer build and design your search solution.

Support: AddSearch vs. Swiftype vs. Algolia

Customer support is super important. AddSearch’s support has been praised by users in customer feedback and public reviews.
AddSearch strives to respond within 1 business day to customers with any questions: from pricing to technical issues. Live chat is available most of the time and is accessible from the dashboard for fast problem-solving.
Swiftype has an email support channel open to all customers and offers response time SLA to enterprise users. Algolia provides Standard and Premium customers with full email support and refers to the community forum for the rest. Implementation support is available upon request.

Pricing: AddSearch vs. Swiftype vs. Algolia

All three search providers have several price tiers. Their pricing is publicly available on their websites. If you compare the preium pricing AddSearch is 33% to 50% cheaper overall in premium and enterprise plans.

AddSearch pricing

Conclusion: which search is best for your website?

It is important to consider the following while choosing the right search solution provider:

• Ease of Set Up: AddSearch goes the extra mile to make sure each implementation is a success by having dedicated implementation engineer and UX designer build and design your search solution.
• Customer Support: AddSearch provides live chat support for all of their customers and do not make the customer suffer while waiting for an answer for many days.
• Pricing: AddSearch is 33% to 50% cheaper overall in premium and enterprise plans