Why Choose Constructor vs. Algolia?
If you’re a large ecommerce business at the stage where you’re comparing Algolia to Constructor, or if you’re looking for Algolia alternatives, congratulations! 🎉
You’re already on the right path to improving your product search and discovery experience.
Algolia is a self-serve tool built for developers across all sorts of industries, including small and medium businesses, content platforms like NPR and Medium, and software applications like Slack.
Because of how Algolia’s search algorithm works, it’s a great choice for these businesses.
It’s just not the right choice for large retailers.
We can compare features and products (and in fact, we’ll dive into those details below). But the biggest difference between Constructor and Algolia?
Product search and discovery that’s actually designed to drive ecommerce results.
Constructor understands ecommerce, and our technology proves it. ❤️
By keeping ecommerce as our core focus, we’ve built the best product search and discovery solution specifically for the unique needs of retailers. Constructor isn’t a jack of all trades. We’re the leader in ecommerce product search and discovery.
And we prove that difference every day in the dynamic optimizations our machine-learning technology brings to critical ecommerce KPIs—results that Algolia can’t match.
“Relevance” is relative. Optimize for ecommerce KPIs instead.
Algolia’s search results optimize for “relevance,” which means that the more frequently a keyword search term appears in a product name or description, the higher that item will rank for the query. For content, relevance works. For products? Not so much.
What if the most “relevant” item is out of stock or low in inventory? What if you’d like to optimize for unit sales or revenue per visit or profit over time? Relevance is subjective, and it’s dynamic.
Using transparent AI and machine learning, Constructor allows your ecommerce teams to optimize search results based on the business KPIs that you define.
We see an average of over 10% lifts in conversion in post-integration A/B tests from prior Algolia customers moving to Constructor.
What would that do for your KPIs?
Manage by exception with merchant intelligence.
Do customers add a certain item to their cart but don’t purchase it? Constructor knows.
Not only does our AI surface those insights, but it intelligently reranks and provides personalized product recommendations and search results based on that data. Putting the right products in front of the right people, we give our customers lifts in business KPIs that Algolia just can’t.
Our AI allows merchandisers to “manage by exception” instead of devoting time and effort to creating manual rules like they do with Algolia. Leveraging the merchant intelligence from Constructor’s platform, merchandising teams can focus on creative strategies to drive conversion rates.
Don’t just trust the AI. Understand it.
Algolia’s dashboard doesn’t allow users to look under the hood and see why the algorithms return the results they do. And that’s because Algolia only started using simple AI recently, layering it on top of a system that wasn’t built for it.
Constructor’s “glass box” dashboard is open and transparent. Not only is it built on true machine learning through clickstream data, but Constructor allows customers to understand exactly how the AI is powering KPI optimizations.
Merchant users also regularly receive insights on how their changes are impacting KPIs so that they can make informed decisions that drive results. The result? Better customer experience and consistent improvement in A/B tests over Algolia.
An ecommerce partner, not just another software vendor.
As a self-service software vendor, Algolia is not built for the level of customer support and customer success investment that enterprise retailers require. They provide documentation, but not much else.
Constructor is a true partner for our customers. We understand that retailers don’t measure our efficacy in features and widgets, but in business KPIs and revenue.
Because of that, we partner closely with each of our customers, matching them each with a dedicated customer support expert, data scientist, and development team. And you can communicate with your team anytime through Slack and email conversations throughout our partnership.
We’ve never met an Algolia A/B test we didn’t win
In every A/B test we’ve ever run, Constructor has consistently outperformed Algolia on the most important ecommerce metrics like conversion rate, revenue, revenue per visitor, and ROI. In fact, our Proof Schedule is built on proving those results first, before our customers pay us a dime.
10.5%
Lift in Search Conversion
Eli Allen
Founder and CTO
“Algolia’s text-based search is inherently flawed because it misses the user’s search intent. We’d just been willing to accept that flaw and compensate by deprioritizing search. With Constructor, we’re discovering new opportunities to drive people to the search page. Instead of a buried feature, search is now something that we actually want people to see—and we’re finding new ways to get them there.”
Compare Constructor vs. Algolia
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Cognitive Embeddings Search virtually eliminates zero search results |
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Dedicated ecommerce specialization |
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Ability to optimize for business KPIs |
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Automated personalizations across product search, recommendations, autosuggest, category pages, and landing pages via clickstream data |
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Enables merchandising teams to automate manual work and focus on creative solutions |
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“Glass box” transparency allows you to supplement automated results ranking with your expertise to improve experiences |
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White-glove enterprise-level customer support with a dedicated team member through Slack, Teams, and/or email |
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AI-generated synonyms |
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Results returned in <100 ms (the speed of a blink of the human eye) |
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All-in-one platform across search, navigation, and recommendations |
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Developer hub with code snippets, live coding sessions, and self-help developer forum |
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UI component libraries |
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See for Yourself
Validate Constructor on your site, using your user data, and see exactly how our platform can lift critical business KPIs.