Algolia vs SAP Commerce Cloud (formerly SAP Hybris)

• Algolia is brain-dead simple to set up. I've implemented search with Algolia in a dozen different ways now, and it never took me longer than a few minutes to get the functionality I want. With Algolia, the only challenge is designing your search UI -- if you don't want to use their baked in UI solutions.
• Results come back incredibly fast. I'm not sure how Algolia does it, but every keystroke I make in a search field returns new results instantly. It's hard to believe that I'm searching large datasets on a remote server when it works so fast.
• Very little customization is needed for 99% of use-cases. Algolia's out of the box setup works great, and it takes no prior knowledge to set up.

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• Large scale product and user data management.
• Out of the box support for common eCommerce functionality.
• Robust platform that is supported well and consistently by the Hybris team who are available for direct support if needed.
• Integrates well with other services if Hybris does not meet all business needs.
• Localization for multi-national support was easy to implement.

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• Algolia can be a bit complex -- for smaller companies or companies without many tech resources, it may be difficult to implement and use without the help of a third party
• Manually manipulating search results (for specific queries having listings show up first) is a bit difficult to do without custom developing that functionality

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• CMS Cockpit is slow and inefficient for performing certain kinds of content management and template manipulation tasks. I often defer to the HMC, but this is not a feasible option for our client's content management team.
• The OOTB UI code that ships with v5.0.1 is several years behind industry standard front end technology. v5.1 shows no promise of significant improvements in this arena. Some things I'd like to see: Dropping the Blueprint framework in favor of something Like Bootstrap, Less Framework or AngularJS. Jquery and key dependent plug-ins need to be upgraded and large, over-featured plugins like JQuery UI abandoned. SASS + Compass should replace static CSS. Granule should be dropped in favor of better tools for JS dependency management, code minification, and file concatenation.
• Maintaining independent codebases for Desktop and Mobile views increases UI development hours by a margin of 30-50%. Natively supporting the option to configure a responsive design with a framework such as AngularJS would offer flexibility to serve up content and site chrome targeted at a wider range of device classes than just desktop machines and mobile phones.

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• It's too early to measure any increase in our transactions
• We have good customer feedback on the Algolia search function
• We are looking at other apps in development where we can also leverage the power of Algolia

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• Our business went through 3 major initiatives to migrate our legacy platform and data to Hybris over the course of several years with multiple tech leadership and dev teams. All 3 of these initiatives failed to launch, largely due to the complexity of the platforms and massively associated tech burdon. A 4th re-platforming succeeded in launching an MVP version with support from expensive consulting firms and to the tune of millions of dollars.
• Due to the inflexibility of the content management features, marketing teams are severely limited and have had to seek 3rd-party software to layer on top of Hybris to deliver modern customer experiences.

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