Elastic Search Reviews

My main use cases for Elastic Search involve search capability. For instance, I built a banking product application, the PFM personal information system, requiring search capability and fuzzy search using Elastic Search. Additionally, I use third-party API data to build a super app in the insurance domain, where I collect requests and responses from APIs and store the logs in Elastic Search for debugging purposes, analyzing the data using the Kibana dashboard.

I previously used Space Cloud to build similar functionality; however, it does not support fuzzy search, which is why I switched to Elastic Search for those requirements.

One of Elastic Search's best features is its search capability due to the index-based data management and lifecycle of unstructured data, primarily in the form of JSON, allowing for historical data storage and multiple indexes.

When using traditional keyword and full-text search capabilities, my experience with Elastic Search's performance indicates that the results are obtained much quicker compared to traditional SQL queries, demonstrating superior efficiency.

Elastic Search fulfills my use case requirements effectively, both for my current and previous needs, which is why I rely on it.

Elastic Search positively impacts my company with many benefits across multiple use cases; for example, it enables quick dashboard setups for client reviews and presents data efficiently, ensuring good user experience.

I think Elastic Search could be improved by introducing more AI features, particularly for complex queries and aggregator functions to enhance usability and readability.

Over the last four years, I have been using Elastic Search, including both the open-source version and the open search provided by AWS.

Elastic Search is stable in my experience.

Regarding scalability, Elastic Search provides horizontal scalability options on AWS, allowing me to scale according to my requirements and traffic.

Technical support for Elastic Search is satisfactory, with quick solutions provided by support teams and active open forums available. I rate customer service and technical support as an eight out of ten.

Before choosing Elastic Search, I evaluated other products like Space Cloud and three to four different banking applications, ultimately finding Elastic Search to be the most capable option.

The initial setup process of Elastic Search is straightforward, with comprehensive documentation available for installation guidelines that make it easy for beginners.

Pricing for Elastic Search setups is dependent on requirements and use cases, but I find the enterprise license to be reasonable in comparison to other products.

I am currently using Elastic Cloud Serverless.

My application is hosted on AWS cloud, utilizing managed services including the open search, which is a component of Elastic Search.

I use the ELK stack for log ingestion and visualization of application logs via Kibana.

I find that the ability to parse and structure raw logs without agents requires different approaches for each use case.

I am using the Attack Discovery feature.

The discovery feature helps me correlate alerts by writing custom queries to retrieve logs based on specific criteria.

I utilize generative AI models like Claude AI and Anthropic within the discovery context for better log analysis.

From a technical point of view, integrating AI capabilities within Elastic Search enhances its value, showcasing the potential for using models and RAG in my systems.

I recommend Elastic Search for companies with substantial data needs or searching requirements, considering it the best search engine. I have provided an overall review rating of nine out of ten.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Elastic Search is used as an observability tool and logging analyzer for solutions that already exist in the company, mainly in FinTech products and financial products.

Elastic Search's main advantages are the visuals that represent and visualize all entities and system components in a simplified diagram, which provides the ability to identify which component in the system has an issue.

The main benefits include having one centralized place that gathers and aggregates all logs related to different or distributed systems.

Elastic Search could be enhanced by incorporating low-code or no-code plugins that permit developers to integrate it with different or distributed systems. This would allow for configurations that already exist but need customization through plugins or simple code that can facilitate user control over parts of the visuals, dashboards, and sensors.

Graphs should be more interactive by importing different graph schemes or visuals from external resources into Elastic Search.

Given that the product has not been used since 2023, the data might be outdated. If Elastic Search is not integrated with any promised LLM, it should have this capability as soon as possible.

Elastic Search has been used since 2018 to the present moment, depending on the different companies that have been worked with.

Elastic Search is a very stable product, especially after obtaining support licenses from Elastic.

The scalability aspect is straightforward. With self-hosting, resources can be expanded vertically, which is managed from the organization's side.

There is no knowledge about general customer service, but there is previous experience in submitting support cases to the Elastic team to get answers and fulfill requirements.

Negative

Elastic Search was installed one time but the work was not completed with it.

Experience exists with Dynatrace observability tool, but Dynatrace is completely different from Elastic Search. Dynatrace is comparable to other observability tools in this category.

Elastic Search has been installed in multiple organizations, including the current employer and previous ones, and used for different purposes.

The setup is somewhat complicated due to multiple dependencies and relations with different systems. However, any engineer should be able to understand and read the documentation well to implement it properly based on business needs and requirements.

The implementation team was involved in the deployment.

Return on investment was achieved more than a year ago.

DataDog might be an equivalent product to Elastic Search, though this requires verification.

Hybrid observability was not used. Enterprise API, whether referring to ESB, API Gateway, or middleware, was not used. Serverless interaction with Kibana was not used. The overall rating for this review is 9 out of 10.

On-premises

I have used the Wazuh SIEM tool, an open-source SIEM tool that uses Elasticsearch for indexing. In this SIEM tool, we have a large amount of logs. Data are converted into alerts, then they are stored in our environment for monitoring and security purposes. For storing that data in Wazuh, we use Elasticsearch indexing.

Configuring Elasticsearch is much easier compared to comprehending other SIEM tools like Splunk. It has a full command-based access that allows you to configure how much data you want to store and set up retention policies. I can easily change the bandwidth for the network to send log data. Elasticsearch is quite user-friendly and offers a hands-on experience for configuring databases.

Elasticsearch should have simpler commands for window filtering. It is primarily based on Unix or Linux-based operating systems and cannot be easily configured in Windows systems. Multi-operating system support would be a great improvement.

I have used it for approximately two years.

It can be installed on cloud and locally, with no issues.

I would rate the stability of Elasticsearch as a seven. There have been multiple instances where I faced errors due to network bandwidth issues. The data transfer sometimes exceeded the bandwidth limits without proper notification, which caused issues.

I would rate the scalability of Elasticsearch as an eight. The high scalability is somewhat limited by its lack of support for different operating systems other than Linux.

I have never used their technical support. I usually resolve issues on my own or with the help of online community forums.

Positive

The complexity of the initial setup depends on the requirements. In an MSSP scenario, where multiple clients use the same software, there is a need to segregate the data. This can make the setup more complex, especially for a single client where you need to adjust network configurations.

For time-saving, Elasticsearch is a good software. It is stable, and we do not encounter critical issues like server downtime, which could result in data loss. There are minor misconfigurations regarding data transfer rates that I have noticed sometimes.

I'm not familiar with the pricing details as it falls under the finance department. My manager handles the costing. However, given that we have been using it for two years, I can suggest that it's priced sensibly for us.

If you can't afford a large SIEM tool like Splunk and QRadar, Elasticsearch is a viable alternative.

Overall, considering key aspects like cost, learning curve, and data indexing architecture, Elasticsearch is a very good tool. I would rate it as a nine.

We use Elastic Search for search purposes and things related to semantic search.

It is not being used for the moment regarding my main use case for Elastic Search.

In my experience, the best features Elastic Search offers are its stability and brand new features that I consider very interesting.

The machine learning features of Elastic Search are very interesting, including the possibility to include models such as ELSER and different multilingual models that let us fine-tune our searches and use them in our search projects.

The machine learning features of Elastic Search have helped us with many things such as improving our searches and experience for the guests.

We could benefit from refining the machine learning models that we currently use in Elastic Search, along with the possibility to integrate agents, intelligent artificial intelligence, form of agent, and MCP.

It would be useful to include an assistant into Kibana for recommendations, advice, tutorials, or things that can help improve my daily work with Elastic Search.

I have been using Elastic Search and Kibana for about four years.

In my experience, Elastic Search is quite stable.

The scalability of Elastic Search is very good in my opinion. It never has incidents that cause issues in our daily tasks.

The customer support for Elastic Search is one of the best I have ever tried. Whenever I had to create a new incident, I got the responses that I needed.

Positive

I consider Elastic Search a very good project. On a scale of 1-10, I would give it a 10.

The features and capabilities that Elastic Search provides are very easy to use, and the documentation is rich. You can find and understand everything here to use it properly.

I would tell others looking into using Elastic Search that they can try it and see if it fits their use cases.

Elastic Search is a very good product. I really appreciate all the features that it provides, and I hope this product continues its evolution in the way it has been.

Private Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

As a developer, I use Elastic Search in developing one of my applications, basically integrating the back-end with Elastic Search.

Our main use case for Elastic Search is for Logstash, which is a subset of Elastic Search that allows us to store logs and enables searching between logs with specific keywords in specific time ranges. Apart from that, we have our data stored in an index, and since Elastic Search is a NoSQL database, that's how we store the files in our databases.

The main objective of integrating Elastic Search is to transition from normal SQL databases to have faster searches and dynamic queries built around it, which makes the search much quicker. Since not all data is structured, we also need to handle unstructured data, and that's how Elastic Search has replaced our previous system.

The positive impact I've seen from using Elastic Search includes replacing conventional databases and being able to store much more unstructured data. In the future, if we need to include data not present in earlier systems, we can implement semantic or flyway changes with Elastic Search in place, allowing us to store unstructured data as is.

The most valuable feature of Elastic Search that I appreciate is the dynamic query building and the speed of result fetching, especially since we have an open-source version called OpenSearch that we use in specific places due to the cost of storing data with Elastic Search.

Dynamic query building and result fetching are valuable because there are specific use cases where we need to build queries based on environment variables rather than having a generic query. This dynamic building helps address various business scenarios, especially considering customer product types and flags that may need inclusion or exclusion in the query. It allows me to create one query to accommodate multiple business cases and ensures that user-specific scenarios are included, with results already fetched for each.

Elastic Search has many features, including Kibana and Logstash, which we regularly use. However, one downside in our product is cost, as it can be expensive when maintaining multiple shards and indexes. Failures of shards or nodes can occur, and I can mention that cost and the upscaling of nodes or shards are areas needing improvement.

We haven't explored the hybrid search feature of Elastic Search, which combines vector and text searches, yet.

Scalability of Elastic Search presents disadvantages, particularly when handling minimal or production-level data. It manages high volumes of unstructured data well, but during performance tests involving one million requests at once, we encountered issues with shards and nodes not upscaling as needed, leading to crashes and minimal data loss, which isn't typical in real-world scenarios.

I have been working with Elastic Search for about 1.5 years.

Elastic Search is quite reliable for us, and despite identifying some very minute limitations, we still rely on Elastic Search.

Scalability of Elastic Search presents disadvantages, particularly when handling minimal or production-level data. It manages high volumes of unstructured data well, but during performance tests involving one million requests at once, we encountered issues with shards and nodes not upscaling as needed, leading to crashes and minimal data loss, which isn't typical in real-world scenarios.

I have not communicated with the technical support of Elastic Search at all up to this point.

Before Elastic Search, we used Couchbase, which is also a NoSQL database. Initially, it was free software integrated into our applications, but with its commercialization, we explored alternatives and found that Elastic Search would be a better fit than Couchbase.

We conducted some preliminary research to find a potential replacement for Couchbase while searching for NoSQL databases. The good documentation for Elastic Search on various websites helped us conclude that it would be an ideal fit. Although we considered the open-source version known as OpenSearch, we decided to integrate Elastic Search to explore its features, eventually determining it had much more powerful features, such as the Kibana dashboard and Logstash.

With respect to performance, we have seen a return on investment from Elastic Search. For example, the API response time has improved significantly, cutting the time down from about one or two minutes to around 50% faster, benefiting our downstream applications.

My usual use cases for Elastic Search are that we are using APM, Application Performance Monitoring. We are using Real User Monitoring, as a RUM. We mostly are using it for application performance monitoring and troubleshooting in that regard. I think that's the main thing we're using Elastic Search observability for right now. We are considering expanding it also to have some Metric Beats and some other features. When we have more data, we will probably start to try to activate AI within Elastic Search. That's a possibility. The Elastic Search platform that we are using is an on-prem installation. It's not a cloud solution we have. This is because of the criticality and confidentiality of the data we have in Elastic Search.

I don't think there's a specific feature within Elastic Search that I have found the most valuable so far. We are more or less using all the features in one way or the other. Elastic Search has impacted my organization positively as we use it for logging and APM. It's not all systems which are using it yet, but it's gathering momentum because they have more use cases to present to other parts of the organization. They explain how different departments are using it, and then people see that they could also benefit from using it. More departments and their systems start to use Elastic Search as a result.

The documentation for Elastic Search can be challenging if you're not already familiar with the platform. The approach to Elastic Search can be difficult if you haven't been working with it previously. Within the product itself, some features could be more intuitive, where currently you need to know specifically where to find them and how to use them.

I have been working with Elastic Search for more than four years now.

From my perspective, Elastic Search has been very stable. The only thing I'm probably missing is what we call the session replay, some kind of tool within Elastic Search based on the data collected that can make some kind of session replay.

Elastic Search is very scalable. The only issue is some features use a huge amount of storage. You need to be in the forefront to make sure that you have the necessary storage to obtain all the data that you're collecting. They probably have surveillance indicating when storage is running low. The engineering department ensures we have sufficient storage. So far, we don't have any scalability issues regarding hosts sending data or the amount of data we are collecting. The engineering department might say we are over-consuming data, but we haven't received any message saying we have reached the ceiling yet.

I do not often communicate with the technical support of Elastic Search. That's the engineering department's responsibility. If I have an issue, I go to the engineering department, and they have the responsibility to communicate with the supplier of Elastic Search or the producer.

Positive

I work with many technical solutions compared to Elastic Search, specifically on observability. We are also looking into AI, which is in an experimental phase in my area. We haven't chosen any specific technology regarding AI. For Elastic Search as it is now, we are not looking into other technology to replace it. I am a chief consultant in my department, but in this regard, I'm mostly a user. The ones who are responsible for the platform are in another department. My experience with configuring relevant searches within the Elastic Search platform is limited as I don't search much within the platform. If I have specific needs, I reach out to get assistance from specialists because they are more familiarized with the system and know exactly how to search for things. For implementation configuration of the system, they are more capable than I am, as I'm more of a user than an engineer on the platform. I would rate Elastic Search an eight out of ten because there's always room for improvement, though from a functionality and price perspective, it could be considered a ten.

On-premises

Other

I use Elastic Search for fast search of products in our database. With Elastic Search, we use full-text search with keywords and different rules from the Elastic Search documentation. I do not have cases when a search request is four sentences long. I typically use three, four, or five words for searches.

I think the best feature of Elastic Search is the speed. It is very fast and comfortable to use in requests with transpositions rather than full requests. It has a smart engine inside.

In Elastic Search, the improvements I would like to see require many resources.

I have used Elastic Search for two or three years, though I do not remember exactly which it is.

Maintenance of Elastic Search is easy because we do not have problems. I would rate the stability of Elastic Search at an eight.

I would rate the scalability of Elastic Search at an eight.

I did not have a situation where I needed to ask something in technical support for Elastic Search.

Positive

I used a different solution before using Elastic Search. It was Sphinx.

I do not know if the deployment was easy or complex, and it is also not my responsibility.

I do not know how it was purchased as it is our DevOps responsibility. I know that it is in AWS, but I do not know the details of how it is deployed there.

I do not know about features such as Agentic AI, RAG, or Semantic Search in Elastic Search. I did not know that there are AI search features available.

I would recommend Elastic Search to other people who want to have fast search in their applications. It is comfortable, it is fast, and it is very interesting to work with it. I gave this product a rating of eight out of ten.

I am a customer, and I use Elastic Search to enhance our search capabilities in our applications.

Elastic Search has excellent features, particularly its scalability and speed. What I appreciate most about Elastic Search is the ability to handle complex queries efficiently. I assess the relevancy of the search results by comparing it to hybrid search methods, such as vector and text searches, which helps ensure the accuracy of the results.

I see that there are areas in Elastic Search that have room for improvement, such as user documentation and onboarding processes.

Regarding the stability of Elastic Search, I find it to be quite robust, and I rate it a 9.

Regarding technical support, I would rate it an 8 because they are responsive and helpful.

The deployment took about two weeks, as we needed to ensure everything was configured correctly.

I compare Elastic Search with other solutions, such as OpenSearch or Algolia, in terms of features and performance, which are quite impressive.

Elastic Search requires regular maintenance, including updates and patching to keep it running smoothly, and upgrades are straightforward to implement.

I have used Elastic Stream for log investigation, which has been very helpful in diagnosing issues. We have about 50 active users in our organization.

Hybrid Cloud

Other