Site search, a chat bot and managed Apache Solr for Sitecore.
Two things for a Sitecore site. An alternative to its site search: Opensolr reads your site or takes your items by push, and gives your visitors a hosted search page and an out of the box chat bot that answers from your content, with nothing to install in Sitecore. And, for Sitecore XP and XM, the managed Apache Solr their own ContentSearch indexes need, in the version and country you choose.
Your Sitecore content in an Opensolr Index, in one click. Then search it, or talk to it.
Opensolr does not need a Sitecore module to give your site search and a chat bot. It needs your pages. There are two ways to hand them over, and both end in the same index, with the same search page and the same chat bot every Opensolr site gets.
Crawl it: one click, no code
Give Opensolr the address of your Sitecore site or its sitemap. Every page, PDF and document it finds is read, enriched with meaning vectors, language and the text of its pictures, and kept fresh on a schedule. Nothing changes in Sitecore. Crawl your site · What every page gets
Push it: your fields, mapped once
Send your items to the Data Ingestion API when they are published, the way the Drupal, WordPress and TYPO3 integrations do. Sitecore fields map straight onto the fields every Opensolr Index already has, so facets, categories and dates work out of the box (table below). Push your data
Search it, or talk to it
A hosted search page for your index, embeddable in any Sitecore page, with hybrid search, facets, autocomplete, AI Hints and AI Reader. And the Opensolr Chat Bot on every page of your site: one line of embed code, your domain listed, done. Put the search page on your site · Put the chat on your site · Hosted Chat Bot
How Sitecore fields map onto an Opensolr Index
| Sitecore | Opensolr Index | What it gives visitors |
|---|---|---|
| Item URL | uri | The result's address; one document per page, by crawl or push |
| Title / Display name | title | The result's title, highlighted |
| Summary or Meta description | description | The snippet under the title |
| Rich Text and other content fields | text | Full text search, AI Hints, AI Reader and the chat bot answer from it |
| Image field | og_image | The result's picture |
| Author | author | An Author facet |
| Created, Updated | creation_date, timestamp | Dates on results, the Fresh switch, date facets |
| Language version | meta_og_locale | Results in the visitor's language |
| Template name | category | A Type filter: article, product, page |
| Item path or taxonomy | item_list_element_1_name_sm and the levels below | A drill-down category filter |
| Any other field | brand_s, tags_sm, price_f, event_dt | A list, slider or date facet, by the ending you choose |
With a crawl, the same mapping is read from the page head: opensolr: meta tags for your fields and breadcrumb structured data for the categories, the way the Drupal, WordPress and TYPO3 integrations print them. Dynamic fields · Categories · Enterprise Site Search, all in one
Sitecore brings the search code. It needs a Solr to point it at.
Unlike a CMS that needs a plugin, self-hosted Sitecore already speaks Solr through its ContentSearch API. What it cannot do is run Solr for you. That part is a list of requirements, and every one of them is something Opensolr already does.
The right Solr version
Each Sitecore release supports a specific Solr version, listed in Sitecore's own compatibility information for that release. Pick the matching version when you create your indexes (section 04).
One core per Sitecore index
The core, master and web indexes, the marketing indexes, and every custom index your solution adds. Rebuild strategies that switch between two cores need a second one per index.
A schema Sitecore can write to
Sitecore expects its fields in the schema of every core. The schema and solrconfig.xml of each Opensolr Index are yours to upload and edit in the control panel.
Secure access from your servers
HTTPS from your content management and delivery servers, with the indexes closed to everyone else by an IP allow-list and HTTP authentication.
Someone to keep it running
Heap, garbage collection, disks, backups, certificates, monitoring and recovery. On Opensolr, that someone is us.
Five steps from an empty account to a rebuilt index.
The exact configuration files differ between Sitecore versions and between solutions. The shape of the work is always the same, and we are happy to go through it with you — tell us your Sitecore version.
- Create one Opensolr Index per Sitecore indexIn the control panel or through the REST API, on the Solr version your Sitecore release requires. Opensolr index names are unique across the whole platform, so give them a prefix of your own, for example
acme_sitecore_web_index. - Give each index Sitecore's schemaUpload or edit
schema.xmlandsolrconfig.xmlin the configuration editor, then reload the index. - Point Sitecore at OpensolrSet Sitecore's Solr connection string to the HTTPS address of your Opensolr Solr, shown with each index in the control panel.
- Map Sitecore's index names to your index namesWith a configuration patch, set the core name of each Sitecore index to the Opensolr Index you created for it.
- Lock it down and rebuildAllow only your Sitecore servers in the IP allow-list, then rebuild the indexes from Sitecore's Indexing Manager.
Pick the version your Sitecore release needs. Pick the country.
Generated from the live list of shared Opensolr environments. A version you need that is not here can run on a dedicated environment.
| Apache Solr | Countries |
|---|---|
| 10.00 | USA |
| 9.60 | Finland, USA, Italy |
| 9.40 | USA, UK, Canada |
| 9.00 | Germany |
| 8.60 | UK |
| 8.11 | France, USA |
| 8.00 | Sweden, USA |
| 7.00 | UK, USA, Germany, Canada |
| 6.10 | Australia, UK, USA |
| 5.10 | USA |
| 4.10 | USA, Germany |
| 4.00 | USA, UK |
| 3.60 | USA |
The Solr part of your Sitecore stack, off your list.
Backups you can restore
Scheduled and on demand, restorable from the control panel. Backup and restore
Query analytics and error audit
What your visitors search, what finds nothing, and seven days of Solr errors, per index.
Resilient clusters
Replicas behind a load balancer for the delivery side, when your traffic calls for it. Resilient Solr clusters
People who run Solr
Support from the people who operate the servers, since 2011. Managed Solr hosting
Move your Sitecore search onto managed Solr
Tell us your Sitecore version and how many indexes you run, and we will tell you exactly what it takes. Prefer to start yourself? See the plans.