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Elastic Search pros and cons

Vendor: Elastic

4.1 out of 5

76 reviews
97% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Elastic Search is renowned for its stability, scalability, and indexing capabilities, ideal for enterprises managing large data volumes. It efficiently handles metadata and unstructured data, enabling complex search operations. Its real-time analytics support quick decisions and insight into user behaviors. However, challenges include scalability management, unclear licensing, and a cumbersome upgrade process. Enhancements in authentication, AI integration, and machine learning are necessary to address technical support and feature expansion needs.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Elastic Search's indexing capabilities and speed allow for efficient handling of large data volumes, supporting complex search operations and storing logs quickly.

The ability to aggregate extensive log and machine data into a searchable index reduces the time needed for identifying and isolating issues, enhancing triage and incident response.

The machine learning features, including the integration of multilingual models such as ELSER, enable fine-tuning of searches, benefiting search projects.

Elastic Search easily scales with the cluster node model, performing well even with significant infrastructure and data footprint.

The analytics capabilities, especially when configured with Kibana, provide valuable insights and enhance decision-making through real-time data access and visualization.

CONS

Enterprise scaling is a challenge, and improvements in email notification and integration are needed for large operations.

Machine learning capabilities require enhancement and more comprehensive integration with third-party tools is needed.

Security features and licensing structures could be more customer-friendly.

Technical support should offer more robust assistance, especially for customized requirements.

Scalability, ROI, and more transparent deployment processes are key areas for improvement.

Elastic Search Pros review quotes

ED

Owner & director at Pulsar ICT

Jun 18, 2020

There's lots of processing power. You can actually just add machines to get more performance if you need to. It's pretty flexible and very easy to add another log. It's not like 'oh, no, it's going to be so much extra data'. That's not a problem for the machine. It can handle it.

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KB

Chief Data Scientist at Everlytics Data Science Pte Ltd

Nov 30, 2020

ELK Elasticsearch is 100% scalable as scalability is built into the design

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Enterprise Architect at DXC Technology

Jul 18, 2024

All the quality features are there. There are about 60 to 70 reports available.

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LK

Senior Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Sep 22, 2022

The solution has great scalability.

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Cloud and Big Data Engineer | Developer at Huawei

Nov 20, 2023

A good use case is saving metadata of your systems for data cataloging. Various systems, like those opened in metadata and similar applications, use Elasticsearch to store their text data.

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EG

Security Lead at Brevo

Oct 6, 2025

My favorite feature is the ease of use, particularly in how you integrate the agent; I've been using it since version 7, and we're on version 9 now, and I've seen the progress from using Beats to using the agent, making it so simple today to enroll a server with the Elastic Agent.

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PO

PHILIP OLANIYAN

Relationship Manager at Snapnet Ltd

Jan 8, 2024

It provides deep visibility into your cloud and distributed applications, from microservices to serverless architectures. It quickly identifies and resolves the root causes of issues, like gaining visibility into all the cloud-based and on-prem applications.

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Dave Ezrakhovich

Site Reliability Engineering at WiseTech Global

Nov 15, 2023

It is highly valuable because of its simplicity in maintenance, where most tasks are handled for you, and it offers a plethora of built-in features.

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KR

Head of Technology Operations at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees

Oct 30, 2020

The most valuable feature is the out of the box Kibana.

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Consultant at High Key Consulting llc

Nov 30, 2023

The most valuable features are its user-friendly interface and seamless navigation.

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Elastic Search Cons review quotes

ED

Owner & director at Pulsar ICT

Jun 18, 2020

The solution has quite a steep learning curve. The usability and general user-friendliness could be improved. However, that is kind of typical with products that have a lot of flexibility, or a lot of capabilities. Sometimes having more choices makes things more complex. It makes it difficult to configure it, though. It's kind of a bitter pill that you have to swallow in the beginning and you really have to get through it.

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KB

Chief Data Scientist at Everlytics Data Science Pte Ltd

Nov 30, 2020

The metadata gets stored along with indexes and isn't queryable.

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Enterprise Architect at DXC Technology

Jul 18, 2024

Scalability and ROI are the areas they have to improve.

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Free Report: Elastic Search Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Elastic Search. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2025.

870,701 professionals have used our research since 2012.

LK

Senior Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Sep 22, 2022

Both the graph feature and the reporting feature are a little bit lacking. The alerting also needs to be improved.

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Cloud and Big Data Engineer | Developer at Huawei

Nov 20, 2023

There are challenges with performance management and scalability.

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EG

Security Lead at Brevo

Oct 6, 2025

What they need is to be more transparent about the actual setup of the cluster and the deployment process.

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PO

PHILIP OLANIYAN

Relationship Manager at Snapnet Ltd

Jan 8, 2024

There are potential improvements based on our client feedback, like unifying the licensing cost structure.

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Dave Ezrakhovich

Site Reliability Engineering at WiseTech Global

Nov 15, 2023

While integrating with tools like agents for ingesting data from sources like firewalls is valuable, I believe prioritizing improvements to the core product would be more beneficial.

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KR

Head of Technology Operations at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees

Oct 30, 2020

I would like to be able to do correlations between multiple indexes.

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Consultant at High Key Consulting llc

Nov 30, 2023

Elastic Search could benefit from a more user-friendly onboarding process for beginners.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 71)

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