When comparing Sphinx vs Searchify (Hosted IndexTank), the Slant community recommends Searchify (Hosted IndexTank) for most people. In the question“What are the best search engines for web applications?” Searchify (Hosted IndexTank) is ranked 3rd while Sphinx is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose Searchify (Hosted IndexTank) is:
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Good search performance
Pro Fast indexing
Since Sphinx talks directly to the database, indexing speed is very fast.
Pro Rich database-like querying features
Pro Batch and real-time full-text indexes
Pro SQL database indexing
Pro Advanced full-text searching syntax
Pro Easy application integration
Pro Non-text attributes support
Pro Non-SQL storage indexing
Pro Good relevance ranking
By default results are ranked by relevance. If you wish, you can adjust the ranking by giving more weight to certain fields.
Pro Excellent scalability
Pro Distributed searching
Pro Flexible text processing
Pro "Did you mean?" suggestions
Pro Field weights
Option to give one field, such as "title", a higher weight than another field for relevance ranking.
Pro True real-time updates
Pro Autocomplete / suggest
Pro Geolocation search
Sorting and filtering by distance
Pro Works without provided libraries
The API consists of REST calls that can be made through HTTP which enables Searchify to be used even without one of the provided libraries.
Pro Multiple libraries
Searchify has libraries in Python, Ruby, Java, PHP, Node.js and more.
Cons
Con No free tier
Searchify has no free tier. It starts at $59/month for 50000 documents or $25/month if using the Heroku addon.