Frequently Asked Questions

What can I do with CloudSearch?

You can use CloudSearch to create a finely-tuned search function for your website or application. If you have content you want your users to find, but you don't want to deal with complicated coding and system administration tasks, CloudSearch is for you. Check out our plug-in page.

I am not a developer. What can I do with CloudSearch?

CloudSearch is a service intended to be used mainly by developers or system administrators. It's not a standalone web search engine, and we don't currently have a way for you to set it up directly through the Web. It requires downloading software such as a Wordpress plug-in (if you wanted to add better search to your blog, for example) or writing a program to interact with our servers.

Please let us know what you would like to do with CloudSearch, and we'll do our best to help you. Thanks for your interest!

Do I download CloudSearch and run it on my computer?

CloudSearch is a hosted service, which means that it runs on our servers over your Internet connection, what we like to call "in the cloud." Using CloudSearch saves you from having to do any system administrations tasks or pay for hardware.

How much set up and management does CloudSearch require?

Very little. You can be up and running in minutes, and we take care of all the maintenance.

What programming languages do you support?

We provide clients for Python , Ruby , PHP , .NET and Java . Our API spec is public and consists of REST calls that can be made through HTTP, so if you don't use one of our client libraries, it's easy to implement your own client or even use the API from the command line with tools like Curl.

What level of support do you provide?

We provide support via email at support@hub9.com and via chat through the pop-up window in the lower left corner of our site. We're also in the process of setting up a discussion group.

How do I get my data to you?

To index your existing data for the first time, you need to iterate through your document database and send each document to the index via the "put" function.

To keep your index up-to-date with the latest additions and changes on your site, you need to call the "put" function for new or changed documents, and the "delete" function for deleted documents.

How fast does CloudSearch deliver search results?

CloudSearch resolves most queries in well under the 50ms mark. For very large data sets and complex queries, times can go up to 300ms.

Can CloudSearch handle a large website?

Absolutely. Basic accounts support 20-30 queries per second out of the box. If that's not sufficient for your needs, we can set up custom accounts that can easily handle several hundred queries per second.

Will CloudSearch work with large datasets?

Absolutely! Some of our customers are using CloudSearch to search hundreds of millions of documents. For more information about a custom plan tailored to your needs, please contact us.

How do I sign up?

Go to our sign-up page and select a plan. For free plans, we only need your email address and a password. For plans that require payment, we also need your billing information.

Can I cancel any time I want?

Yes. You can cancel your account at any time without any prior notification.

How do I cancel my service?

Send us an email telling us you want to cancel, and we'll take care of it.

When will you charge me?

We charge for the paid plans every month in advance, and we provide the first month free of charge. This means that if you sign up, for example, on January 15th, you will not be charged until February 15th, and that will pay for the period from February 15th until March 14th.

Can I switch plans?

Sure. We're working on automating this process, but in the meantime, contact us and we'll do it for you.

How do I upgrade from the Free package to the Starter package?

Contact us at support@hub9.com

What is an index?

An index is a structure designed for quick and efficient keyword searches. Think of the index at the back of a book, and how you can find a page containing a particular word without having to scan every single page. When you create a new index in CloudSearch and start adding entries to it, it is as if you are starting with an empty book and updating the index every time you add a section.

For example, let's say you have a blog and you want to index it so your users can search through it. You index the first post (post #1) which contains the word "apple". The index will contain an entry for "apple" pointing to the post #1. When a user searches for "apple" the index shows that "apple" is mentioned in post #1.

You can also split your document into several fields and index them as separate entities. For example, your blog post might be composed of a "title" field, an "author" field and a "content" field, etc. When you index the document, you provide its unique identifier (the document key) and the contents of each field. You can later restrict your search to a specific field by using the field name in the query, for example "title:apple".

How often will my data be indexed?

As often as you wish. CloudSearch doesn't actively fetch data from you as a web crawler would do. Instead, your application sends CloudSearch the data as soon as it is created or updated.

How is CloudSearch different from Lucene and Solr?

There are many functional differences but most importantly, CloudSearch is a cloud-based, robust and scalable service, so you don't have to worry about managing servers, configuring the software and scalability.

Is CloudSearch better than Google Custom Search?

Yes. CloudSearch provides more complete, relevant, and timely search results, because we give you the ability to control what gets indexed, when it gets indexed, and how the results are sorted. Google Custom Search results are often stale or incomplete in comparison. Further, Google Custom Search requires you to show ads, which Google chooses in order to increase its own advertising revenue, so you may end up serving sponsored links for your competitors. CloudSearch does not require ads.

Is my data secure in the cloud?

Yes. From a security standpoint, we use Amazon AWS security best practices, and our servers are not accessible in any way except to provide the search service. Since each customer has a unique key to access their own index, no unauthorized access is possible. Your data is as private as you choose to make it.

In terms of integrity, storing your data in the cloud can be more secure than storing it on-site, because cloud data is typically replicated in several locations and supported by a lot more hardware than most companies want to own and maintain.

Can CloudSearch search though PDF or Word documents?

CloudSearch, like other full-text search alternatives, indexes only text. However, for common formats like PDF or Word documents, it is very easy to parse them to obtain the readable text by using open source tools.

What types of queries work with CloudSearch?

CloudSearch implements Boolean operators (and, or, and not) and phrase queries.