Guide
Ecommerce search pricing explained
Ecommerce search tools charge in one of four ways: per search request, per indexed record, as a percentage of revenue, or a flat fee by catalog size. The model you choose decides whether a busy season raises your bill, and most hidden costs sit outside the vendor's quote. This guide explains each model and how to compare them honestly.
On this page
The four pricing models
Every search vendor's price list reduces to one of four models, sometimes combined. Understanding which one you are looking at is the first step in a fair comparison.
| Model | How you are charged | Who it suits | Where it hurts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per request | Each search query, often in blocks of 1,000 or 10,000 per month | Low-traffic stores with predictable volume | Promotions, seasonal peaks, bots and autocomplete all raise the bill |
| Per record | Each product or variant in the index, in tiers | Small catalogs with high traffic | Large wholesale catalogs pay for every variant |
| Revenue share | A percentage of orders attributed to search | Retailers who want cost tied to outcome | Attribution is argued over, and high-margin B2B orders inflate the fee |
| Flat by catalog size | A fixed monthly fee for a catalog band, unlimited requests | B2B and wholesale, where traffic is spiky and catalogs are large | Small catalogs with very low traffic may overpay |
In the vendors most commonly evaluated, per-request and per-record pricing dominate at the self-serve tiers, with custom annual contracts at the enterprise level. This page does not quote another vendor's rates. Check that vendor's own pricing page on the day you compare.
Why per-request pricing penalises distributors
Per-request pricing penalises distributors because B2B search traffic is spiky and much of it is not a human typing a query. Autocomplete fires a request on every keystroke. Quick-order pastes fire one per line. A buyer scanning a stockroom fires one per barcode. A monthly promotion to retailers can triple query volume for a week. Under per-request pricing, the storefront's best month is also its most expensive, and the finance team learns the real cost after the fact.
Worked examples at three catalog sizes
The table shows how the same storefront compares under each model. Dollar cells are blank on purpose. Fill them from each vendor's published rates on the day you compare, and link those pages. Shopsense does not publish a dollar amount yet. See pricing.
| Catalog | Monthly searches | Per request | Per record | Flat by catalog size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8,000 SKUs | 60,000 | Use the vendor rate | Use the vendor rate | Shopsense Starter, talk to us |
| 60,000 SKUs | 400,000 | Use the vendor rate | Use the vendor rate | Shopsense Professional, talk to us |
| 250,000 SKUs | 1,500,000 | Use the vendor rate | Use the vendor rate | Shopsense Enterprise, custom |
The pattern to look for is the slope. Per-request cost rises with traffic. Per-record cost rises with catalog size. Flat pricing rises only when you move up a catalog band.
The hidden costs most quotes leave out
The search vendor's invoice is usually less than half the total cost of search. Five costs sit outside it.
- Connector or middleware licences. Tools that index a synced copy need a connector between the ERP and the storefront. That licence is a search cost.
- Implementation. Agency or developer hours to configure the feed, map fields and tune relevance. Ask for a fixed figure.
- Merchandising seats. Some vendors charge per user for the console where rules and synonyms are managed.
- Overage. Per-request plans have overage rates, often higher than the base rate. Ask what happens at 101% of the plan.
- Maintenance. The developer time spent fixing failed syncs and re-mapping fields when the catalog changes. It is invisible until someone counts it.
An ERP-native tool removes the first and fifth entirely, because there is no connector and no second product list. See the guide to ERP-integrated ecommerce search.
Questions to ask every vendor before signing
Ask these seven questions in writing. The answers tell you more than the price list.
- What exactly counts as a request? Does autocomplete count? Do bot requests count?
- What counts as a record? Do variants count individually?
- What is the overage rate, and is there a cap?
- Is implementation included, and if not, what is the fixed price?
- Which features are gated to higher tiers? Personalisation, analytics and merchandising often are.
- What is the contract term, and what happens to our index and data at the end?
- What is the total cost including connectors and middleware for our ERP?
How Shopsense prices
Shopsense charges a flat monthly fee by catalog size with unlimited search requests. Plans cover up to 10,000 products on Starter, up to 100,000 on Professional, and a custom catalog on Enterprise. There is no per-request metering, no overage and no connector licence, because the index reads the ERP directly. Dollar amounts are on the pricing page once a rate card is published. Until then every plan is talk to us. Shopsense is a B2B ecommerce search engine for distributors and wholesalers that connects directly to ERP systems.
Frequently asked questions
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