Search isn’t simply something nice to have on your website; it’s a major contributor to conversions. Users that conduct their own particular search are frequently far more engaged, have a high degree of intent to complete an action, and are often much more likely to purchase a product on the site than those who only view pages without performing any searches.

There are two popular solutions that have been directly compared as helping to improve upon the WordPress default search solution: Relevanssi and ExpertRec. Both solutions can provide value, but the way each must be used in order to achieve the desired result varies from one to the other. While both will improve upon WordPress’s default search capabilities, ExpertRec is a fully AI-powered search solution, and Relevanssi is a more traditional plugin.

This resource guide will assist you in determining which solution is best suited for your particular site and application of these technologies by comparing:
Key Features of Each Solution
Performance Comparisons
Scalability Considerations
Real-World Examples of Each in Use
Implementation Ability of Each Solution for Your Needs.

What Is Relevancy?

Relevanssi is a WordPress plugin that is used to increase the relevance of search results within your website. It has been widely adopted because it offers significant improvements to your current WordPress default search option without needing third-party services, as it works fully within your site and builds a large search index right in your database.

Relevanssi offers the following features:

• Results sorted by relevance rather than date published
• Fuzzy matching (partial word matches)
• Phrase searching (using quotes to search for exact phrases)
• Support for AND/OR queries
• Custom post type and taxonomy indexing

Keep in mind that this approach can use large amounts of disk space on your server, especially if your site has heavy content usage. Depending on the amount of content your site has, you could end up using hundreds of MB of disk space just for the Relevanssi search index.

What Is ExpertRec?

ExpertRec is a hosted AI-powered site search platform that can be integrated into your WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, or other CMS-based sites. Rather than placing additional loads on your server resources by performing searches, ExpertRec crawls your site and provides you with search results via its own optimized search platform.

The core functionality of ExpertRec includes

• AI-driven relevance and intent identification
• Instant autocomplete/typo corrections
• Faceted filter capabilities (merchandising)
• Voice search support
• User-based personalization and recommendations
• Advanced analytics and insights
• Search of documents (PDFs/DOCs/XLS/etc.)

ExpertRec focuses on providing very quick and accurate searches even for your larger catalogs and libraries of content.

ExpertRec vs Relevanssi: Feature-by-Feature Comparison

Ease of Setup

Relevanssi—Install the plugin from the WordPress repository; configure indexing settings; rebuild the index after changes to content; requires ongoing tuning.

ExpertRec—Install either via plugin or by embedding the code; enter your site URL in order to be automatically crawled; configure the search UI from the dashboard; no need for server-side maintenance.

👉 If you do not have a technical team or dedicated developers, ExpertRec will be easier to set up.

Performance & Speed

Relevanssi—Runs on your hosting environment; performance is dependent on the server resources available; large sites may have issues with slowing down.

ExpertRec—Built as a hosted search infrastructure; results are delivered in nearly real-time; designed for high traffic as well as large data sets.

👉 Since ExpertRec provides the search processing away from your WordPress server, there is no impact on the database on your server.

Scalability

This is where both solutions are the most different.

Relevanssi – Primarily serves small to medium-sized websites. Huge indexes can add to the overall database size by a lot; you may need an upgrade to your hosting service.

ExpertRec—Built for scalability, e-commerce catalog sizes, and large enterprise site sizes; able to handle many tens of thousands of records with ease; no bloat of the database on your server.

For companies that are looking for additional growth, either online retail businesses or content portals, you can expect ExpertRec’s installation process to afford you long-term scalability.

Search Quality & Intelligence

Relevancy
• Relevance based on keywords, fuzzy matching, and manual weightings

ExpertRec
• Intent analysis via AI; synonyms and typos corrected by AI; personalized ranking of results via machine learning (improves over time)

ExpertRec can interpret complex queries and provide relevant results without users needing to refine their query.

Advanced Features

ExpertRec provides a complete search experience—not just a better results page.

AI-powered site search with instant autocomplete

Deliver lightning-fast search experiences with ExpertRec

ExpertRec helps you implement intelligent autocomplete, typo-tolerant search, personalized results, and scalable server-side search — all without complex infrastructure or heavy development effort.

Start Free Trial →

Quick setup • No coding required • Works on any website

Resource Usage

Relevanssi
Uses your hosting CPU, RAM, and storage; creates large database indices.

ExpertRec
The minimum amount of resources are used locally when doing a search as well as being performed externally.

If your website has limited resources and you install ExpertRec it will not degrade the speed of your system.

When Relevancy Is the Better Choice

Relevanssi still has a legitimate and relevant role within the ecosystem. Examples of when Relevanssi is the better option:

• For small blogs or brochure-style websites
• Projects that have a low budget
• Websites that require a fully self-hosted solution
• Developers who are willing to do manual configuration

When ExpertRec is the better option

ExpertRec has been developed for when search features impact both revenue and UX.

Good Use Cases:

• E-commerce websites
• Very large content-driven websites
• SaaS companies
• Documentation-type websites
• Websites in multiple languages
• High-traffic websites

ExpertRec was created to increase conversions rather than just navigation purposes.

Customizing ExpertRec for Your Website

• Changing the search interface to match your branding
• Changing the criteria on how products/pages are ranked
• Using different synonyms/values from the dictionary
• Creating unique filtering options/category sets
• Customizing the ‘no results’ page
• Personalizing result sets based on user activity

Pricing Considerations

Relevanssi:
Offers a free version which might lack certain advanced features; you will need to pay for the premium version (which may or may not include hidden costs). You will probably have to upgrade your hosting provider to use Relevanssi due to their additional requirements.

ExpertRec:
Offers a 30-day FREE trial. Is based on the number of searches performed; therefore, there is no additional infrastructure needed.

Final Verdict

Overall, both Relevanssi and ExpertRec enhance search capabilities in WordPress, but they each appeal to different subsets of customers.

Use Relevanssi If:
You Want a Free, Self-Hosted Search Option
Your Site is Relatively Small (<500-1,000 Visitors/Day)
You Are Comfortable Managing Your Own Indexes and Performance

Use ExpertRec If:
The Quality of Your Search Results Influences Conversion Rate
Your Site is Large or Has a Lot of Room to Grow (>1,000 Visitors/Day)
You Want Access to AI for Search and Analytics
You Are Seeking an Easy to Maintain, Scalable Search Option

Why Many Growing Sites Move to ExpertRec

As a website scales up, the limitation of using a traditional plugin-based search may also limit the total output that a website can provide. By using the easier access to the hosted AI search of ExpertRec, a website is able to increase the total amount of intelligence they are able to provide, make the search experience more personalized, and increase the speed of the overall searching experience.

In conclusion:

• Relevanssi improves the overall user experience on WordPress.
• ExpertRec will help you to create a true discovery engine for all of your users.