I used Algolia to implement search functionalities. When I had too many products and wanted to improve search functionality, I built custom webhooks in the backend using ExpressJS and NodeJS. The product information was passed to Algolia, which I used only for search functionalities.
In my site, conversion rate or customer satisfaction progressed 100%. I rate it 100% for customer satisfaction because when users search for a product, they don't need to press the enter button.
If they type ABC, the ABC type of product is automatically filtered and shown at the bottom of the screen. Algolia gives us that functionality, immediately showing filtering products without any bugs. That's why, in my site, it's 100% customer satisfaction. And from my side, it's okay.
In my experience, I used Algolia because it made searching and filtering products much easier. Algolia provides some cool functionalities like filtering, indexing, and searching.
If I implemented such functionality without Algolia, I would have to create the filtering functionality customly. But with Algolia, it's much easier because they already have these features built-in.
I implement their inbuilt hooks or components, like InstantSearch, which is a React UI component provided by Algolia. It helps me with searching and filtering the products. I used Algolia for basic purposes because I haven't worked on any advanced projects with it yet.
The documentation is not beginner-friendly. When I first used it, I sometimes couldn't understand its components and how they worked.
At one point, the product was automatically deleted from the backend for unknown reasons. But, I haven't had any other problems so far.
I started working with Algolia last year in December at my ex-company. I worked as a front-end technical lead and used different technologies, including Algolia. However, I only used the basic features, not the advanced ones, because it was already set up.
I didn't see any bugs. It's developer-friendly and user-friendly. I have not faced any bugs so far.
When I worked at my previous company, they had a limited developer team of just ten or twelve. So, five or six developers used Algolia in my current team.
My company decided to use Algolia. It's a very big and complicated web application. I asked them why we use Algolia, and they told me that implementing such functionality or filtering functionality customly would take too much time. But if we use Algolia, it helps us save time on maintenance, and we can use it frequently.
If someone reads the documentation well, then anyone can use Algolia. But for beginners, it's hard because the documentation is not beginner-friendly, in my opinion.
Deployment model: I used Algolia in the cloud for search recommendations to make the site's searching faster.
First of all, I want to know why you would ask me this. If you have a complicated project, then I definitely recommend Algolia. But if the project is simple and not too complicated, then you can use custom filtering or functionality.
There are two types of beginners:
- Those who want to learn just from watching YouTube videos.
- Those who are willing to read the documentation and research the features.
For the latter, it will be okay, but for beginners who don't want to read the documentation and just want to watch YouTube videos, it will be hard for them to learn to use Aloglia.
Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten. When I use this product, it reduces my time and saves me from time-consuming tasks because everything is automated. Every back end, Express, Scrapy, and others, they already told us that if we use Algolia, they already provide us with webhooks.
If we implement the webhooks, it only takes two to five minutes maximum. Then we work on the front end just for designing. If I created the functionality without Algolia, it would take too much time, like 30 minutes or an hour.
But when you use Algolia and webhooks, it takes only five minutes, and Algolia has its own component, InstantSearch, for filtering. We just implemented the component, and it's okay. That's why, from my side, I rate Algolia as nine out of ten.