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Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

blog.algolia.com

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Re: Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

#91

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

smnrchrds wrote: post #87
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many local governments publish shapefiles (geojson) that have address information. You could parse out addresses and have a fairly simple free option. Since this data is based on property taxes, these data sets aren't going to be missing parcels (or the tax collector would be missing potential revenue).

That still leaves out a lot: unincorporated lands, First Nation reserves, small settlement where all the mail goes to a post office instead of individual buildings, etc. Also, one of the main benefits from Canada Post API is that it gives you the canonical address Canada Post uses to deliver packages. I don't think this always overlaps with addresses municipalities use to assess taxes. For example, I can imagine for…

Yeah, my initial suggestion likely misses some corner cases. One case I am fairly confident it covers is (not sure if correct term) mutual interest land ownernship (aka, condos). Each layer has the same shape, but they're stacked one top another; each layer is a billable portion of the interest (e.g., a single condo on the shared land).

A poor man's approach could be to query the publicly available data sets, and use that data when there's match. Then, only pay for queries that fall into the edge cases.

Re: Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

#92

Post by atonse »

jlemoine wrote: post #63
atonse wrote: post #6

We've loved algolia for the 2-3 sites we've used it for. The speed is unbeatable. I wish we could've used it for one of our HIPAA use cases (patient data). I could've rolled out powerful search for an internal site in a day, but instead I'm having to build in postgres full text search and looking longingly at them.

(I am the CTO and Co-founder), we are HIPAA compliant since 2020 and we can support your use case

Good to know. We’ll be in touch!

Re: Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

#93

Post by grouseway »

karterk wrote: post #34
grouseway wrote: post #28

For comparison, the old free plan used to be 10k records plus 100k searches. That would be $100/month now. I think the new plan makes sense if you're selling to sites with purchase intent, but for searching knowledgebases it seems like it's way too expensive -- the value per search just isn't there. Especially when using instant searching and counting each slightly debounced keystroke as a search.

I've been working on an open source alternative. It's dead simple to setup and run (including raft based clustering). It also integrates seamlessly with Instantsearch.js library. Would love to hear your feedback on Typesense: https://github.com/typesense/typesense

Tried it out with about 10k short docs and it works pretty well as a potentional algolia replacement. I had to use 'sort_by' : '_text_match:desc' to get good results.

I couldn't find a way to create synonyms, is this possible?

Is it also possible to control typo sensitivity like algolia? e.g. min chars for 1 typo, min chars for 2 typos.

The curation features looks handy, but I haven't tried it yet.

Install and config was a breeze which is appreciated.

I hope it takes off for you. Nice work.

Re: Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

#94

Post by karterk »

grouseway wrote: post #93
karterk wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been working on an open source alternative. It's dead simple to setup and run (including raft based clustering). It also integrates seamlessly with Instantsearch.js library. Would love to hear your feedback on Typesense: https://github.com/typesense/typesense

Tried it out with about 10k short docs and it works pretty well as a potentional algolia replacement. I had to use 'sort_by' : '_text_match:desc' to get good results. I couldn't find a way to create synonyms, is this possible? Is it also possible to control typo sensitivity like algolia? e.g. min chars for 1 typo, min chars for 2 typos. The curation features looks handy, but I haven't tried it yet. Install and config…

Thanks for the feedback. Synonyms is on the immediate roadmap, but not available at the moment.

> Is it also possible to control typo sensitivity

You can control overall number of typose with ?num_typos=1 -- there is no way to define min chars for a specific typo. The engine does make some intelligent decisions to optimize. For example, for a 2 letter query it does not use a num_typos=2 even if that is specified.

Glad to hear about the setup. Will continue to improve.

Re: Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

#95

Post by jschumacher »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #69
ysavir wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the GP, but I figure their point is as follows: If I'm running an e-commerce website, I don't mind pay-per-search since those searches may turn into sales, so the cost is justified. My income scales with search count, and the Algolia price is part of user acquisition costs. If I'm running a SaaS business, the search is a feature for customers who have already paid, so I don't see any further returns from the sear…

Does an e-commerce site search really need anything more than fuzzy matching on item names? It pay not be perfect, but if it provides relevant results 90% of the time, you're paying a big premium for SaaS search that may only net you a small tail end of additional sales.

In particular for ecommerce sites it pays to invest in search. A large percentage of transactions is initiated by search queries. You are correct that fuzzy matching will likely get you decent results. However, finding the right product 90% of the time or 98% of the time makes a huge difference if you have a high volume of transactions. Synonyms and a better spelling model can massively improve your results and the resulting conversion.

But search relevancy is only one part of the equation. Think about a physical store and how the milk is usually in the back and a few high margin items are close to the counter or strategically placed. The same can be true for an ecommerce store. If the search engine has the ability to take business metrics like revenue and margins, or customer data like loyalty programs or brand affinity into account, you can much better optimise for your desired business outcome.

We just recently switched one of the largest ecommerce retailers in Australia over from Algolia to Sajari by doing the above and increasing their conversion rate by 10%.

Re: Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

#96

Post by dvdhnt »

abri wrote: post #30
dvdhnt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, we do around ~5.1k queries on App Search and pay something like $200. Looking at Algolia (which we didn't go with because it was too expensive), the cost would be about even right now ($1.50 premium * 6). However, that doesn't include the elastic or kibana instance we get at the moment. Hopefully the cost doesn't grow too sharply.

How come you're paying $200 for 5.1k queries on App Search? 5k doesn't seem like a big number so I imagine the lower tier plans/configs like the $20-30 plans should be enough right? Right now I have the lowest configuration and I pay $25/month.

Woah. Err I don't handle billing but it looks like we got App Search through Elastic and it comes with the entire ELK stack behind it.

I know they are moving App Search to some kind of Elastic Enterprise service, perhaps we're dealing with that instead?

We use the analytics, clicks, and suggestion API's - idk if those are included at the base level or not.

Re: Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

#97

Post by yurisokolov »

jlemoine wrote: post #67
krasin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a dollar is for 1000 queries, a million queries costs $1000, not $10000.

(I am the CTO and co-founder). It seems like most people missed that we introduced volume discount in the model. On this example: - 1M queries per month $847 in full pay-as-you-go - 1M queries per month with yearly commitment cost $7200 per year ($600 per month)

1. You say the discounted cost for 1M queries per month with yearly commitment is $600 (= 1000 units, priced incrementally). But according to your website (https://www.algolia.com/pricing/) 1000 units cost: 10 units free + (90 units x $0.83) + (400 units x $0.70) + (500 units x $0.61) = 659.70 ! This would be $659.70 versus the $600 you stated. Am I understanding something wrong?

2. What would be the discounted cost for 10M and 100M queries per month with yearly commitment?

Re: Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

#98

Post by ctx_ »

Everyone seems really hyped with Algolia, before and after the pricing update but the major drawback i've seen is the pricing model that is still a big issue IMO.

Given you have 10K documents, if you want to make a "sort by something" you have to create a replica with another ranking configuration.

So if you want 4 sort criteria, you'll be billed for 40K document even if you have only 10k at start.

I've looked in competitors like Swiftype and even them point out this issue in the pricing page :

"Index once, sort all you want (No need to replicate engines to sort or filter your data in different ways. Once your data is indexed, it can be filtered, faceted and sorted at will.)"

Re: Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

#99

Post by jlemoine »

yurisokolov wrote: post #97
jlemoine wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I am the CTO and co-founder). It seems like most people missed that we introduced volume discount in the model. On this example: - 1M queries per month $847 in full pay-as-you-go - 1M queries per month with yearly commitment cost $7200 per year ($600 per month)

1. You say the discounted cost for 1M queries per month with yearly commitment is $600 (= 1000 units, priced incrementally). But according to your website ( https://www.algolia.com/pricing/ ) 1000 units cost: 10 units free + (90 units x $0.83) + (400 units x $0.70) + (500 units x $0.61) = 659.70 ! This would be $659.70 versus the $600 you stated. Am I understanding something wrong? 2. What would be the discounted cos…

1. Yes you miss the yearly discount. 1000 units = 12000 units per year = 7295/year

2. 10M/month with yearly commitment = $46895/year 100M/month with yearly commitment = $165895/year

Re: Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

#100

Post by yurisokolov »

jlemoine wrote: post #99
yurisokolov wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. You say the discounted cost for 1M queries per month with yearly commitment is $600 (= 1000 units, priced incrementally). But according to your website ( https://www.algolia.com/pricing/ ) 1000 units cost: 10 units free + (90 units x $0.83) + (400 units x $0.70) + (500 units x $0.61) = 659.70 ! This would be $659.70 versus the $600 you stated. Am I understanding something wrong? 2. What would be the discounted cos…

1. Yes you miss the yearly discount. 1000 units = 12000 units per year = 7295/year 2. 10M/month with yearly commitment = $46895/year 100M/month with yearly commitment = $165895/year

Thank you for the explanation!
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