Meilisearch 1.0: the next stage in search
Tags: search, rust, opensource
Published: 2023-02-21 13:01:07

After three years of hard work and dedication, we are thrilled to announce the **launch of Meilisearch 1.0**. With this release, Meilisearch has taken a stride forward in its mission to help developers create fast, powerful, and reliable search experiences.

With more than 32,000 GitHub stargazers and 100,000 launches per month, Meilisearch is already well-loved by its community. Now, after countless hours spent polishing the API and architecture to perfection, we are confident and happy to release the first completely stable version of Meilisearch, with guaranteed compatibility through future versions.

Creating a seamless search experience for your users can be a daunting task, but it is crucial to help your business **elevate user satisfaction, drive conversions, and increase retention**. Enter **Meilisearch v1**: the most performant search engine on the market with zero setup required.

## What is Meilisearch?

**Meilisearch is an open-source, user-focused search engine** that easily integrates with any website or application. It features powerful built-in capabilities such as [search-as-you-type](https://docs.meilisearch.com/learn/what_is_meilisearch/features.html?utm_source=release-post&utm_id=v1-announcement&utm_content=search-as-you-type#search-as-you-type), [typo tolerance](https://docs.meilisearch.com/learn/what_is_meilisearch/features.html?utm_source=release-post&utm_id=v1-announcement&utm_content=typo-tolerant#typo-tolerant), [faceted search](https://docs.meilisearch.com/learn/what_is_meilisearch/features.html?utm_source=release-post&utm_id=v1-announcement&utm_content=faceted-search#faceting), [geo search](https://docs.meilisearch.com/learn/advanced/geosearch.html?utm_source=release-post&utm_id=v1-announcement&utm_content=geosearch), and [multi-tenancy](https://docs.meilisearch.com/learn/security/tenant_tokens.html?utm_source=release-post&utm_id=v1-announcement&utm_content=multitenancy). A suite of [SDKs and libraries](https://docs.meilisearch.com/learn/what_is_meilisearch/sdks.html?utm_source=release-post&utm_id=v1-announcement&utm_content=integrations) makes it easy to connect with popular coding languages and web tools. When it comes to languages, Meilisearch supports them all, with special optimizations for any language that uses whitespace to separate words, plus Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, Thai, and Korean.

> *We found that, with our prior search engine **(Elasticsearch), 14%** of searches resulted in a purchase, and with **Meilisearch, 20%** of searches were resulting in a purchase. That's a **huge improvement** without a lot of development time: 1 out of 5 customers found the book they were looking for and purchased it.
>\- Andy Hunter, CEO of [Bookshop.org](https://bookshop.org/)*


From e-commerce to SaaS, media, and beyond, businesses from all industries trust Meilisearch to power their search needs. Don't let lackluster search hold you back any longer: [try Meilisearch today](https://www.meilisearch.com/?utm_source=release-post&utm_id=v1-announcement&utm_content=landing).

## Why do companies love Meilisearch?

### Simplicity

We're a team of developers who understand the importance of a great developer experience. Even if you have the most flexible and powerful tool in the world, it doesn’t count for much if it’s painful to use and understand. That's why we made Meilisearch: to give developers the tool they need to create awesome search experiences, without provoking headaches or gray hairs.

The **consistency** and **predictability** of Meilisearch’s design make it easy to integrate into your chosen technical stack. Our comprehensive [documentation](https://docs.meilisearch.com/?utm_source=release-post&utm_id=v1-announcement&utm_content=docs) and [developer tools](https://docs.meilisearch.com/learn/what_is_meilisearch/sdks.html?utm_source=release-post&utm_id=v1-announcement&utm_content=integrations2) are designed to help you from start to success.

**Meilisearch works out of the box with no configuration needed**. But we understand that every project is different, so we've made customization easy. You can tailor it to your needs in just a few minutes, so you don't have to be a search expert to get the most out of Meilisearch.

### Relevancy

Relevancy, meaning the quality and accuracy of the search results, is a crucial aspect of any search engine. Irrelevant or poor-quality results can lead to a poor user experience, reducing sales, and causing users to lose trust in your brand. Conversely, users are more likely to return to, trust, and engage with brands that provide relevant search experiences.

> *As a user, it felt like magic compared to other solutions I've tried. I'm not sure whether it's related to how typo tolerance works or if it's related to the default settings. Still, right after setting up Meilisearch with no particular tweak, I've got fantastically relevant results.
> \- Anthony Catel, Co-founder of [minipouce](https://www.minipouce.fr/)*


Meilisearch provides a **pre-configured set of ranking rules** that enable you to achieve **high relevancy right out of the box**, while also accepting customization to meet individual needs. These default settings were developed iteratively by working directly with our users, and are sure to satisfy almost all use cases.

### Performance

In today's fast-paced digital world, search plays a crucial role in user experience. Being able to deliver relevant results quickly is key to the success of almost any product.

One [report from Deloitte](https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/ie/Documents/Consulting/Milliseconds_Make_Millions_report.pdf) shows that a mere 0.1s change in load time can have a noticeable influence on the user journey, increasing conversions by 8% for retail sites and 10% for travel sites.

**Meilisearch returns results in as little as 0.05s**. It is designed from the ground up for performance, making it an essential addition to your technical stack.

## What’s included?

### Search-as-you-type

For a long time, users were accustomed to typing search queries, pressing enter, and waiting for a page to load to view results. Those days are over, as technological improvements have ushered in the age of “search-as-you-type.”

By providing results instantly as the user types their query, **Meilisearch helps users make more precise searches and quickly find what they are looking for**. In today’s internet, “search-as-you-type” is a must-have feature that greatly improves overall satisfaction and retention.

### Typo tolerance

Typos happen. [According to the VP of Search at Google](https://blog.google/products/search/abcs-spelling-google-search/), as many as 1 in 10 searches are misspelled. [A Baymard Institute UX study](https://baymard.com/research/ecommerce-search) also reports that out of 185 major e-commerce sites, 34% don’t return useful results when users misspell even a single character in a product title.

<figure><img src="https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/44rbyphzrzzog4dswowb.gif" alt="" loading="lazy" width="800" height="385"><figcaption><a href="https://where2watch.meilisearch.com/?utm_source=release-post&amp;utm_id=v1-announcement&amp;utm_content=where2watch">See Meilisearch in action here</a></figcaption></figure>

These statistics highlight the importance of using a search solution that can effectively handle spelling mistakes. **Meilisearch’s customizable typo tolerance allows for more accurate and relevant search results** even when users don’t type perfectly. Even better, it isn’t limited to Latin-based languages.

### Faceted search

E-commerce merchants with large catalogs have a particular challenge to overcome. Potential buyers can get [overwhelmed by possibilities](https://neilpatel.com/blog/too-many-choices/), becoming less likely to make a purchase simply due to the effort of making a decision.

Fortunately, faceted search interfaces solve this problem.

Faceted search is a powerful tool that gives customers the power to apply filters and narrow down search results based on their needs and desires. By helping shoppers view the products they’re looking for based on criteria such as size, color, and style, the likelihood of a purchase is increased.

**Meilisearch makes it easy to integrate faceted search into any e-commerce storefront**. With just a few lines of code, you can upgrade your store's search capabilities, increasing sales and customer satisfaction.

### Geo search

Geo search, also known as location-based search or local search, is becoming increasingly important for modern web applications. With the fast-paced nature of today's world, people are constantly on the move and looking for quick and easy ways to find the information they need, such as **nearby businesses, services, or other points of interest**.

Meilisearch meets this need, providing simple methods to [sort search results by their location or filter results based on a geographic radius](https://docs.meilisearch.com/learn/advanced/geosearch.html?utm_source=release-post&utm_id=v1-announcement&utm_content=geosearch2). This helps developers build more personalized and modern applications.

### API keys and multi-tenant indexes

Thanks to [fine-grained API key management](https://docs.meilisearch.com/learn/security/master_api_keys.html?utm_source=release-post&utm_id=v1-announcement&utm_content=API-key-management), you can personalize **Meilisearch to comply with your organization’s security requirements**. Create API keys with custom permissions and expiration dates to ensure secure and flexible access to your data.

If your application is storing sensitive data from multiple users in the same index, it's very important that each user can only search for their own documents. You can trust Meilisearch’s many SDKs to provide methods to generate [tenant tokens](https://docs.meilisearch.com/learn/security/tenant_tokens.html?utm_source=release-post&utm_id=v1-announcement&utm_content=multitenancy2).

## What’s next?

We will stay devoted to our core concepts of simplicity, speed, and relevance to keep empowering all builders.

We’ll keep collaborating with the open-source community and focusing on the Developer Experience to ensure **Meilisearch users can provide the best search experience in their websites and applications**.

## Start building with Meilisearch v1.0

You can **get started with Meilisearch in just a few minutes**—everything works out of the box, no configuration required! All you need to do is choose the hosting solution that fits your business requirements, add documents, and you’re off.

### Try our solution: Meilisearch Cloud

Need to build fast, be compliant, or save resources? [Meilisearch Cloud](https://www.meilisearch.com/pricing?utm_source=release-post&utm_id=v1-announcement&utm_content=cloud) takes care of everything, so you can focus on the most important thing: making your users happy.

### Build your own solution: self-hosting

Since Meilisearch is open-source, you can host your own Meilisearch instance. Run Meilisearch and start searching through your data in less than five minutes by following our [quick start guide](https://docs.meilisearch.com/learn/getting_started/quick_start.html?utm_source=release-post&utm_id=v1-announcement&utm_content=quick-start).

🧰 For both solutions, we provide a large number of [developer tools](https://docs.meilisearch.com/learn/what_is_meilisearch/sdks.html?utm_source=release-post&utm_id=v1-announcement&utm_content=integrations3) and [reliable documentation](https://docs.meilisearch.com/?utm_source=release-post&utm_id=v1-announcement&utm_content=docs2) to help you connect your code base with Meilisearch.