Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

SearchWP VS Apache Solr

Compare SearchWP VS Apache Solr and see what are their differences

SearchWP logo SearchWP

Instantly improve the search experience of your WordPress site today with SearchWP, the best WordPress search plugin you can find!

Apache Solr logo Apache Solr

Solr is an open source enterprise search server based on Lucene search library, with XML/HTTP and...
  • SearchWP Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-09-11
  • Apache Solr Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-28

SearchWP features and specs

  • Improved Search Accuracy
    SearchWP enhances WordPress's default search functionality by indexing content more comprehensively, handling custom fields, PDFs, products, and more, which results in more accurate search results.
  • Customization Options
    It offers a wide range of settings to customize search algorithms according to user needs, allowing for fine-tuned control over search results.
  • Integration with WordPress Plugins
    SearchWP seamlessly integrates with popular WordPress plugins such as WooCommerce, ACF (Advanced Custom Fields), and WPML, enhancing the search functionality across different types of content.
  • User-friendly Interface
    The plugin provides an intuitive interface that makes it easy for site administrators to configure search settings without extensive technical knowledge.
  • Analytics and Reporting
    SearchWP provides detailed search analytics, allowing site owners to gain insights into user behavior and refine search capabilities based on actual data.

Possible disadvantages of SearchWP

  • Cost
    SearchWP is a premium plugin, and the cost may be a drawback for smaller websites or those with limited budgets, as it requires a subscription for continued use.
  • Performance Impact
    Depending on the site's size and complexity, SearchWP might use additional resources, potentially impacting site performance and speed.
  • Learning Curve
    For users unfamiliar with search configuration and technical settings, there may be a learning curve to fully utilize SearchWP's comprehensive features.
  • Potential Compatibility Issues
    As with many plugins, there might be occasional compatibility issues with other plugins or themes that could require troubleshooting or support.
  • Overadvanced for Simple Sites
    For very simple websites with minimal search needs, the extensive features of SearchWP might be unnecessarily complex or redundant.

Apache Solr features and specs

  • Scalability
    Apache Solr is highly scalable, capable of handling large amounts of data and numerous queries per second. It supports distributed search and indexing, which allows for horizontal scaling by adding more nodes.
  • Flexibility
    Solr provides flexible schema management, allowing for dynamic field definitions and easy handling of various data types. It supports a variety of search query types and can be customized to meet specific search requirements.
  • Rich Feature Set
    Solr comes with a wealth of features out-of-the-box, including faceted search, result highlighting, multi-index search, and advanced filtering capabilities. It also offers robust analytics and joins support.
  • Community and Documentation
    Being an open-source project, Apache Solr has a strong community and comprehensive documentation, which ensures continuous improvements, updates, and extensive support resources for developers.
  • Integrations
    Solr integrates well with a variety of databases and data sources, and it provides REST-like APIs for ease of integration with other applications. It also has strong support for popular programming languages like Java, Python, and Ruby.
  • Performance
    Solr is built on top of Apache Lucene, which provides high performance for searching and indexing. It is optimized for speed and can handle rapid data ingestion and real-time indexing.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Solr

  • Complexity
    The initial setup and configuration of Apache Solr can be complex, particularly for those not already familiar with search engines and indexing concepts. Managing a distributed Solr installation also requires considerable expertise.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running Solr, especially for large datasets, can be resource-intensive in terms of both memory and CPU. It requires careful tuning and adequate hardware to maintain performance.
  • Learning Curve
    The learning curve for Apache Solr can be steep due to its extensive feature set and the complexity of its configuration options. New users may find it challenging to get up to speed quickly.
  • Consistency Issues
    In distributed setups, ensuring data consistency can be challenging, particularly for users unfamiliar with managing clustered environments. There may be delays or issues with synchronizing indexes across multiple nodes.
  • Maintenance
    Ongoing maintenance of a Solr instance, including monitoring, tuning, and scaling, can be labor-intensive. This requires dedicated effort to keep the system running efficiently over time.
  • Limited Real-time Capabilities
    Although Solr provides near real-time indexing, it may not be as effective as some specialized real-time search engines. For applications requiring truly real-time capabilities, additional solutions might be necessary.

SearchWP videos

SearchWP Plugin Review

More videos:

  • Review - SearchWP Two Minute Overview
  • Review - SearchWP Overview

Apache Solr videos

Solr Index - Learn about Inverted Indexes and Apache Solr Indexing

More videos:

  • Review - Solr Web Crawl - Crawl Websites and Search in Apache Solr

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to SearchWP and Apache Solr)
Custom Search
16 16%
84% 84
Custom Search Engine
0 0%
100% 100
Web Development Tools
100 100%
0% 0
WordPress Developement
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare SearchWP and Apache Solr

SearchWP Reviews

Best WordPress Search Plugins (Top 10+ Reviewed)
SearchWP Live Ajax Search WordPress plugin is powered by SearchWP. It is a type of live search plugin that comes with many features and functionality like autocomplete search queries. This plugin is trusted by more than 60k WordPress users.
19+ Best WordPress Search Plugin(s) - Comparison+Tips (2022)
One area where SearchWP shines is in its ability to search within PDFs of other documents. If you use them on your site, users can search within them as well as within your site. SearchWP costs $99 for a single site, $149 for up to 5 sites and $299 for unlimited sites.

Apache Solr Reviews

Top 10 Site Search Software Tools & Plugins for 2022
Apache Solr is optimized to handle high-volume traffic and is easy to scale up or down depending on your changing needs. The near real-time indexing capabilities ensure that your content remains fresh and search results are always relevant and updated. For more advanced customization, Apache Solr boasts extensible plug-in architecture so you can easily plug in index and...
5 Open-Source Search Engines For your Website
Apache Solr is the popular, blazing-fast, open-source enterprise search platform built on Apache Lucene. Solr is a standalone search server with a REST-like API. You can put documents in it (called "indexing") via JSON, XML, CSV, or binary over HTTP. You query it via HTTP GET and receive JSON, XML, CSV, or binary results.
Source: vishnuch.tech
Elasticsearch vs. Solr vs. Sphinx: Best Open Source Search Platform Comparison
Solr is not as quick as Elasticsearch and works best for static data (that does not require frequent changing). The reason is due to caches. In Solr, the caches are global, which means that, when even the slightest change happens in the cache, all indexing demands a refresh. This is usually a time-consuming process. In Elastic, on the other hand, the refreshing is made by...
Source: greenice.net
Algolia Review – A Hosted Search API Reviewed
If you’re not 100% satisfied with Algolia, there are always alternative methods to accomplish similar results, such as Solr (open-source & self-hosted) or ElasticSearch (open-source or hosted). Both of these are built on Apache Lucene, and their search syntax is very similar. Amazon Elasticsearch Service provides a fully managed Elasticsearch service which makes it easy to...
Source: getstream.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apache Solr should be more popular than SearchWP. It has been mentiond 19 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

SearchWP mentions (2)

  • Ask HN: What is a good Jetpack Search alternative for WordPress websites?
    Https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-search-with-algolia/ Or if you don’t need so many records we had good success with SearchWP up to about 90k records with a few thousand taxonomy tags. https://searchwp.com/. - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • How to only make pdf researchable ?
    Https://searchwp.com/ Https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-add-pdf-indexing-and-searching-in-wordpress/. Source: about 2 years ago

Apache Solr mentions (19)

  • List of 45 databases in the world
    Solr — Open-source search platform built on Apache Lucene. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • Considerations for Unicode and Searching
    I want to spend the brunt of this article talking about how to do this in Postgres, partly because it's a little more difficult there. But let me start in Apache Solr, which is where I first worked on these issues. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • Swirl: An open-source search engine with LLMs and ChatGPT to provide all the answers you need 🌌
    Using the Galaxy UI, knowledge workers can systematically review the best results from all configured services including Apache Solr, ChatGPT, Elastic, OpenSearch, PostgreSQL, Google BigQuery, plus generic HTTP/GET/POST with configurations for premium services like Google's Programmable Search Engine, Miro and Northern Light Research. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Looking for software
    Apache Solr can be used to index and search text-based documents. It supports a wide range of file formats including PDFs, Microsoft Office documents, and plain text files. https://solr.apache.org/. Source: about 2 years ago
  • 'google-like' search engine for files on my NAS
    If so, then https://solr.apache.org/ can be a solution, though there's a bit of setup involved. Oh yea, you get to write your own "search interface" too which would end up calling solr's api to find stuff. Source: over 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing SearchWP and Apache Solr, you can also consider the following products

Ivory Search - Ivory Search is a WordPress search plugin that improves WordPress Search by providing advanced options to extend search or exclude specific content from search.

ElasticSearch - Elasticsearch is an open source, distributed, RESTful search engine.

Relevanssi - Relevanssi replaces the standard WordPress search with a better search engine, with lots of features and configurable options.

Algolia - Algolia's Search API makes it easy to deliver a great search experience in your apps & websites. Algolia Search provides hosted full-text, numerical, faceted and geolocalized search.

WebberZone Better Search - Better Search is a WordPress plugin that automatically replaces the default WordPress search with an enhanced contextual based search engine

Typesense - Typo tolerant, delightfully simple, open source search 🔍