What is the best extension for search on magento 2.3?

i have a magento 2.3 install on DO(did it with @digitalstartup youtube video help) and now have configured elasticsearch to be used with it.

I was earlier using searchanise for powering my results. Searchanise was giving me a lot of other facilities in terms of product suggestion, synonyms, marketing, etc. However I am not getting that with elasticsearch (default from magento 2.3). I dont even know what all features are provided by elasticsearch on magento 2.3.

  1. It would be great if someone could enlighten about features which are provided by elasticsearch on magento 2.3(default)

  2. Can anyone suggest a better search engine/extension which does not have a monthly expenditure.

I had homed on to mirasvit extensions ( Sphinx ultimate ,elasticsearch ultimate) and other extension providers like amasty.

Can anyone here tell me if they have faced any difficulty or have any experience dealing with similar problem.

I will also configured ELK stack to be used with magento instance so that I get total analytics about my store.But thats another story (I really have no idea what I am doing with those- its experimental)

@digitalstartup you are doing a wonderful job, Many thanks to you.

Hi @doctor,

Thanks for the positive comment. We used Solr back in the days of Magento 1 - But the implementation of it was so sketchy that Indexing used to break all the time. On another instance of Magento 1, I was using a service called Searchanise and it was great for what we needed at the time.

As for Magento 2.3, I haven’t upgraded any of my Production environments yet - Because I’m waiting for all the bug fixes in 2.3.1 first. Therefore, I’ve not gotten around to installing/integrating/testing Elasticsearch just yet. It’s actually one of the first videos I plan to do when 2.3.1 comes out. I’ll let you know what I learn as and when that happens.

By the way, it was my understanding that Elasticsearch was free if you’re self-hosting it - Am I wrong? How much are you paying if you don’t mind me asking?

As for the features of Elasticsearch, this is what’s listed in the Magento 2.3 Official Documentation:

  • Quick and advanced searches on products in the catalog
  • Support for multiple languages
  • Support for stop words and synonyms
  • Indexing does not impact customers until reindex is completed (Elasticsearch returns search results based on the last generated index until the new one has been completely indexed so there’s no disruption to customers.)
  • Accurate, performant, and scalable
  • Works well out of the box
  • Easy to horizontally scale
  • Supports real-time data and analysis
  • Can be used as a document-oriented data store
  • Applications in framework beyond search, including reporting, personalization, performance, and storage
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Hello @digitalstartup

Thanks Craig for the kind insight .

I have installed elasticsearch( free if you self host it- just like discourse) . I have taken a 4 Gb ram server ( minimum this is recommended as I was getting errors in the 2Gb Ram install. The installation can be done on ubuntu or centos and is an easy process ( compared to magento) , Just google and U can find plenty of links for installing that.

I was with searchanise till now and it was a very decent service with a competitive pricing , but I am planning a healthcare website and therefore data access to anyone can be a potential problem.

Therefore I have decided to go with elastic and trying to figure out how to best use it.

If I have trouble with default elastic in magento I plan to go with mirasvit( sphinx or Elastic ) extensions since they provide features that are not there in default elasticsearch( for example autocomplete and others). I coudnt find reviews of other search extensions so I am not sure how others behave.

Speaking of 2.3.1 I told my software company to upgrade from 2.2.6 to 2.3 to be able to use elastic but I guess I should have waited too. WHen do you expect the fresh version to be out?

Very wise!

It’s only down to experience, that I tend to hold off the “big” updates. To be honest, the only reason I was considering Elasticsearch was because I read in a 2.3 announcement that their no-longer going to support standard MySQL engine moving forward because it’s awful and have instead moved Elasticsearch support from Commerce to Open Source Edition.

To answer your question, I’m not sure when to expect 2.3.1. I figured it should have been out by now…

Anyway, I’d love to get an update on how you get on with Elasticsearch/Mirasvit module, if you can keep us posted.

Hello @digitalstartup,

Good Evening.

Follow up to the search extension, As of now i was able to configure a self hosted elasticsearch engine with default magento 2.3 .
However it was returning zero results, so i was perplexed. But finally i was able to fix it. there are two things - one is indexing by the elasticsearch engine and then refreshing the cache through admin or command line. once that was done it started working.

however the search is not very relevant in order and even verbatim product names return top most result as totally different product. the relevant one was 4th or 5th. Pls check this as this contradicts the most basic reasons elastic rose to fame- relevance.

I tried to talk to a Mirasvit Customer care executive wanting to buy Mirasvit Elastic Search Extension. I pointed out two reviews which were verbatim and asked if it was fake- he got angry and said u dont trust us, and cancelled my coupon and said dont buy our extension. After some time he returned and although didnt offer an apology but agreed on the fact that it was duplicacy and deleted that review. No one should judge Mirasvit on my experience but I didnt find any reviews on any other site apart from mirasvits own site, so i am wary. I might have angered the customer care executive by finding fault but really I just wanted to be sure about my investment in an extension. Other that that I believe Mirasvit is considered a great company because my developer said Mirasvit extension is the best and they deal wit magento a lot!!

Not only Mirasvits extensions but there is little info on how elasticsearch extensions from other companies behave… SO I urge anyone having any experience to kindly offer any light on search extensions – Just share whatever search extension you are using and what are the advantages and disadvantages, how is the customer support, what other extensions are compatible , what are not etc.

I am still in search of a good search extension and will let you know when I buy one.

Thanks craig for starting this platform. Hope to see you shed some light on this issue .

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Thank you so much for the follow-up, @doctor.

It’s interesting that the search results didn’t return what you expected. I’m kinda looking forward to researching this in more detail (whenever I find the time).

In regards to Mirasvit, it’s disappointing that you received the response you did. I’m a personal customer of Mirasvit and I think the products I’ve used so far a great. But I’ve never had to reach out to them before.

Hopefully, it was just a bad day for someone over there - But it’s still no excuse. As a consumer you’re allowed to have doubts and concerns. It’s up to a companies representatives to give you ease and confidence. Well, this is the my point of view from a Sales/Customer Support background anyway.

When I finally start looking into this, I’ll update this post with my findings as well.

Thank you again for the update.

Hello @digitalstartup,

Thanks for your reply.

You are right , someone was just having a bad day there, he said he would cancel the coupon but he never cancelled it.

After reading your review of mirasvit i have gone ahead and bought their elasticsearch ultimate extension. I will keep updating once I use the extension.

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Hello there,

Good morning. Its been sometime and i thought i will update on mirasvits elasticsearch extension.

I am having some small problems with it as there is some heavy customisation on my store with extensions from another company but i am sure they will be fixed. the mirasvits team have been on the job of fixing issues but its taking time. I hope they do it soon.

I will post a comprehensive review of how I felt the extension was and that is why i am avoiding the review till all things are sorted out.

@digitalstartup I will be updating that in the relevant section and post the url here.

Once again, great to be involved in the community.

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Hope you can update us when you get things working. We also have used Searchanise and find it great, inexpensive but are also looking at elastric search because of what it promises. So, if you don’t mind we will wait for your report.

Hello guys,

Thanks for taking time to read.

From what I can make out till now that mirasvit is a great company. They have been pretty responsive and I am happy with how things are progressing with them( some issues are there and they are sorting it out one by one)

My site is slightly complicated so they are still working on it , but they already solved some issues which I think were pretty custom to my site. I like this as each one of us has a different requirement.

Will update again, once all issues are sorted.

Ask can me anything you want in specific , I will answer once I possible.

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As a matter of fact, I have been waiting for months to find a good tutorial about elasticsearch.
I can’t wait to release a video tutorial from Craig how to install and set up elasticsearch.
By the way, I bought a theme what name is Martfury and this theme use elasticsearch and elasticsuite on the demo site.
https://martfury.magebig.com/
If you are interested, check this elasticsuite too and inform us about this extension.

I’ll probably do the Elasticsearch setup after I do the 2.3.1 upgrade video (next month). It’s something I need to implement on my Production project, so I need to work out how to do it at some point anyway.

Hello craig,

I have tried the elasticsearch(default) of magento and i feel it was too bland - Product suggestions with an option to see their images ,price rating and info. Stop words, synonyms and other important features are not there and it really does not have the kind of admin control other extensions have.

I feel buying a good elasticsearch extension is worth the price if you can afford it. Mirasvit has been great with their support and I would recommend it. their extension is also top notch with many options which give a lot of control how you want ur search to show and what you want to show.

I could not see the elasticsearch functions like autocomplete or suggestions being triggered. so I am not quite sure how it would function.

Other options for elasticsearch extensions which i thought were very promising were–

  1. Amasty
  2. Wyomind

Looking forward to the tutorial from craig for elasticsearch and learn from it.

Regards,
Manish

A post was split to a new topic: Mirasvit Elasticsearch Ultimate for Magento 2

Hello community,

Greetings.

I think I am ready with my review of mirasvit extension and their support. The reason I am including support in the review is because any software might have glitches despite being a robust one, because generally we have a lot of other extensions installed.

My review of Mirasvit Elasticsearch Ultimate for Magento 2

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A post was split to a new topic: Problems when switching to Elasticsearch

We’ve been using many Magento searching tools and I must say in the self-hosted solutions Mirasvit always has been the best. In both Magento 1 and 2.

Using Elastic is must now so the options are Mirasvit, Wyomind and Amasty. I’ve purchased Mirasvit and it’s great as always. But unfortunately for those who are using Amasty Layered Navigation (Pretty popular) there are conflicts between the two and can’t work together well now. (Hope they fix it soon) So for now if you are using Amasty Layered Navigation the only solution is Amasty Elastic. I’ve used it on a project (still testing) and it’s not bad but my heart is still with Mirasvit.