Used For

• +**Your WooCommerce search shows irrelevant junk and kills conversions** → Smart search that handles typos, finds 'warm clothes' when users search 'sweaters', loads in 50ms
• +**Users can't filter by price, brand, or rating so they bounce** → Instant faceted search with price sliders and checkboxes that actually work
• +**Job board candidates can't find remote Python jobs in their salary range** → Multi-filter search by location, skills, salary that updates results as they type
• +Semantic search using AI - understands 'budget laptop' means cheap computers, not laptop budgets
• +Global search network - results load fast whether users are in Tokyo or Toledo

Best For

• >Your e-commerce search returns blue boots when someone searches 'red shoes'
• >You tried building search with your database and queries take 3 seconds on mobile
• >Hit 50k+ products and your current search chokes on anything beyond basic keywords

Not For

• -Solo projects or small sites under 10k monthly searches — you'll hit the free limit during your first demo day
• -Teams without a developer — this isn't drag-and-drop, you're writing API calls and configuring indexes
• -Anyone wanting to self-host — it's cloud-only, and moving your search data out later is a nightmare

Pairs With

• *Shopify (handles the store, Algolia fixes the search that Shopify does badly)
• *React (where you'll build the search UI components that talk to Algolia's API)
• *Google Analytics (to track which searches convert and which ones send people running)
• *Zapier (to automatically update your search index when products change in your CMS)
• *PostgreSQL (stores your actual product data while Algolia handles the search layer on top)

The Catch

• !Usage costs sneak up fast — users report burning $200 in a week testing on the free tier with no warning
• !You'll need someone to babysit the typo tolerance settings or 'Nike' will match 'Mike' and confuse everyone
• !The dashboard doesn't warn you about overages until after you're billed at $0.50 per 1,000 extra searches

Bottom Line

Turns your crappy site search into something that doesn't make users want to leave immediately.