Algolia offers AI-powered solutions to improve online search and discovery experiences, with tools for business teams and APIs for developers that help to improve user engagement and conversions across websites, apps, and e-commerce platforms.
$0
per month 10k search requests + 100k records
Guru
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
Guru is a knowledge platform designed to serve as what the vendor describes as an AI source of truth for enterprises. It connects information from tools like Slack, Teams, Google Workspace, Salesforce, and other systems into one governed, permission-aware knowledge layer. Guru delivers cited AI answers, chat, and research directly within existing workflows, to enable employees and AI assistants to access verified knowledge securely and efficiently. The platform combines…
$300
per month 10 seats (minimum)
Pricing
Algolia
Guru
Editions & Modules
Build
Free
per month Up to 10,000 search requests + 1 Million records
Grow Plus
Free / Pay as you go
per month 10K searches/month & 100K records included; $1.75 per extra 1K searches, $0.40 per extra 1K records
Grow
Free / Pay as you go
per month 10K search requests & 100K records included; $0.50 per extra 1K searches, $0.40 per extra 1K records
Elevate
custom
per year
Elevate
Custom
per year Custom search requests and records — volume-based discounts available
Self Serve
$30
per month per user
Enterprise
Custom
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Algolia
Guru
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
Optional
Additional Details
Pay as you go, scale instantly, or upgrade anytime for advanced features and capabilities.
Discount available for annual pricing. 10 seat minimum.
I'd definitely recommend Algolia for a business operating in the ecommerce space and looking to integrate search quickly. Using the tool is easy to set up and works well. Out of the box you can have search, autocomplete, and recommendations that are all integrated. If you integrate directly, Algolia works well for also using their internal A/B test system. Areas where Algolia can be harder to use are in user-generated marketplaces. On a site where you control / own / produce all your inventory of results, you are solely optimizing for revenue/conversion. When you have a platform where there are different creators for each item, you need to balance revenue optimization with trying to support the business goals of the sellers on your marketplace platform. Algolia offers less tooling there which can be difficult and will require you build additional tooling/monitoring for that. Given that need, you likely cannot use all of Algolia's UI tools like A/B testing.
Our Guru contains a lot of knowledge specific to our line of work. It's often where I start to fact check something, begin a blog post, research a company specific topic, etc. It excels at researching specific items, drafting new procedures, and keeping things organized into various collections. I can review answers to employee questions to ensure things are correct and step in when needed. It's honestly been the most helpful thing we've added.
Users get instant feedback as they type, even with complex filters like brand, model, price range, and financing eligibility. This speed significantly improves engagement and reduces bounce.
A user searching for “Camry 2020” or even “Camary 20” still sees relevant Toyota Camry listings from 2020. This reduces friction, especially on mobile where spelling errors are common.
Algolia handles multi-faceted filters efficiently. For example, a user can filter by location, transmission type, color, or inspection status without any lag.
We fine-tune the ranking of search results based on what matters to our business—like prioritizing cars with higher margins or better availability in key cities.
We can experiment with different ranking formulas or UI variations to improve KPIs like lead conversion or time-to-first-interaction.
Recent pricing model changes made Algolia considerably more expensive. I understand that companies change their models all the time, but my plan almost doubled in price overnight. They let me keep my legacy plan for as long as I wanted, but I had already outgrown it, so a small increase in demand caused big price spikes. It's still cheap for what it is though.
The documentation is generally good, but sometimes hard to navigate. I was trying to find examples of how to combine geo-queries with normal ones, and I couldn't find an example, but it wasn't actually hard to figure out.
Some of the advanced features can be hard to understand at first. This isn't really a con, as it just means Algolia is loaded with features, but I was a bit overwhelmed the first time I tried to customize an index.
The "My Library" session could be simplified. Whenever we access it, instead of going to "Following" Gurus, it can directly open the folders I created and save my favorite Gurus.
When keywords are not organized, it can be a little tricky to find a card if there are many similar articles.
When there are many updates on the same card, they are stacked at the top of the page, making it difficult to view the card.
Algolia is a great tool, we didn't have to build a custom search platform (using Elasticsearch for example) for a while. It has great flexibility and the set of libraries and SDKs make using it really easy. However, there are two major blockers for our future: - Their pricing it's still a bit hard to predict (when you are used to other kind of metrics for usage) so I really recommend to take a look at it first. - Integrating it within a CI/CD pipeline is difficult to replicate staging/development environments based on Production.
I rated Guru a 9 out of 10 for renewal likelihood because it has significantly enhanced our processes and customer satisfaction in the automotive rental company. Guru’s user-friendly interface and organized knowledge base make it easy to access and update essential information, which is crucial for maintaining high operational standards. The tool’s integration with other platforms, like the Guru Chrome extension, streamlines our workflow, increasing efficiency and productivity. One of the standout features is the ability to favorite cards, allowing quick access to frequently used information, which saves time and ensures accuracy in customer interactions. Additionally, Guru’s analytics feature helps us identify which resources need updating, ensuring our knowledge base remains relevant and effective. The only reason it’s not a perfect 10 is occasional slow performance and occasional inaccuracies in search results. However, these minor issues do not overshadow the overall benefits Guru provides. Its consistent updates and reminders further enhance our ability to deliver excellent customer support, making it an indispensable tool for our team.
Algolia has a good interface and they have done some improvements. However, some non technical users have a challenging time in the use for the first days of learning. But once the main aspects are learned is a straight forward operation
Guru is straightforward to pick up. Even if something takes a minute, I'm usually able to find a support article that answers my question quickly. Guru has served its purpose, and training others within our organization is very easy. It's very useful during the onboarding process. Usability is great.
I have never encountered an outage with Guru in the year+ we've had it. I also never encountered an outage at the previous company where I used Guru. It has been extremely reliable.
Performance is always a major concern when integrating services with our client's websites. Our tests and real-world experience show that Algolia is highly performant. We have more extremely satisfied with the speed of both the search service APIs and the backend administrative and analytic interface.
There is some occasional slowness, or multiple refreshes before content will load. This doesn't happen frequently, though, and I don't get complaints from teammates about it.
It’s non existent. No tech support and no customer service… my application was blocked and is currently inactive causing huge business disruption, and I’m still waiting days later for a response to an issue which could be resolved very very quickly if only they would respond. Very poor from a company of that size
The only reason I do not give it a a ten is because I think there is still some room for improvement in meeting the different time zone needs of their customers, but overall their support is top notch. Friendly, capable, and quick.
I would rate the in-person training for Guru a solid 9 out of 10. The session was incredibly valuable as it provided comprehensive insights into using Guru effectively. I learned a lot about the tool's functionalities, which significantly enhanced my proficiency and confidence in utilizing Guru for my daily tasks. The training was engaging, informative, and tailored well to ensure I could apply what I learned immediately. Overall, it was a highly productive and beneficial learning experience.
I would rate the online training for Guru a strong 8 out of 10. While it lacked the interactive nature of in-person sessions, the content was well-structured and delivered effectively. The training modules were clear and comprehensive, covering all essential aspects of using Guru. The flexibility of online training allowed me to learn at my own pace and revisit topics as needed. Overall, it provided a solid foundation and practical understanding of Guru's functionalities, making it a valuable learning experience despite the virtual format.
You will need a very strong team of guru champions in order to get EVERYONE and EVERYTHING on Guru, it takes some craziness and over talking about guru everywhere to get people to be exicted, contribute and use. If you are starting any kind of buisness and you need KB, just go for guru as fast as you can because when you will grow you will thank yourself.
While AWS's offering is a typically cheaper solution, it requires a lot of work to gain any of the core features of Algolia. The cost of dev time and long-term maintenance would be more than the costs incurred with Algolia, which is why it made the most sense financially. On the engineering side, we could give our stakeholders access to Algolia to adjust the indices themselves, which would allow us to focus on other work.
I prefer Guru because it's easy to follow, user-friendly, and really helps resolve different kinds of issues and concerns. We use it as the basis for the steps and instructions that we need to follow to make sure that we are providing effective resolutions to customers and that we are calibrated.
Guru is somewhat expensive compared to what our org is typically willing to spend on software solutions. Additionally, there is a price difference per seat when paid monthly versus annually, which was a big downside for us as my company didn't want to commit to an annual cost.
Overall is a scalable tool as the environment and the backend functions are the same and many things are done directly on the tool so without the need of further specific developments. However some things could be improved such as documentation for integration that could help in doing whitelabel solutions
Users who had abandoned our product (attributing slow search speeds as the reason) returned to us thanks to Algolia
We used Algolia as our product's backbone to relaunch it, making it the center of all search on our platform which paid off massively.
Considering we relaunched our product, with Aloglia functioning as its engine, we got a lot of press coverage for our highly improved search speeds.
One negative would be how important it is to read the fine print when it comes to the technical documentation. As pricing is done on the basis of records and indexes, it is not made apparent that there is a size limit for your records or how quickly these numbers can increase for any particular use case. Be very wary of these as they can quite easily exceed your allotted budget for the product.
Guru allows our team to quickly reference available learning/knowledge materials with our clients on a daily basis and provide better support at every outreach
With that said, spreading those same resources across two major global teams in the USA and Germany can lead to some inconsistencies. The i-frame process is not very intuitive for this scenario and our team treats policy/procedural differences as separate card or article entities.
Guru allowed our organization to pioneer and establish a dedicated knowledge team component, of subject matter experts who work in tangent with existing resources, create new ones, and vet collective knowledge.
