4 Leading Enterprise Search Software to Look For in 2023

In this post, we want to guide you through the top 4 enterprise search software solutions covering their pros and cons to help you make the right decision for your business.

Specifically, you’ll learn:

• What are the top enterprise search solutions?
• What are they used for and their pricing
• Key features and reasons to use each system
• Top companies that use these tools.

Besides, we provide a comparison matrix of these tools to bring a high-level overview of them for your guidance.

It’s high time to share our research data and see what tool suits you best.

Why Use Enterprise Search Software

Today, more and more people tend to Google any question to find a relevant solution for any aspect of life from household equipment to business issues.

This reality of technological progress allows us to find, analyze, and store data without some extra movements.

According to the Internet Live Stats Tracker, approximately 40,000 users search for information on Google every second.

So, 3.5 billion searches a day and 1.2 trillion searches a year. Impressive, isn’t it?

The Number of Google Search Requests

It means that people constantly want to know more valuable content and are ready to consume it.

Moreover, data search becomes an essential and must-have attribute for businesses of any scale.

The same is right when users interact with your website or application. They want to get relevant data immediately.

As Carly Fiorina, former executive, president, and chair of Hewlett-Packard Co. once said:

The more valuable and trending insights your business gets, the better becomes your decision-making process.

Here comes advanced enterprise search software that can greatly boost your business efficiency and improve customer service for your clients.

However, how to choose the most suitable and relevant technology solution to improve the search experience on your application or website?

We have prepared a detailed guide of the top 4 enterprise search systems with a comparison table that will help you make the right decision for your business.

Let’s take a closer look at the main market players.

4 Best Enterprise Search Software

Elasticsearch

Established: 8 February 2010

Elasticsearch pricing:

• Standard – $16/month
• Gold – $19/month
• Platinum – $22/month
• Enterprise – individual

What is Elasticsearch?

It is one of the most popular open-source enterprise search software in the Big Data industry with embedded JSON REST API that is built on Apache Lucene and Java.

Elasticsearch was released to establish multitenant-capable full-text search and analysis of a large amount of data.

The tool’s opportunities make Elasticsearch a perfect choice for both middle and enterprise-scale projects that need more resources.

What Сompanies Use Elasticsearch?

Elasticsearch is a popular system used by such brands as Trivago, HubSpot, Walmart, Shopify, Asana, GitHub, Slack, Stack Overflow, Udemy, Fiverr, GitLab, SoundCloud, Uber, 9GAG, and Ascendix Tech.

Top Companies That Use Elasticsearch

What Are the Key Features of Elasticsearch?

• Scalability and fault tolerance

Elasticsearch allows you to scale easily by adding new servers in progress and the enterprise search software will automatically distribute the load amongst them.

What’s more, if some search nodes shut down, the system still stores the data and keeps working without fail.

• Multitenancy

You can dynamically organize several search flows in terms of a single Elasticsearch object.

For example, it becomes useful when dealing with multilanguage systems and multiuser platforms with large volumes of personal data.

• Operational stability

Elasticsearch fully takes care of your system processing and logs all database changes within several cluster units which greatly increases fault tolerance and data safety in terms of any fails.

• Schema-free

This enterprise search software allows to upload a common JSON object and forget about data structures. It becomes possible as Elasticsearch will automatically index the entire data and add it to the search base.

This feature makes Elasticsearch a super convenient and easy-to-use tool, especially when dealing with fast prototyping.

The Key Features of Elasticsearch

Elasticsearch Use Cases at Ascendix

At Ascendix, we actively use Elasticsearch to deliver high-quality enterprise search software that meets business needs and end-users’ expectations.

What’s more, we have built our own software products that help thousands of users transform their data search, management, and storage into an easy-to-use and powerful way of generating data-driven results to improve their decision-making process.

Where Did We Use Elasticsearch?

For example, Ascendix software developers have delivered an advanced listing portal MarketSpace for brokers to help them boost marketing and sales through powerful search and filtering tools that allow to find, analyze, store, and modify data easily and fast.

Ascendix Tech MarketSpace Case Study

Why Do We Use Elasticsearch at Ascendix?

The key reason Ascendix development teams choose Elasticsearch is the high performance it provides.

So, we can avoid 1-3 seconds for a search result to be generated and provide our clients with immediate data without solid delays.

You may ask the following question: “Why is Elasticsearch so fast?”

The answer lies in the essence of shards which are the set of inverted indices.

Simply speaking, this enterprise search software generates multiple inverted indices tables each time after indexing which saves much time for both the program and end-users that get immediate results.

Algolia

Established: 2012

Algolia pricing:

• Free – up to 10 units (1,000 requests)
• Standard – $1/unit/month
• Gold – $1.5/unit/month
• OEM – individual

Algolia is a SaaS-based enterprise search software using RESTful API for websites and applications. Search Algolia API provides high performance and less than 10 ms of data response on average.

The product was released in 2012 in the US and has acquired $110m of investment funds within several years.

Companies That Use Algolia

Algolia is one of the leading enterprise search software solutions utilized by such giants as Medium, Zendesk, LVMH, Dior, Discovery, Decathlon, Lacoste, Under Armour, Stripe, Slack, and others.

Top Companies That Use Algolia

Why Use Algolia?

• Site search

Algolia allows you to generate the most relevant search results according to your requests.

It becomes possible as the Algolia search engine considers the context, request type, possible typos, synonyms, multiple languages, and much more.

• Voice search

This enterprise search software provides you with a real-time voice search feature within multiple devices like desktop, mobile, or even voice assistant devices.

This way, Algolia allows you to save much time on the process of search result generation.

• Geo search

Algolia search empowers you to customize the strategy for ranking search results based on geodata. It means that you can limit the search results to a specific street, city, or continent.

• Mobile search

This enterprise search system provides frontal components for iOS, Android, and other platforms to improve the mobile search experience.

Algolia algorithms consider specific concepts, encrypting patterns, and the best UX/UI practices to provide end-users with a smooth search experience.

The Core Reasons to Use Algolia

What Are the Key Features of Algolia Search?

• Search rules
• InstantSearch
• Personalization
• A/B testing
• Specific search API
• Algolia AI

The Key Features of Algolia

You can learn more details about each enterprise search software feature on their official website.

Azure Cognitive Search

Release date: 2008

Azure Search service pricing:

• Free – only 50 MB storage
• Basic – $73.73/month
• Standard S1- $245.28/month
• Standard S2 – $981.12/month
• Standard S3 – 1,962.24/month
• Storage Optimized L1 – $2,802.47/month
• Storage Optimized L2 – individual

It should be mentioned that the Azure cognitive search pricing is fully flexible to the needs of your enterprise. For example, you can decide whether to get more performance by gaining more queries per second or a higher document count each time you use the search. These alterations influence the costs that makes final pricing fully individual based on your needs.

What is Azure Cognitive Search?

It is a cloud search service by Microsoft with integrated AI features that allow to quickly identify and analyze relevant data of any scale.

Azure cognitive search allows you to build mobile and web applications with powerful enterprise search features.

Companies That Use Azure Search

Azure Cognitive Search is the #1 choice of such companies like Auto Trader Canada, Icertis, Howden, Real Madrid CF, Archive360, and Audioburst.

Top Companies That Use Azure Cognitive Search

Key Features of Azure Full-text Search

• Powerful indexing

Azure enterprise search software provides indexers that automate data ingestion and JSON serialization that greatly boost search performance.

• Data processing

Parsing, entity detection, and Aspire Staging Repository are the key components of Azure cognitive search that empower users with more efficient access and parsing of data, content sorting algorithms, and quick re-indexing of processes data.

• Query & Relevancy Ranking

Azure Search has different scoring profiles that help test and tune any ongoing relevancy that accelerates the generation of search results.

Key Features of Azure Cognitive Search

Swiftype

Release date: January 2012

Swiftype pricing:

• Swiftype App Search – $49/mo
• Swiftype Site Search – $79/mo

Swiftype search is a cloud-based and customizable software-as-a-service platform that allows your business to create a powerful search experience and work with data efficiently.

Established in 2012, the company has acquired $23 million and continuously improved the product.

Swiftype provides two SaaS products: Swiftype Site and App Search for both internal and external usage.

What Companies Use Swiftype?

Swiftype is an enterprise search software that competes with top tools being a choice of AT&T, Dr. Pepper, Samsung, Marketo, TechCrunch, Shopify, Duke, and SurveyMonkey.

Top Companies That Use Swiftype

Core Features of Swiftype

• Powerful Search Algorithm

Swiftype search provides spelling correction, bigram matching, stemming, auto synonymizing, and phrase matching tools out-of-the-box.

This way, you can get relevant results for any complicated request and find the data you are looking for without fail.

• Content ingestion and syncing

Leverage the benefits of highly-structured search data through JSON API and Crawler that allow you to capture content immediately with fresh results.

Deep customization opportunities empower you to create custom document types and record schemas within the real-time indexing.

• Deep analytics

A Swiftype site search is an advanced tool that enables you to get a clear understanding of what your audience and clients really want. Customers use the on-site search, you monitor the queries, track clickthrough rates, and adapt content to end-users’ needs and preferences.

• Real-time indexing

Swiftype app search allows you to search for data 100s of time a second and send or update documents on a regular basis. The embedded Documents API provides a bulk update feature that accelerates the way you modify search requests and reflects the engine immediately.

Besides, the internal Document Browser simplifies document management and allows you to analyze indexed documents, verify data integrity, and delete content right in the dashboard.

Main Features of Swiftype

Enterprise Search Software Comparison Matrix

Each search tool mentioned above has its benefits and drawbacks in terms of specific aspects.

In order to help you choose the best enterprise search software, let’s look at the comparison of Elasticsearch vs Algolia vs Azure vs Swiftype below.

You may ask the question “What are these DB-engines ranking and Finances Online resources about“, right? So, we want to shed the light on these platforms and their importance when comparing enterprise search software solutions.

First, DB-engines ranking is the world’s largest platform dedicated to DBMS (Database management systems) popularity ranking. It may seem unobvious but search engines are NoSQL database management systems so they are included in the platform’s ranked list.

The platform has a special score calculation algorithm that ranks the current and previous months’ popularity and compares it to the last year.

DB-Engines Ranking

What’s more, you can monitor the tools’ popularity using the trend chart functionality which provides you with the picture since 2013.

DB-Engines Ranking trend chart of search engines 2013-2021

Second, Finances Online is the leading business software discovery & research center platform which provides valuable market insights and product reviews.

Apart from a general overview, the resource provides a SmartScore rank for each enterprise search software which is calculated based on 9 components:

• Main functionality
• Collaboration features
• Customization
• Integration
• Ease of use
• General impression
• Help & support
• Security
• Mobility.

9 components of the SmartScore system

How to Choose the Best Enterprise Search Software Development Company?

The current IT market is overcrowded with software development companies that provide similar services and expertise.

This complicates the process of hiring a reliable and experienced technology partner who will deliver the exact enterprise search system that you need.

We want to provide you with a short checklist of the most critical and important factors you should pay attention to if you want to hire software developers that deliver the required value.

Solid technology expertise

If you want to implement a powerful and effective enterprise search software for your app or website, the choice of the right high-performance search engine tool will be critical for your project and based on your use cases.

So, we recommend paying your attention to the tech stack the software development company will use for your project delivery. Such tools as Elasticsearch, Algolia, Swiftype, and Azure Search should be used in 2021.

Portfolio of projects

Customer success stories are the biggest proof of the company’s contribution level. Case studies and materials clearly demonstrate the way development providers:

• Meet clients’ needs
• Solve technical challenges
• Cater to end-users’ demands
• Drive great business results.

What’s more, you can find portfolio works similar to your project idea and see what enterprise search solutions they have built.

It may help you better realize if a specific software development company can build the software you need.

Flexible engagement models

We recommend you choose software development companies that offer agile service models. This way, you get valuable flexibility in project development and an opportunity to adopt the most suitable engagement model you need.

At Ascendix Tech, we provide on-demand, dedicated, offshore, and blended teams of both US business analysts and project managers, and European software developers to optimize your development costs.

We know how different your project requirements and personal expectations may be.

So, we try to offer the most suitable and convenient service models so that you get high-quality enterprise search software and enjoy the project development process.

Maintenance and support services

Successful software development and deployment do not mean that your technology solution will work well all the time. Regular maintenance and support services are of utmost importance to reduce downtime rates and keep your enterprise search software error-free.

When hiring a software development company, always ask them if they have concierge and support staff that will handle errors and bugs after the deployment.

For example, we have maintenance and support teams that help thousands of users solve their challenges, problems, and applications’ bugs in a time-efficient way.

Bottom Line

As you can see, there are many high-quality enterprise search software solutions in the market. Each tool has its pros & cons, and there is no one-box solution for all demands.

Choose the most suitable and valid search engine for your particular project needs and requirements. We hope our detailed overview and Elasticsearch vs Algolia vs Swiftype vs Azure comparison matrix will help you make the best decision for your business idea.

Have you worked with any of the above-mentioned tools? Did we miss something? Please share your experience in the comments section below.