We use the e-commerce solution. We were working with a client in the USA and developing some search tools for e-commerce.
Algolia AI Search
AlgoliaExternal reviews
452 reviews
from
and
External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
Somewhat satisfied
What do you like best about the product?
Direct connect to BigCommerce. User friendly platform, easy to navigate and see whats going on.
What do you dislike about the product?
Very limited in the information that is linked between BigCommerce and Algolia. Wish it was all information.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Algolia is allowing us to have a more robust search functionality. Eventually it will start recommending products.
Ease of Use, Ease of Implementation, Customer Support
What do you like best about the product?
Ease of Use, Ease of Implementation, Customer Support
What do you dislike about the product?
Limited synonyms, number of features, limited rule for keywords
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
rules, analytics, synonyms, a/b test
The smartest search and merchandising tool on the market
What do you like best about the product?
It uses our data in a really intelligent way, and is very good at presenting this back to you in a way that demonstrates its value, and performance against the norm.
What do you dislike about the product?
There's a steep learning curve for new users and the user interface and how it operates can be a bit daunting for non-technical team members.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It has removed the manual aspect of merchanding our collection pages search results and then showing us the additional value it has generated from doing this.
Easy user interface, despite being still relatively new to the tool it has been easy to navigate
What do you like best about the product?
Implementaion was much easier than previous tools and the support from Algolia has been incredibly helpful and informative.
What do you dislike about the product?
Some of the defaults such as number of results bought back from facets were hard to overwride and were not the clearest.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Getting facets and search attributes in, our previous tool struggled to get use out of all of our products attributes and was confused by certain search queries that our users were trying.
Algolia
What do you like best about the product?
I love the visual editor in Algolia, it is very easy to use. The analytics also provide very valuble insights that can be used to then create or edit rules or synonyms. As a daily user it is a very easy platform to navigate and was able to be learned very quickly.
What do you dislike about the product?
There could have been multiple rules created by different users that effect the same results, would be nice to be able to see all rules/synonyms together the effect a certain query.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Algolia is an easy way to control and optimize site search. After updating in the back end you can see all changes within second on the live site. Merchandising product is simple and straight forward. Our Algolia represneative is always suggesting new test ideas to further enhance our product, both for simple features we already have as well as new features that continue to roll-out and help improve out site (ie. Dynamic Re-ranking)
Fast and customisable search experience with real time results
What do you like best about the product?
The upsides of Algolia are fast search, scalability and ease of integration
What do you dislike about the product?
The downsides of Algolia are complexity and learning curve associated with it, reliability concerns
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Algolia is helping our users to discovers and narrow down relevant solutions they need from us quickly
Very useful and rapid
What do you like best about the product?
What I like the best is the loading time, which is under 1ms for all of our requests.
The customer support is really great and we deployed Algolia in a few hours for our stock.
The customer support is really great and we deployed Algolia in a few hours for our stock.
What do you dislike about the product?
Everything is not always "no-code" friendly, you better have some experience in development in order to understand every feature
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It can hold the whole stock of our company, and render it in a few milliseconds.
Algolia is displaying facets, and it helped us to launch the product quite easily, as we didnt have to developp everything thanks to instantsearch.
Algolia is displaying facets, and it helped us to launch the product quite easily, as we didnt have to developp everything thanks to instantsearch.
lightening fast search but too many indexes to manage
What do you like best about the product?
ease of use, easy to manage and fast search.
What do you dislike about the product?
there are too many indexes to manage for sorting. Not being able to get the accurate count for search result is also something on which Algolia should focus to solve.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
faster PLP pages and search. Most importantly it really shows the relevant results and supports the multi-languages.
Helps to power faster and easier
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
We were working with search products, brands, and different attributes specific to the product; it's faster and easier. The implementation is easy.
What needs improvement?
The deployment could be easier for beginners.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Algolia as a partner for a year and a half.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
50 users are using this solution.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was easy because I knew the backend remote. Without proper knowledge, the initial configuration would have had some problems.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend the solution.
Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Offers extensive customization options, allowing users to tailor search results to their specific needs
What is our primary use case?
I like to describe it as an embedded Google that you can tailor with your own information. You can input your proprietary information and modify the weights and configuration of the search to tailor the results for your clients or services, like for internal tooling.
I can have a built-in flexible search engine. We used it specifically to return results to our clients in terms of listings based on their search and geographic location.
What is most valuable?
I like the fact that it's very powerful. It has many fine-tuning configurations. Essentially, every single piece of information you pass through it is a free document you can tailor. This allows me to craft the information in a manner that it can be easily searched.
For example, with our listings, we tailored them based on the individual's name, geographic location, and information specific to us, such as access to golf clubs and tennis courts. This very narrow information could then be used as part of the search results, providing our clients with a very intuitive search service.
The idea is that good search results lead to better commercial opportunities and customer retention because clients are satisfied with an easy-to-use service. That was definitely the greatest aspect of Algolia - it's a very powerful search engine.
What needs improvement?
There are two problems. Number one, it's a bit pricey, especially when there are similar algorithms. There's one called Typesense, which we considered to lower our bill. Algolia is good for a startup because it allows you to bootstrap powerful functionalities quickly. But if that startup ends up growing and becomes quite successful, the cost of Algolia will balloon with it. So, I could imagine that Algolia might have difficulty retaining clients.
The other problem I had to deal with as the lead software engineer is the documentation. I was basically assigned a guy who had no idea how Algolia works, and I had to get it to work, which I did. But the documentation for the service is not as good as it could be. You can still figure it out, but Algolia has a lot of functionalities, not just the search engine. They have built-in components for different UI libraries. In our case, we were using React, and they have a third-party library that you can import to use Algolia services as React components.
It's great, but they have very little documentation for those kinds of third-party things. It's tough to use them if you don't explain to your potential developers how they're supposed to be used. I eventually had to call them directly and sit down with their engineers, and I realized that it's a great product, but they need to explain it better.
For how long have I used the solution?
I used Algolia as an embedded search engine. I was the lead software engineer for a US-based startup called Teach Me To, based in San Diego. I used it throughout my entire stay with the company, which was seven and a half months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Algolia is a powerful framework, so there are many ways the setup could have suboptimal results, and we actually experienced them. It's not 100% their fault; it was more about how we were integrating the program. For example, we were trying to return search results based on geographic location and put that on a map. We realized there were a lot of duplicate returns, with the same listing being returned as part of a big block of results. We didn't catch it because the pins on the map would overlap, so we would only see one pin when there were actually two of them.
The problem is that Algolia works like any cloud technology in terms of use. We were getting a bunch of redundant results that were nonetheless part of the billing because the configuration of the platform was wrong. That was part of my reason for fixing things that happened. It wasn't necessarily something wrong with Algolia, but rather with our integration of it. However, it's the kind of pitfall that developers should be aware of.
I would rate the stability an eight out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I believe the technology is scalable, but I have doubts as to whether the billing is scalable for any company. If you're a big, successful startup transitioning into a corporation, you might have the resources to build your own internal search engine because Algolia can get expensive unless they adjust their pricing.
How are customer service and support?
I'm very happy with it. I would give them ten out of ten. They were responsive, active, and even followed up to see if everything was okay and if we needed more support.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is fairly easy. It's not trivial, but it's not hard either. There are two sides to it:
- the application side and
- the cloud information side.
You have to make sure your information is correct on the cloud side to see it reflected on the application side. It is not 100% easy, but it is not necessarily hard because any good developer should be able to handle it.
Deployment time: It depends on the amount of data. They do have to index the information, so if you have less than a hundred thousand entries, it should be super quick. They have a great capability that allows you to demo it on a test set so you don't mess with your real-time production information. You can play around with Algolia on a development set and then pass it into production when you're ready.
However, if you have a lot of indices, let's say a million or more, it does take a couple of minutes to pass that information into the system, index it, and test it in development before passing it to production. It's not super slow, but it is worth mentioning.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
For any developer starting out, it is worth it. If you're already a successful startup and you have other worries, that would be a debate amongst the internal teams. But, it's worth it to bootstrap something.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We played around with Python, which was part of a different part of our stack, but we didn't consider other options.
When I came in, Algolia was already integrated into the product, so, I couldn't change the existing product, only improve upon it.
What other advice do I have?
It's a really great solution. The more you work with it, the more intuitive it gets. I think Algolia is onto something that is very valuable.
Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.
showing 21 - 30