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Amazon CloudSearch

Amazon CloudSearch is a managed search service that makes it easy to add search functionality to your application. It handles the complexity of setting up, managing, and scaling a search solution.

Key Features​

  • Managed infrastructure: Automatic scaling, patching, and maintenance
  • Full-text search: Support for stemming, synonyms, and fuzzy matching
  • Faceted search: Filter and navigate results by categories
  • Geospatial search: Location-based queries
  • Highlighting: Show matching terms in context

How It Works​

  1. Create a search domain
  2. Define your index fields and types
  3. Upload documents (JSON or XML)
  4. Query using CloudSearch's query syntax or simple text search

Example Query​

search?q=serverless+architecture&return=title,description&size=10

When to Use CloudSearch​

CloudSearch is appropriate for:

  • Applications needing basic to moderate search capabilities
  • Teams wanting a fully managed solution
  • Use cases where simple configuration is preferred over flexibility

What We Like​

  • Simplicity: Easy to set up compared to self-managed Elasticsearch
  • Managed scaling: Handles traffic spikes automatically
  • AWS integration: Works well with other AWS services

What We Don't Like​

  • Limited features: Fewer capabilities than Elasticsearch/OpenSearch
  • Dated service: Hasn't received significant updates in years
  • Pricing: Can be expensive for the feature set
  • Vendor lock-in: Proprietary query syntax

Alternatives to Consider​

For most new projects, we recommend:

  • Amazon OpenSearch Service: More powerful, based on Elasticsearch/OpenSearch
  • Algolia: Excellent developer experience and hosted search
  • Meilisearch: Open-source, fast, and easy to use

CloudSearch remains viable for existing workloads but is rarely our first choice for new projects.