Anna PogrebniakWe 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 | Swiftype | Algolia | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | From $25/month | From $79/month | From $29/month |
| Features | |||
| Result management | Ranking adjustments, typo tolerance for all plans; synonyms, promotions, search suggestions for Professional and higher | Ranking adjustments, typo, synonyms tolerance for all plans | Synonyms for all plans, ranking and promotions only for enterprise customers |
| Analytics | Shows popular, no click and no result keywords. Integration to Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics available. | Covers searches, clicks and insights. | Shows popular, no click, low CTR and no result keywords. Enterprise analytics shows geographical data and use of search. |
| Analytics retention | Unlimited analytics history available | From 7 days to 6 months (custom to premium) | From 7 days to 365 days |
| Search UI | Ready-made UI with customization. Search API and JavaScript library for complex solutions. | Ready-made UI with customization. Search API and JavaScript library for complex solutions. | Search API and JavaScript library for complex solutions. |
| User management | Advanced user management for account | User management set up at each index | No public information available |
| Self-learning algorithms | Available for all plans | At request for premium users only | Available for enterprise. Part of personalization tools |
| Personalization | Available for Premium and Enterprise | Not available | Available for enterprise |
| Setup | |||
| Implementation | From inserting a few lines of code to building complex customized solution with API. | From inserting a few lines of code to building complex customized solution with API. | System to push content to Algolia is required to set up crawling. Then building UI with API. |
| Platforms supported | All | Most, no support for Ajax, JavaScript and private websites | All, if you build integration |
| Multiple domains | From 2 to 20 domains in one index (custom for enterprise) | 1 domain (+$30/each additional) | Each domain is required to have a separate licence |
| Support | Email and live chat support for all customers | Email support | Email support and live chat during implementation for Pro and Enterprise users |
Compare by
Feature and Tools
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 incuding. 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 enterprise customers.
Analytics
AddSearch provides basic search analytics that cover popular and no click keywords as well as keywords that don’t return any results. Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics integrations are available for anyone with Professional plan or higher. Swiftype and Algolia analytics are more advanced, giving access to search insights by geography, CTRs or search category used.
Analytics Retention
At AddSearch, we provide unlimited access to search analytics history, while at Swiftype retention is limited to 7 days or 6 months depending on the plan (custom for enterprise) and at Algolia – from seven days to one year, depending on the plan.
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 JavaScript library. By 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 extensive developer toolset including a building blocks library and the search UI can be coded with the help of these tools.
User Management
AddSearch has an advanced user management tool that allows you to manage which user has access to 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 and Algolia doesn’t mention user management.
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 status of the user 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
Search setup is the major difference between the three platforms. While setup is simple and fast for AddSearch and Swiftype, Algolia’s implementation could become a complex and long project and can not be done without the help of developers.
Swiftype and AddSearch implementation
In the simplest setup, both AddSearch and Swiftype can be set up within minutes by adding a few pre-defined lines of code to the website. Both platforms provide API and JavaScript libraries for customization of search UI.
Above you can see an example of a search bar implemented by AddSearch customers. There’s the AddSearch search widget, composed by simple pre-defined lines of code.
On the second example, you can find search built using the AddSearch API. AddSearch also provides extensive implementation support.
AddSearch is platform-agnostic, which means that it can crawl any content on any CMS, while Swiftype has certain limitations to the website’s platform, including inability to crawl AJAX and JavaScript websites or certain private websites.
Algolia implementation
Algolia’s implementation is very different to 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 certain script which connects their own platform with Algolia’s system.
Although this is certainly a costly and time-consuming constrain for most businesses, Algolia is perfect for complex databases and for data which is not publicly available for crawlers.
Support
Customer support is super important and 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 Pro and enterprise customers with full email support and for the rest, refers to the community forum. Implementation support is available upon request.
Pricing
All three search providers have several price tiers and their pricing is publicly available on their websites. Algolia and Swiftype prices are based on the number of search queries and operations, which can’t be known in advance. AddSearch has transparent and predictable pricing based on the features and number of documents (pages) indexed on the website. Here’s a look at the pricing in more detail:
AddSearch pricing
AddSearch offers four pricing plans ranging from $25/month for a simple search bar to a complex tailored solution for enterprises.
All AddSearch plans include ranking tools, Search API, language-specific features and fast and reliable customer support. The more advanced plans have many additional features and, for example, SLA and implementation support available.
Swiftype pricing
Swiftype’s pricing offers $79/month, $199/month and a custom plan. Plans differ in number of documents, crawling frequency and search management features. AddSearch’s and Swiftype’s offerings are similar, however with AddSearch you can set up more complex solutions at a similar or even lower price.
We made a simple comparison chart between AddSearch Professional plan and Swiftype Pro plan.
| AddSearch Professional | Swiftype Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $99 / month | $199 / month |
| Documents | 10k (+$25 per additional 10k) | 10k (+$25 per additional 5k) |
| Queries | Unlimited | 100k |
| Domains | 10 | 1 (+$30 per each additional) |
| Analytics | Pro (all analytics history) | Pro (6 months analytics history) |
| Result Management (Content Promotion, Synonyms and Autocomplete) | ✔ | ✔ |
| Typo Tolerance | ✔ | ✔ |
| PDF / Document Indexing | ✔ | ✔ |
| User Management | Advanced | Standard |
| AJAX Crawling | ✔ | - |
Algolia pricing
Algolia has both a free offer for developers for small personal projects and a business offering starting from $29/month. All the developer plans cover basic functionality and little to no result management features and support.
Conclusion: which search is best for your website?
If you’re looking at AddSearch and Swiftype, the decision is, of course, up to you. Here at AddSearch we are obviously working hard to make the best search solution for you and your website. Finally, here is a list of features that we think you’ll love about AddSearch:
- Advanced result management toolset for any needs
- Simple and straightforward search setup with implementation support at your disposal
- 100% customizable design: from search UI to look and feel
- Search analytics that cover most popular and low CTR keywords as well as keywords returning no result
- Transparent and predictable pricing
- Fast and friendly customer support
However, if you have a complex database platform, or if you are looking to set up search personalization and have spare development resources, then Algolia might be the right choice for you.
