Exploring Manticore Search and Elasticsearch: A Comparison for Smart Decision-Making

Are you an e-commerce business owner searching for the best site search software on the web? Well, your quest ends here because this article covers a complete comparison of Manticore Search, Elasticsearch, and Luigi’s Box – three widely used site search tools.

So, let’s dive straight in, starting with the basic functionality of each tool.

What is Manticore Search?

Manticore Search, originally named Sphinx Search engine, is an open-source search and analytics engine known for its fast, lightweight, and scalable database comprising advanced full-text search capabilities.

It allows users to perform classic full-text indexing and search using SQL, JSON, and many other programming languages. Additionally, it offers easy scalability irrespective of the size of a search query. Besides enjoying seamless integration into their existing stack, users can also access Manticore Search via ProxySQL.

Among its users are small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), content-heavy websites, and open-source developers. Other than its faceted search and full-text index features, Manticore’s capability of real-time inserts makes it a ‘database for search’ for e-commerce sites where users often want to filter products by attributes like price, category, or brand.

What is Elasticsearch?

Elasticsearch is also a full-text distributed search and analytics engine. Built on top of Apache Lucene, it offers near real-time indexing and is popular for its data aggregations and analytics capabilities, making it a suitable choice for log analytics.

Among its major users are security and operational intelligence experts, marketing analysts, content management systems (CMS) with huge content volumes, and data scientists. Other than that, e-commerce store owners and online retailers use it to power their search and recommendation systems. This helps their customers find products more easily, enhancing the shopping experience.

What is Luigi’s Box?

Luigi’s Box is an award-winning AI-powered site search and product discovery software used by thousands of online businesses across the world. Unlike Manticore Search and Elasticsearch, Luigi’s Box is specifically designed for e-commerce sites to serve as a single server for search analytics, personalized recommendations, and product listing. This is also the reason why it ranks as the third best on G2 in the e-commerce search software category.

Trusted by more than 3000 online businesses to date, Luigi’s Box has been used by telecom companies, automobile manufacturers, sportswear companies, hardware companies, and beyond. Among its major users are top international brands like SKODA, Under Armour, O2, Acer, and many others.

A quick comparison in terms of key features

Let’s have a quick comparison in terms of the most sought-after features of an e-commerce site search software and see how each one performs and what results we get for Manticore Search vs. Elasticsearch vs. Luigi’s Box.

Advanced search personalization

Manticore Search offers an advanced search experience, but its personalization capabilities are not as out-of-the-box as its competitors, such as Luigi’s Box.

On the other hand, Elasticsearch offers search personalization to only some degree, as it requires customization and integration of other tools in order to meet the level of other search platforms like Algolia Search, etc.

When it comes to Luigi’s Box, it evaluates each e-commerce user’s past interactions with the website to personalize search results shown against search requests based on their unique preferences.

Real-time behavioral recommendations

To boost cross-selling and upselling opportunities for e-commerce retailers, Luigi’s Box uses predictive analytics and ML approaches to assess multiple factors that determine users’ behavior and interest to recommend products that are more personalized and relevant to them.

While Manticore Search also offers real-time search and recommendation capabilities, it lacks the advanced AI and predictive analytics to surpass the former, as Luigi’s Box is particularly an AI-powered product discovery software.

On the other hand, Elasticsearch shows near real-time recommendations and may need additional plugins to match the results offered by the other two.

Advanced search analytics and insights

Manticore Search offers advanced search functionalities but a less intuitive UI for the visualization of results.

On the other hand, Elasticsearch also offers search analytics but needs to configure Kibana to access advanced search results and insights.

However, Luigi’s Box is second to none when it comes to search analytics and insights, as it offers visual dashboards to let e-commerce users understand search performance, popular search terms, and user search behavior.

Customizable product listing pages

Manticore Search allows users to customize product listing pages but lacks in terms of user-friendliness and ease of customization.

On the other hand, Elasticsearch offers customizable listing through search result templates and styling options. Still, users may need to dedicate additional resources and coding work to get the desired digital appearance and visual customization of the layout.

Finally, the highly intuitive and user-friendly interface of Luigi’s Box allows e-commerce retailers to customize product listing pages and show specific products and brands based on their users’ preferences.

Manticore Search vs. Elasticsearch vs. Luigi’s Box in terms of major benefits

Each search software has some unique benefits that make it stand out from the crowd. Let’s discuss some of the major benefits of the three search tools to find out what e-commerce users love about them the most:

Benefits of Manticore Search

• Real-time indexing – E-commerce stores demand continuous and timely indexing of new data and products. To ensure the search results are up to date, Manticore Search offers real-time indexing features with the quickest response times that help e-commerce sites stay competitive and relevant in the constantly changing market.
• Built-in geospatial support – Location-based search applications and services require geospatial support to target accurate results and performance. Manticore Search has built-in geospatial support to keep that box checked.
• Ease of migration – Sometimes, users want to migrate from one search engine to another for better results. To simplify this process, Manticore Search offers ease of migration, allowing the transitioning users to adopt its software conveniently.

Benefits of Elasticsearch

• Fast and accurate search – Users often make spelling mistakes or don’t know the right words while searching for a product. Elasticsearch solves this problem by letting e-commerce users implement advanced features like typo tolerance, synonym management, and relevance scoring to improve search accuracy.
• Dynamic faceted navigation – Through this feature, Elasticsearch allows e-commerce retailers to offer a rich and intuitive filtering experience to their customers based on various product attributes, such as price, brand, size, and color.
• Scalability and performance – During peak shopping seasons and periods of high traffic, Elasticsearch lets online stores stay responsive, as it can easily handle large product catalogs and complex searches without affecting the site’s performance.

Benefits of Luigi’s Box

• Comprehensive search capabilities – Popular for its clear visual dashboards, Luigi’s Box provides in-depth search analytics to let users gain valuable data and insights about their customers.
• Intuitive product page customization – E-commerce stores often need product repurposing and page customization to meet the varying branding and promotional needs. To cater to this, Luigi’s Box allows retailers to customize product listing pages to make them more visually appealing. This also helps in showcasing featured products and driving conversions.
• Advanced real-time recommendations – E-shop retailers can offer their customers personalized product recommendations based on their search preferences and current browsing behavior in real time, thanks to Luigi’s Box.

Why you should choose Luigi’s Box

Now that you have learned about the benefits and top features of each search software, here are four reasons why you should choose Luigi’s Box over Manticore Search and Elasticsearch for your e-commerce site.

Advanced navigation and personalization

As an e-commerce store owner, you might know how little amount of time customers spend on an e-commerce site if they can’t see the product they’re searching for or the one that intrigues them. Luigi’s Box ensures this never happens with your site, as it offers advanced navigation filters through which customers can quickly narrow down the products that meet their needs.

As a cherry on top, Luigi’s Box provides autocomplete functionality to your site, a proven feature to prevent customers from leaving the site.

AI-powered recommender

If you want to increase your order value or drive higher sales, Luigi’s Box recommender can serve as a game changer. By using AI and machine learning techniques, it allows you to expose your customers to personalized recommendations of the products they love.

So, every user who lands on your site could only leave by purchasing a product that meets their preferences and requirements.

Voice search capabilities

Although the multilingual search feature of Luigi’s Box makes it a leading choice among competitors, the tool went beyond traditional text-based search with its voice search capability to stand in a class of its own. By enabling the voice search option, you can allow your customers to search for products using natural language, bringing their shopping experience to a whole new level.

This feature alone can set your e-commerce store apart from the competition, as it opens up a new dimension of flexibility, user-friendliness, and convenience to your customers. It’s like having Siri to find your customers what they simply want.

Frequently asked questions