Algolia is a hosted search and discovery platform that brands appreciate for its speed and rich features.

 may be worth considering for brands needing more AI features at a lower cost.

This guide covers how Algolia serves e-commerce businesses, its key features, user feedback from review sites and forums, UX and support, integrations, pricing, drawbacks, and tips for getting the most value from the platform.

Our team looked at what verified customers say about Algolia online (

 Algolia customers love the wide range of features, solid reporting for managers, and decent ease of use.

Long and tedious implementation time. Limited customization options and high cost (especially at scale).

On software review platforms, Algolia is generally well-regarded. Many e-commerce teams praise Algolia for transforming their onsite search experience ⤵️

Speed is a recurring theme – multiple reviews mention the speed of Algolia’s search. An e-commerce manager on Capterra wrote, 

“The sheer speed of the search is astonishing… you get results in next to no time,”

 especially compared to native platform searches”.

Similarly, another retail user with a 10,000+ product catalog noted the search was 

. Users like the ability to fine-tune rankings, add synonyms, and use the visual dashboard to adjust results without code. ​

Virtually every review site also contains cautions about 

. Algolia’s pricing is often described as 

, especially for smaller businesses or high-volume sites.Others mention that 

as their usage grew, the bills grew faster than expected

. This is a very common drawback and complaint by Algolia customers.

 – users on Capterra noted that standard support is limited and 

“they also do not offer much in the way of support unless you pay even more”

 for higher tiers​. This leaves some smaller customers feeling a bit on their own with documentation and self-service resources.

the steep initial learning curve of setting up Algolia

 (schema design, relevancy tuning, etc.) is noted in a couple of reviews, though once running, daily use is reported to be straightforward.

On developer forums and communities (Reddit, Hacker News, etc.), discussions about Algolia often echo the pros and cons found in formal reviews, sometimes with more candidness.

Many developers confirm that Algolia delivers on its promise of easy integration and fast, relevant search. As one Reddit user put it ⤵️

“I use Algolia and yes, it’s super expensive but the dev experience is super easy and simple to setup.”

E-commerce entrepreneurs on Reddit have shared their experiences of switching search solutions due to cost.

. While Algolia provides libraries and integrations, some developers noted that it’s not a completely plug-and-play solution for every platform.

For example, integrating Algolia with a custom Shopify theme or a WordPress site requires writing code or using third-party plugins, which can be non-trivial for a newcomer.

One comment about Algolia on a forum mentioned that 

“it’s not a straightforward setup out of the box and requires quite a bit of building into your [platform] template.”

Algolia offers various features catering to online retail search and discovery needs. Some of the standout capabilities include:

Algolia’s core search is extremely fast and smart. It combines traditional keyword matching with AI 

 (semantic vector-based search) to better understand user intent​.

This means shoppers get relevant results in milliseconds, even if their query is vague or contains typos. Algolia’s search engine also supports advanced query understanding like 

 (automatically detecting synonyms from user behavior) and 

These AI enhancements help customers find exactly what they want and discover products they might have otherwise missed.

Beyond the search box, Algolia can dynamically power category and listing pages. The 

 feature turns static category or collection pages into dynamic, high-converting pages driven by real-time analytics and AI​.

 on category pages that automatically show trending or popular products, and use 

 to boost items that are hot sellers or in-stock.​

Algolia includes a recommendation engine (Algolia 

) to display related or complementary products. This feature uses machine learning on your product catalog and user events to suggest items that a shopper might also like or that are frequently bought together​. 

E-commerce sites can use this for carousels like “Similar Products” or “Customers Also Bought,” encouraging shoppers to expand their browsing if their initial search isn’t an exact match. These AI-driven recommendations help increase average order value and keep users engaged on the site.

Algolia can personalize search and browse results for each visitor by learning from their behavior.

As users interact (search, click, buy), Algolia’s 

 feature re-ranks results to favor what’s most relevant to that user​For instance, if a customer frequently buys running shoes, the search algorithm can boost sportswear items for their queries. This tailoring happens automatically when enabled, leading to higher engagement and conversion by showing shoppers more of what they are likely to want.

To speed up integration, Algolia provides pre-built UI components and templates. There are open-source 

 libraries for JavaScript, React, Vue, iOS, Android, and more, which offer ready-made building blocks for search UIs (product listing grids, filters/facets, autocomplete dropdowns, pagination, etc.)​

For example, you can drop in a search box with instant autocomplete suggestions or a faceted filtering sidebar without building it from scratch. Algolia even offers an 

 (built with frameworks like Flutter in their examples) that developers can use as a starting point for a complete storefront search experience.

 You must be tech-savvy enough to understand code to leverage Algolia’s template library.

Algolia is easy for developers, once it’s implemented

Users generally find Algolia’s dashboard and tools to be modern and user-friendly once the system is up and running.

The platform is designed so that even non-developers (like merchandisers or marketers) can adjust search results via the dashboard – for example, pinning a product to the top of results or creating a synonym rule – without needing to write code.

In reality, customer reviews frequently mention how the platform is easy, but once you get past the steep learning curve.

 can require technical work. Setting up Algolia for the first time – indexing your products, configuring attributes, integrating the front-end components – typically needs a developer or someone comfortable with code.

If you’re using a pre-built integration (like Algolia’s Shopify app or Magento extension), this process is simpler, 

but custom websites will involve using the API

A Capterra review pointed out that for a completely non-technical person, Algolia’s concepts might be 

Customer support is great (if you pay for it)

Experiences here are mixed, depending on the user’s plan and expectations. Some customers speak highly of Algolia’s support and account management team, especially 

On the other hand, several smaller-scale users have reported frustrations with support 👇 

In short, Algolia’s support is good if you pay them enough money. If you don’t, your team needs to figure things out on their own.

💡 This is a common reason why e-commerce brands switch to BigSurAI, as they can get AI-powered search, product recommendations, and dynamic experiences in minutes, for a fraction of the cost.

Algolia is designed to plug into various e-commerce platforms, content management systems (CMS), and tech stacks. This flexibility is crucial for merchants, as it allows Algolia to work with your existing store infrastructure.

, Algolia provides official integrations and connectors:

 – Algolia offers an app for Shopify that syncs products and collections, enabling Algolia-powered search on Shopify stores​. This integration can replace Shopify’s native search with Algolia’s faster, AI-driven results and is fairly straightforward to set up via the Shopify App Store.

 – An Algolia extension for Magento 2 (Adobe Commerce) integrates with the Magento catalog and front-end. It allows Magento stores to offload their catalog search and category navigation to Algolia, improving speed and relevancy. Adobe Commerce (which Magento is now part of) is directly listed among Algolia’s supported platforms​.

 – Algolia can also integrate with BigCommerce sites, using connectors that pull product data from BigCommerce into Algolia’s indices​. This typically involves installing a BigCommerce app or using their API with Algolia’s indexing API.

 – Algolia has an integration for Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud, allowing SFCC merchants to use Algolia for search and category pages​. Given SFCC’s enterprise user base, this integration is geared towards large retail sites needing advanced search capabilities beyond the native SFCC search.

 – Platforms like commercetools are also supported​.

 – While Algolia doesn’t provide an official first-party plugin for WordPress, it’s compatible via community plugins. For example, the open-source plugin 

 can integrate Algolia into WordPress/WooCommerce sites​

. This plugin offloads WordPress search queries to Algolia and even supports WooCommerce product search. However, Algolia 

 these plugins (third parties maintain them), so WordPress users rely on the plugin’s community for support. Alternatively, developers can use Algolia’s PHP/JavaScript API clients to custom-integrate Algolia with WordPress if they need more control.

 – Algolia provides API client libraries for many programming languages (JavaScript, Python, PHP, Ruby, Java, etc.) and front-end frameworks​.

 – Algolia can index data from places like 

 (for help center search)​ or integrate it into static sites via its crawler.

💡 In practice, an e-commerce business will often use the out-of-the-box connector for their platform if one is available (for quick setup), possibly extending or customizing the integration. The partner integrations cover a lot of ground.

Algolia’s pricing structure is a combination of a usage-based model and tiered plans, which can be a bit complex at first glance.

Here’s an overview of how pricing works as of 2025:

 – Algolia offers a free plan suitable for small projects or trial usage. This includes up to 

 and a certain number of records indexed (historically around 10k records, but currently they list 

 for free which covers most small catalogs)​.

 – Algolia uses a usage-based pricing model beyond the free quotas. You pay for the number of search operations (queries, indexing operations) and the number of records stored. For example, after the free 10k monthly searches are used, additional search requests cost about 

Algolia 2025 Review: Key Features, Pricing & Insights (E-commerce edition)

Octane AI is among the best tools for collecting zero-party data through interactive ecommerce quizzes.

But is it truly the best for your business? Or are there other alternatives that better fit your brand's needs?

To answer that, we have curated a list of 7 of the best Octane AI alternatives. Each offers something Octane AI lacks—more features, affordable pricing, or a more straightforward setup.

The best Octane AI alternatives for 2025 are Big Sur AI, Aiden, Manifest AI, Quizell, Quiz Kit, Convert Flow, and Digioh.

Below, we break down each tool’s key features, use cases, pros & cons, and pricing.

Octane AI is a Shopify plugin to build interactive quizzes to engage website visitors. The tool offers a no-code editor to blend each quiz into your brand aesthetic, offering a consistent customer experience.

Octane AI is a go-to ecommerce quiz tool because of its multi-channel marketing feature. With built-in AI and data collected via quizzes, you can trigger 

, send targeted emails and SMSs, and answer common queries via chatbots.

Public reviews and customer conversations show two key reasons users seek Octane AI alternatives.

Huge learning curve due to technical setup

Lack of advanced eCommerce quiz customizations

Reason 1: Setting up interactive quizzes can get technical

Even though Octane AI is a completely AI-based platform with no-code functionality, 

Users have reported that launching custom chatbots and building customer segments require coding knowledge.

especially if you have a small team with limited developer bandwidth.

Reason 2: Octane AI’s customization is not on par with native AI tools (like Big Sur AI)

Octane AI doesn’t offer the best customization tool to build truly on-brand quizzes that match your brand experience and specific product recommendation setup.

This limitation can restrict you from using specific quiz themes or typography, making quizzes look banal and out of place.

Reason 3: Pricing sneaks up on you at scale

Additionally, it can add more costs to your budget as you’ll supplement the customization by using additional tools.

Furthermore, Octane AI's pricing can become steep as businesses scale. While the Basic plan starts at $9 per month, costs escalate with the number of active Messenger contacts and SMS messages. For instance, managing 50,000 Messenger contacts and sending 25,000 SMS messages monthly can raise the Basic plan to $700 per month and the Pro plan to $1,400 per month.

Reason 4: A desire for comprehensive AI solutions

Merchants aiming to provide real-time, personalized assistance to shoppers might seek platforms like Big Sur AI. Unlike Big Sur AI, which can handle conversational shopping, quizzes, and product recommendations, Octane AI capabilities are more narrow.

What Are the Best Alternatives to Octane AI?

AI-powered search and adaptive quizzes to drive more site conversions

Building automated ecommerce workflows to trigger personalized messaging

Engaging dormant customers with proactive AI chat support and nudges

Building personalized quizzes, forms, and surveys

: Personalized marketing through automation across email and SMS campaigns

apturing website visitors’ data through forms and surveys

AI-powered search and adaptive quizzes for product recommendations

 leads the list as it’s the closest and most user-friendly alternative to Octane AI.

It’s a complete AI-powered ecommerce platform that aims to boost your conversion rate by hand-holding customers as soon as they land on your website.

Full disclosure: Even though Big Sur AI is our tool, we aim to provide an unbiased perspective on why it is the best Octane AI alternative.

For example, customers can ask questions, get AI-generated product recommendations, or engage in an interactive conversation. At every step, they’ll have access to an assistant to make the shopping experience a breeze.

And, you can build this experience by simply adding a line of code to your site. Whether using ecommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, Woocommerce, or self-hosted, Big Sur works.

Let’s look at three key features to build an exceptional customer experience.

. Unlike asking customers a series of customers and showing them preset product recommendations, our AI quizzes adapt each question based on the respondent’s previous answers.

Such quizzes become even more paramount and valuable in product categories where expert guidance is critical, such as skincare.

For example, if a customer mentions they have sensitive skin early in the conversation, the AI immediately shifts focus to hypoallergenic products without asking a series of pre-planned questions about skin type.

With this, you can recreate the in-store consultant experience online, strengthening customers’ trust in your brand.

 acts like an in-store assistant for online customers to listen to their concerns and offer them the best-fit products.

Once you launch the agent, it’ll appear at the bottom or in the middle of the screen or somewhere most visible to the human eye. Then, it works like asking a question in Google.

Customers can ask product recommendation questions like, 

“Can you show me women’s winter boots in size 7?”

The agent also suggests follow-up questions to keep the customer engaged until they’ve received the best answer to their questions.

Our analytics turn every customer interaction into rich data points that you can use to optimize your website for higher conversions.

At a glance, you’ll see the following metrics in your 

: Conversation rate based on interaction with the AI’s sales agent vs. average conversion rate for your overall store.

Journey your customers went through with the sales agent—number of queries, items added to cart, order placed, etc.

: List of top selling products along with their category and number of orders.

Apart from the hard cold numbers, you also see helpful insights like,

Top questions your customers asked (clustered by the topic)

Top queries that are most likely lead to a purchase

Queries that often lead to non-conversion or drop-off

With these insights, it’s easy to improve 

, add customer-specific language in your marketing copy, and launch new product lines.

✅ Easy to set up and launch your first AI sales agent in under 5 minutes

✅ Helps you boost sales by optimizing customers’ shopping experience through deep insights into customer behavior and interactions

✅ Offers direct integration with Klaviyo to help you send personalized emails to the recipient

❌ Doesn’t offer as many integrations as Octane AI

Building automated ecommerce workflows to trigger personalized messaging.

Aiden is a guided selling tool that helps you build interactive product quizzes using its no-code quiz builder. Unlike Octane AI, which specifically integrates with Shopify stores, Aiden connects with any ecommerce platform and analytics tools like GA4.

Small to large-scale e-commerce businesses based in Europe who desire simplicity and ease of use.

Get question suggestions to add to your interactive guided quizzes and related answers. Tweak the prompt to generate different responses.

: Build conditional logic to show specific questions based on customers' previous responses and show targeted recommendations.

Understand how your guided quizzes perform through quantitative numbers like conversion rate and visual graphs that reflect the performance over time.

Aiden offers custom pricing plans. Book a demo to get a quote.

✅ Easy to build and embed quizzes with an intuitive quiz builder

✅ Built-in AI that saves time by suggesting questions based on your prompt

✅ Automatically update the published version if you make any changes in the backend after making a quiz live

The 7 Best Octane AI Alternatives and Competitors (2025 Edition)

E-commerce optimization is more than creating good product pages and running marketing campaigns.

Online retailers have been testing different ways to optimize the customer experience to increase conversion rates.

This article will explore the best practices for optimizing your e-commerce store in 2024 to improve your conversion rate.

E-commerce optimization involves improving every aspect of your customers’ buying experience on your online store to boost conversions.

You can optimize your online store by setting up a conversational experience on your store that guides your shoppers throughout their product discovery phase, helping them find the right product for their needs

Other ways to optimize your online store include adding AI-powered product recommendations, setting up a semantic site search, testing out smart pop-ups with personalized offers, and adding a product quiz.

Personalization has become crucial for online stores, as it helps a brand boost customer engagement and loyalty.

You can personalize your site’s experience with dynamic content that updates recommendations and re-targeting campaigns in real-time, customized email campaigns, and a home page that is personalized to each shopper.

E-commerce optimization is when your brand improves every aspect of your consumers’ buying experience to improve your conversion rate.

With the rapid growth of digital commerce in 2024, optimization is critical to make sure that your store attracts shoppers, converts them, and retains them as loyal customers.

You can optimize various aspects of your customers’ buying journey, such as:

Your advertising, targeting, and re-targeting efforts to attract the right customers.

Your home page, landing pages, and category pages to improve their conversion rate.

The purchase flow, such as making sure it’s easy to buy and return your products.

How Can You Optimize Your Online Store’s Conversion Rate?

Apart from optimizing existing channels of growth and pages on your website, your online brand can also look to improve the customer experience by:

Setting up various product recommendation engines across site search and product pages.

Adding a conversational assistant in your store to help your customers find the right product for their needs (more on that later).

Set up a website product quiz that can collect consumer data and offer personalized product recommendations.

Let’s go over a bit more detail into each of these 

One of the best ways to optimize your e-commerce store is by setting up a conversation

What customers miss from traditional stores is talking to a knowledgeable and helpful salesperson who can help them with their buying journey.

 (that’s us), you can recreate that sales assistant-like experience in your online store.

Shoppers can ask the AI-powered assistant contextual questions about your products from anywhere on your site.

The sales agent can understand user intent and converse with your customers like a human, 24/7.

 when asking the AI assistant to compare two different e-bikes ⤵️

The software is trained to provide personalized answers based on the information about your products, site content, and each customer’s engagement with your store.

Here’s why online brands have been adopting Big Sur AI:

: The sales agent can help your shoppers find the right product at any time without relying on human agents to be online.

: You control the AI experience to ensure that the tone of voice represents your brand. The software has been fed and trained with your store’s information.

Our AI Sales Agent’s advice has been designed to provide relevant recommendations and propose follow-up questions based on data on what would most likely lead to conversions.

: Shoppers can talk to the sales agent as if they were messaging a real human.

Here’s the AI assistant in action ⤵️

Embrace the future of retail, today.
Increase sales and delight your shoppers with state of the art AI, tailored just for your store.

Grow your sales with AI Sales Agent
• Always on, always ready
• Next-gen assisted shopping experience, optimized for conversions
• Easy setup, exceptional outcomes

Reach out to us at info@bigsur.ai to get started

Big Sur AI Sales Agent Demo: Increase sales with state of the art AI, tailored for your store

 to provide real-time support to your shoppers to recreate the in-store shopping experience.

Rad Power Bikes converts a 12% conversion rate for shoppers who converse with the AI Sales Agent.

This is four times more than their store's average conversion rate.

get data into the conversion rates of each question your users ask that leads to a conversion.

This will help you identify the crucial pre-purchase questions interested shoppers ask.

#2: Add AI-Powered Product Recommendations That Are Customized

Optimize your e-commerce store by adding personalized product recommendations to improve the customer experience.

Personalized product recommendations are customized suggestions made to your shoppers that consider the customers’:

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Algolia 2025 Review: Key Features, Pricing & Insights (E-commerce edition)

The 7 Best Octane AI Alternatives and Competitors (2025 Edition)