To Build or To Buy? Deciding Which Search Is Right for Your Company

When it comes to search, many organizations are torn between building their search in-house or going with an external SaaS solution like Cludo. The decision can be even harder if you’re trying to improve search across multiple digital platforms, like your website and your internal intranet. You have to consider factors like budget, development resources and how quickly you need a working search.

But at Cludo, we’re not here to present you with difficult choices. We’re here to make your life a little easier. So to help with your decision, we’ve broken down what you need to know when choosing a search solution. In this post, we’ll look at the types of search you can implement, the different ways of investing in search, and which one is right for you.

To build or to buy? That is the question!

When deciding what path to take on your search journey, there are a few questions you’ll want to answer first:

Getting team-wide agreement on these questions is the first step toward choosing between buying and building your search.

To answer them, let’s first explore the types of search you might need, and which is the right fit for your organization.

Which search solutions should you implement?

Search is at the center of the digital experience, which means a search tool that meets all of your needs is essential. There are many ways to provide an optimized search experience for your visitors and employees. Let’s dive into the different types of search you can offer!

Which search (or searches) your organization should provide depends on your answers to the questions in the first section, and on whether you need internal search, external search or both. Work with your team to decide where to begin. Once you know which search to offer, dive into the two options: building or buying.

Building your search

First, let’s look at what it’s like to build your own search solution. Building search in-house comes with its own set of pros and cons. Not everyone is equipped to build a custom search, though there are benefits to doing so. Mainly, developing your own search gives you full control over its technology and functionality, which is especially appealing if your organization has a strict set of guidelines and aesthetics to follow.

However, let’s discuss the elephant in the room: the cost, and the time. Our research suggests it costs, on average, $60,000 to build a search solution in-house, and another $10,000 a year to maintain it. (Not to mention the cost of the staff needed to keep it running.) Most organizations don’t have the development time and budget of larger corporations like Google or Amazon. Employing a dedicated search team is a huge undertaking, and not always the most cost-effective option.

Source: Cludo research

And today, the bar is higher. Visitors expect search that understands what they mean, handles typos and synonyms, and answers questions directly. Building that yourself means working with vector embeddings, hybrid ranking and AI answers with guardrails against made-up information, on top of the basics.

You also can’t set it and forget it. The upkeep and maintenance of search can be unpredictable, from bug fixes to new functionality. You’ll want your search to keep up with current search features and trends, which may be difficult for a smaller team.

Buying a search solution

Next, buying a search solution. Buying can feel like a complicated task, especially if your organization is hesitant to commit to new technology. Finding the right solution can take time, but that time won’t come close to the time you’ll save after implementation.

Buying a search solution is a great option for many reasons. Whether you’re limited on development resources, have a small budget, or would rather go with a trusted solution, buying has its perks. A few benefits of going with a search solution like Cludo include:

But of course, there’s still customization to consider. If you’re looking for a search that looks and works just the way you want, without the hassle of building it yourself, out-of-the-box solutions like Cludo offer that middle ground. You can customize everything from the layout of your search to the categories and facets it shows.

The middle ground: buy, then build on top

Building and buying don’t have to be either-or. With Cludo, you can buy the search engine and still build a fully custom experience on top of it. Cludo handles crawling, indexing, AI relevance, analytics and security, while your developers use React Search Core or our REST APIs to build exactly the interface you want. Or our team can design, build and host a custom search results page for you.

Decisions, decisions

When deciding which search is right for your organization, remember the value of search. It may seem like a “nice to have,” but it’s much more than that. Search not only helps increase conversions, it can be the difference between a visitor staying on your site or app and leaving for good.

Whether you decide to build your search or buy a solution like Cludo, search is more than a bar at the top of the page. It’s a direct connection to your users and their needs. So make sure your search is ready to deliver!