This post is not sponsored by Jetpack and contains no affiliate links.
Yesterday, Jetpack announced that it has relaunched its search product. They have changed the pricing model; previously this was part of the “professional” plan, but now it will have standalone pricing.
The pricing is based on the number of records you have in your search index. For those with a small amount. this change works out to be much cheaper. However, if you have a large number then this may well increase. Prices run from $5 to $200 per month, making it very competitive with other “hosted” search providers such as Algolia. It is not yet clear whether existing Jetpack professional subscribers will be grandfathered or offered a discount.
Don’t be fooled, though. This isn’t just a price increase. They’ve introduced some great new features including:
- Instant Searching – super speedy results. No need to wait for the page to reload.
- Facets and Filters – filter by taxonomy, date and post types.
- Real-time Indexing – your content appears in search as soon as it’s published.
- Relevant Results – using a ranking algorithm
What We Think
Search is often very complicated and expensive, especially on big sites. The default search has always been weak, and whilst there are some plugins that can increase its functionality, it’s never going to be as good as a dedicated search service.
The offering from Jetpack is affordable and has a decent feature set. We’d like to see them release developer documentation and more functions for advanced faceting, filtering and styling. If this is put in place it will certainly be the go-to WordPress search solution.
Keep on the lookout for our next article – “The State of WordPress Search (2020 Edition)”. Sign up to our mailing list, or follow us on social media to be notified.
Let us know your thoughts about Jetpack search in the comments.