42 Constructor Reviews
Constructor has all of the search features you could ever want, and on top of it, they have the most helpful account reps of any SaaS company I've worked with. They routinely go above and beyond to make sure we have everything we need, and it really sets them apart from the off-the-shelf solutions like Algolia.
And crucially, their tech is great. They are much more than a keyword-matching search engine. Their engine understands search intent in a way that optimizes results so that you don't need to write hundreds or thousands of rules and synonyms in order to show your users the correct results. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The integration is slightly less straightforward than others, but the customer success team more than makes up for it Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
- Speed of Search; This is exactly what we were looking for in a search partner.
- Ai-Driven results; Results tailored to each user based on their search habits.
- Ability to integrate with practically anything since the results are returned in JSON format. We used a JS framework to pull in the JSON results and formatted them to display to our end users.
- Recommendation Pods; The ability to create recommendation pods to be used across the site. Best Sellers, Recently Viewed, etc...
- Dashboard; The dashboard allows us to see an overview of the indexes in Constructor. It also allows us to see the feeds that get sent to Constructor. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
- Daily Full Feed needs to be sent; A daily full CSV feed needs to be sent every day regardless of the delta CSV feeds are sent throughout the day. This is something we had to account for and make very performant since we have a big catalog of data.
- No full API usage; Currently we have to use CSV feeds to get the data into Constructor. They do have an API to update/add items but have been told it is not ready for use. If this changes in the future we will be using the API instead of CSV feeds.
- No logging for API calls; If you can use some of the API calls that Constructor allows there is no logging in the dashboard to see if the call was successful or not.
- Product search in the dashboard; If you need to search in the dashboard you have to search by product name ONLY. Constructor has a great search on the frontend but in their dashboard, the search seems to be only looking at 1 column in their database and that is the product name. Just something to be aware of if you need to find a specific product and see the data set on it. Also, the products in the dashboard do not show the variant products (child) only the parent product. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The support team at Constructor is fast to respond with insightful solutions. They consistently go the extra mile to help solve a problem. It is refreshing to have a vendor who prioritizes customer service to the nth degree.
Constructor is always looking for feedback on how we think their product should work. They take input from their clients and use that to put goals on the road map. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The payload delivered by Constructor.io is pretty significant, so mobile users in remote areas may notice some lag time while waiting for search results to load. However, I've noticed significant improvements in this over the last 12 months, and I anticipate even more improvement in the coming months. I don't have much else negative to say against Constructor - they're great! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The Constructor Dashboard is very insightful and the Customer Success team is a pleasure to work with. The turnaround with the team on Slack is fast and helps drive quick business outcomes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The user documentation, while extensive, could be a little more exhaustive and potentially elaborate so that new users on Constructor can quickly come up to speed on how to get the best out of the platform. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
We had an incredible experience collaborating with Constructor to integrate their search service into a new site launch. Personally, I could not have asked for more in a partnership. Everyone from Constructor had excellent attention to detail and timeliness on virtually everything. When we were in the trenches the last couple weeks crunching for launch, it really felt like we were working with another team at our company, in the best way possible. The enthusiasm, optimism, and willingness to go above and beyond with weekends and expedited feature changes was all really incredible. Constructor has an excellent group of people and a wonderful energy that shows in their passion to provide an excellent service. The technology itself was great. It comes with thorough documentation and overall has well thought out models for deep customization as well as some next-level merchandising controls ("searchandizing"). Out of the box, the semantic search capabilities were far superior to our previous implementation. The admin dashboard contains meaningful analytics and insights, with a particular strength in communicating the decisions and effects of their machine-learning system. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Overall the experience was very positive, but there were a few hiccups along the way. Some of which we knew going into it, and some of which we found out along the way. In no particular order, a few things that stood out that could be improved:
- Methods for syncing the search catalog generally favor a discrete cadence of full catalog syncs (daily, hourly, etc.). For our use case, we need to immediately re-sync individual records as they are modified, continuously. All of the methods for this support exist, and ultimately we were able to develop a strong implementation. I believe with additional efforts from Constructor, this process could be further streamlined.
- Our web application is primarily server-side rendered. The javascript implementation was a little tricky because it required a separate SDK for use in the node context vs the browser context. These two packages were very similar, but had some key divergences that created some friction in integration. Again not a blocker, but could be streamlined for sure.
- Our use case heavily utilizes Constructor's "collections" feature. We sync a lot of information about collections through the REST API. These endpoints have somewhat strict rate limiting, and felt a little incomplete compared to the rest of the API. Again, workable but could use improvement.
- Hierarchical facets would be an amazing feature to add. We had to implement a custom workaround to accomplish a hierarchical filter design (e.g., category). We would have prefered to have first order support for this kind of design. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Impeccable customer service and support. The team is insightful and innovative with solutions. I have greatly appreciated the level at which Constructor.io works with us on specific business needs and supports us with creative and curated solutions. It is a collaborative relationship and I value the partnership. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Overall no real complaints. The dashboard functionality needed improvement but Constructor.io has been receptive to feedback and has made improvements along the way. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The platform has everything you need to remain competitive in product search and discovery in today's day and age. And it keeps evolving.
The tool is good to use - easy to learn, with great analytics.
Their customer service is world-class and I was left with a smile after every interaction. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
While the self-service admin dashboard is feature-rich, allowing merchandisers to create the experiences they want for their customers, I wish more of the functionality was accessible. There were some (minor) things we couldn't do ourselves. However the A+ customer service team always plugged the gaps with good pace. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
We use this service within our Magento 2 platform, and it integrates seamlessly. The APIs work great in displaying search results and product recommendations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The period it takes to go live with the software and settings is a little bit too long. However this could be due to some of the custom setups we needed, in which the team helped with no problem. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I am an Senior Engineer and Team Lead contracted at an enterprise retail fashion company which sells primarily through our e-commerce site and has a few dozen brick and mortar stores located throughout the US. I was the primary contact and lead engineer for our Constructor.io integration.
Constructor.io provided the most collaborative integration team I’ve ever worked with. We had a hard deadline leading up to the holiday season and Constructor.io shared a sense of ownership and urgency around the integration. We had frequent pairing sessions, Slack conversations, check-ins, and retrospectives along the way. We successfully delivered on time and Constructor.io remains highly responsive and attentive with any new request or issues we encounter. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
As Constructor.io is a newer platform, it was sometimes difficult to keep track of when new features were being released. We played leapfrog with each other a few times during integration. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Following the replacement of our incumbent search engine, we noticed a 30% higher Revenue per Search and a 50% decline in the number of Zero Search results. Besides the performance numbers that speak for themselves, the Constructor team has been incredibly helpful working closely together with our team to get their search engine live. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Given that Constructor.io is a start-up and offers a SaaS solution, feature-wise it is not yet as rich as some of the legacy, incumbent providers Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
