What are some Search Servers out there?

Question

I'm looking to find alternatives to Solr from the Apache Software Foundation.

For those that don't know, Solr is an enterprise search server. A client application uses a web-services like interface to submit documents for indexing and also to perform search queries. Solr has other features built in like caching and replication. I believe it was originally started by CNet and then open-sourced.

I'm looking for other search servers out there that might be seen as the competition.

Answer 1

I wrote a long post about my experiences and features of all the engines I listed below but I scrapped it because formatting is a pita. But quite simply if you don't want to shell out money Solr/Lucene or Fast (now MSSE) is really about the best you can do.

Excluded because I have no experience of this product: Seamark,

Price High to Low

• Endeca,
• FredHopper,
• Mercado,
• Google Mini,
• Microsoft Search Server,
• Autonomy,
• Microsoft Search Server Express,
• Solr/Lucene

Speed Fast to Slow

• Google Mini/Endeca,
• FredHopper,
• Autonomy,
• Solr/MSS/MSSE

Features High to Low

• Endeca,
• FredHopper,
• Mercado,
• Solr,
• Autonomy,
• Lucene,
• MSS/MSSE,
• Google Mini

Extensibility High to Low

• Solr/Lucene,
• Endeca,
• FredHopper,
• Mercado,
• Autonomy,
• MSS/MSSE,
• Google Mini

Java API

• Endeca,
• FredHopper,
• Autonomy,
• Solr/Lucene

.NET API

• Endeca,
• Solr/Lucene,
• MSS/MSSE,
• Autonomy

XML API

• FredHopper,
• Mercado,
• Solr/Lucene,
• Autonomy,
• Google Mini (limited)

Faceted Search

• Endeca,
• FredHopper,
• Seamark,
• Solr

Natural Language Search

• Endeca,
• Fred Hopper,
• Solr,
• Mercado,
• MSS/MSSE,
• Autonomy,
• Google Mini

Document Crawling

• Endeca,
• Mercado,
• MSS/MSSE,
• Autonomy,
• Google Mini

ITL

• Endeca,
• FredHopper

Merchandizing/Content Spotlighting

• Endeca,
• FredHopper,
• Mercado

Distributed Search

• Endeca,
• FredHopper,
• Mercado,
• Solr/Lucene,
• Autonomy,
• Google Mini

Analytics

• Endeca

Platform x86 Windows

• Endeca,
• FredHopper,
• Mercado,
• MSS/MSSE,
• Solr/Lucene,
• Autonomy

Platform x64 Windows

• Endeca,
• FredHopper,
• Solr/Lucene

Platform x86 Unix Variants

• Endeca,
• FredHopper,
• Mercado,
• Solr/Lucene,
• Autonomy

Platform x64 Unix Variants

• Endeca,
• Solr/Lucene

Other

• Google Mini