Choosing the right site search solution can significantly impact your business, especially when you aim to improve your website visitors’ experience. While Swiftype has been a go-to for many, its complexities and limitations often drive users to look for alternatives.
In this article, we’ll discuss five site search solutions you can use instead of Swiftype and compare Swiftype and AddSearch against each other to see which tool wins.
TL;DR: Best Site Search Solutions Similar to Swiftype
Here’s a quick look at the top Swiftype alternatives we’ll discuss in this article.
| Best For | Top Features | Pricing | |
| AddSearch | Scalable site search and recommendation engine | Advanced search plugins for WordPress and Shopify Site search analytics dashboard Advanced customization options | Starts at $129 per month |
| Relevanssi | WordPress search plugin | Custom excerpts with highlighted search terms Fuzzy matching for incomplete search terms Advanced search filters | Starts at $117.18 per year |
| Cludo | AI-powered site search | Custom banners Search recognition for misspellings and synonyms Dynamic deranking | Starts at $5,400 per year |
| Searchspring | All-in-one conversion site search for e-commerce websites | Predictive product bundling Semantic search Customizable merchandising controls, such as on-site banners | Starts at $599 per month |
| Loop54 | E-commerce product discovery engine | Predictive personalization Automated search result ranking and sorting Spell check and auto-complete | Custom pricing |
What is Swiftype?
Founded in 2012, Swiftype helps mid-market and enterprise businesses improve their website experience. It provides customizable search solutions that can be easily integrated into websites to help visitors find the information they are looking for quickly.
Top Features
- Customizable Search Interface: allows you to design the search experience to match your website’s look and feel.
- Search as a Service: operates on a cloud-based model, ensuring scalability and reliability without needing to manage search infrastructure.
- Relevance Tuning: offers control over search relevance algorithms to ensure the most relevant results are presented to users.
Why Look For a Swiftype Alternative?
Despite its decent search features, Swiftype users often look for other search site solutions for the following reasons.
1. Complex Setup
Its complex setup requires significant technical expertise. If you’re a non-technical team, you’ll likely need to pay a developer to help set things up, ramping up the costs easily. This makes Swiftype less suitable for businesses without in-house technical resources.
2. Compatibility Issues
Swiftype isn’t fully compatible with certain content management systems, which can affect its search function on your website. For example, it struggles with Magento’s CMS caching methods, causing single searches to be inaccurately recorded as multiple searches in your search analytics dashboard.
3. Restricted Features
Advanced site search features are mostly excluded from Swiftype’s pricing packages. You’ll need to purchase them separately, increasing the overall cost of the tool. For example, the Pro plan only supports a single domain — adding extra domains costs $30 each.
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The Best Swiftype Alternatives
Now that you know why users switch from Swiftype, let’s discuss the best site search solutions you can use instead.
1. AddSearch: Scalable Site Search Solution
AddSearch helps you convert website visitors into customers with fast, relevant, and customized search results. Our AI-powered site search tool makes it easy for users to find exactly what they’re looking for in a few clicks.
It also offers a recommendation engine that suggests relevant content to website visitors based on predetermined criteria, such as general purchasing habits or sales promotions.
Top Features
AddSearch offers several features, including:
- Advanced Shopify and WordPress plugins to speed up site search setup and implementation.
- An analytics dashboard that gives you a 360-degree view of visitors’ search behaviors on your website, including how often they search, what they search for, and whether they find it.
- Advanced customization options that allow you to set up your site search interface and experience as you like.
Pricing
AddSearch has three pricing plans:
- Professional: $129 per month
- Premium: $649 per month
- Enterprise: Contact Sales for pricing
You can try the Professional Plan for free for 14 days. If you opt for an annual subscription, you’ll get an attractive discount across all plans.
2. Loop54: E-commerce Product Discovery Engine
Loop54 is an AI-powered product discovery engine used for e-commerce platforms. It provides advanced search, navigation, and personalization capabilities to help customers find products more efficiently and accurately.
However, Loop54 has several drawbacks. First, its pricing isn’t available on the website. You’ll need to contact sales and wait for some time to get feedback. This can be a barrier for businesses looking for immediate information to make quick decisions.
Next, Loop54 has limited self-service capabilities. Even relatively simple tasks, such as handling synonyms, require assistance from the customer support team.
Top Features
- Predictive personalization
- Automated search result ranking and sorting
- Spell check and auto-complete
Pricing
Loop54 uses customized pricing, meaning you’ll need to reach out to the sales team for a quote.
3. Relevanssi: WordPress Search Plugin
Relevanssi is a plugin that enhances the default search functionality of WordPress websites. It is particularly useful for websites with large amounts of content, where the default WordPress search may not be sufficient to provide accurate search results.
It’s a decent choice for smaller websites looking for a budget-friendly site search solution. However, it lacks advanced site search functionalities like visual previews and faceted search, which are must-haves for enterprise websites.
Top Features
- Custom excerpts with highlighted search terms
- Fuzzy matching for incomplete search terms
- Advanced search filters
Pricing
Relevanssi has a free plan and two premium licenses.
- Annual License: $117.18 per year
- Permanent License: $407.42 for lifetime access
4. Searchspring: All-in-one Conversion Site Search For E-commerce Websites
Searchspring is an e-commerce search and merchandising platform designed to enhance the shopping experience on online retail websites. It allows retailers to create custom product displays, manage product ranking, and implement rules-based merchandising to highlight specific products or categories — increasing the likelihood of conversions.
That said, using Searchspring could hurt your website’s SEO performance. One user said that they switched some top-performing pages to Searchspring-powered pages as they loaded faster. However, these pages immediately lost ranking.
Top Features
- Predictive product bundling
- Semantic search
- Customizable merchandising controls, such as on-site banners
Pricing
Searchspring has three pricing plans:
- Essential: $599 per month
- Advanced: $799 per month
- Expert: $999 per month
5. Cludo: AI-Powered Site Search
Cludo is a search and insights platform designed to enhance website search functionalities and provide valuable data-driven insights.
It focuses on improving user experience through advanced search capabilities and actionable analytics. However, you need significant tech skills to set it up, especially for complex features like identifying content from multiple sources under a single domain.
Top Features
- Custom banners
- Search recognition for misspellings and synonyms
- Dynamic deranking
Pricing
Cludo’s pricing packages start at $5,400 per year. There are no limits on pages, files, or searches. You can also purchase add-on features like single sign-on.
What to Consider When Choosing a Swiftype Alternative
Here are the most important things to consider when vetting Swiftype alternatives.
1. Ease of Integration
Ensure the alternative is compatible with your current CMS or e-commerce platform to avoid integration issues. For example, AddSearch integrates with all content management systems, including Magento and Contentful. It also has native plugins for quick Shopify and WordPress integrations.
You should also consider the technical expertise needed to set up and maintain the software. If you don’t have an in-house developer, you should opt for an easy-to-deploy site search tool.
2. Pricing
Choose a tool that offers the best value for your budget. Assess the overall cost to make sure you’re getting a good deal. This includes any additional fees for extra domains, advanced features, and higher usage levels.
3. Features
Look for solutions that offer fast, accurate search results to enhance user experience. Consider whether it supports advanced site search features like AI-driven insights, auto-complete, spell check, relevance tuning, and faceted search to improve your website experience for visitors.
4. Scalability
Determine whether the solution can scale with your business growth without significant additional costs or technical adjustments. It should be able to handle increasing search volumes and product catalog sizes efficiently.
AddSearch vs. Swiftype: How We Compare
Let’s closely examine how AddSearch’s site search solution measures up against Swiftype to see if it’s a worthwhile replacement.
1. AddSearch vs. Swiftype: Pricing Packages
AddSearch offers more robust pricing packages than Swiftype. With the latter, you’ll need to purchase many features as add-ons on your regular plan. AddSearch’s packages already include advanced site search features like multiple domains, making them more cost-effective in the long run.
2. AddSearch vs Swiftype: Scalability
AddSearch’s pricing packages are built for scale from day one. Take our lowest-tier plan, for example. It already supports 10 domains and 100,000 monthly queries. This allows you to scale your site search functionality without upgrading to a more expensive tier.
Swiftype, on the other hand, only supports 50,000 queries and a single domain on its cheapest plan. If your site search needs exceed these, you’ll need to upgrade or purchase add-ons.
3. AddSearch vs. Swiftype: Website Compatibility
You can integrate AddSearch into any type of website or content management system, including Shopify and WordPress, and enjoy reliable site performance. Swiftype, on the other hand, can be buggy when synced with certain CMSs like Magento.
4. AddSearch vs. Swiftype: Ease of Use
Unlike Swiftype, AddSearch is really easy to set up and use. You don’t need to have advanced technical tools to implement our site search solution. Plus, we have a reliable support team on call if you need help with our tool.
Here’s what one of our customers says:
“Setting up and managing AddSearch is easy, it would even be easy for someone with limited technical experience. The interface is intuitive and user-friendly, and there’s documentation that walks you through the process. The customer support team is also fantastic. Whenever I’ve had a question, they’ve been quick to provide a solution.”
AddSearch: The Best Swiftype Alternative For Businesses
Given its scalable AI-powered search solution, rich feature set, and flexible pricing, AddSearch emerges as the best Swiftype alternative for businesses looking to enhance their website’s search experience.
Its ability to provide fast, relevant, and customized search results, alongside a recommendation engine and comprehensive analytics, positions AddSearch as a reliable site search solution for organizations of all sizes and industries.
Try AddSearch for free for 14 days, and let us know what you think!
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