Coveo alternative · Catalog search · On-premise · One-time license

The Coveo alternative that stays inside your perimeter — and off the renewal calendar.

Dartfind is a catalog search engine you install on your own server and own outright. One payment covers the license — no enterprise subscription, no per-query metering, no annual renewal negotiation. It reads what customers actually type — partial part numbers, typos, glued words — and your data never leaves your network.

Built for distributors, wholesalers and e-commerce with large catalogs — from 10,000 to 100 million records.

Why teams go looking for a Coveo alternative.

The contract

Enterprise SaaS, enterprise renewals

Coveo is sold as an enterprise cloud subscription — a recurring line that comes back to the negotiation table every year and grows with usage. Search stays a permanent operating expense instead of becoming an asset.

The data

Cloud-only, by design

Your catalog, pricing and query stream are indexed and processed on Coveo's infrastructure. For data-residency rules, defense and government suppliers, and security policies that end at the firewall, cloud-only ends the conversation.

The scope

A platform sized for problems you may not have

Coveo bundles website search with support portals, knowledge bases, ML personalization and behavior analytics. Powerful — and priced, deployed and administered like the enterprise platform it is. If the actual job is catalog search, you're paying for the rest of the suite too.

Dartfind vs Coveo, side by side.

DartfindCoveo
PricingOne-time license, owned outrightEnterprise SaaS subscription, renewed and renegotiated yearly
HostingYour server — on-premise or your own cloudCoveo cloud only
Data locationNever leaves your network, works fully offlineIndexed and processed on vendor infrastructure
ScopeCatalog search, done deeplyFull experience suite: site search, service, knowledge, personalization
Dirty queriesTypos and partial SKUs land natively, nothing to configureStrong relevance stack, tuned and administered per deployment
Long-term costFixed. Grow 10x — no new billRecurring, scales with usage and modules

When Coveo is still the right choice.

A comparison table where one column wins every row is an ad. Three cases where we’d tell you to stay put:

If the actual workload is a product catalog — and the cloud-only contract, the renewal cycle, or the suite pricing is what chafes — that's the profile where a one-time license inside your own perimeter wins the comparison.

Switching is two connections.

A sync script feeds your catalog into the engine — from a database or a plain export — and keeps it updated on schedule. A query endpoint answers searches; your storefront calls it instead of Coveo. Works alongside Adobe Commerce, SAP Commerce, Oro, BigCommerce, Shopify or fully custom builds, because it sits behind an API rather than inside the platform. For most stacks this is days of work — and the free pilot skips integration entirely.

16,787
products live in production
~20 ms
per query, full catalog
1
ordinary machine, no cluster
0
outbound connections, ever

Those are numbers from a live deployment: an auto-parts retailer runs Dartfind as its counter and catalog search, fed with broken part numbers every day. Full case on the main page.

Don’t take the table’s word for it. Free pilot.

Send a catalog export — real or fake. Two days later you have a working search box in your infrastructure, next to your current Coveo setup. Type your customers’ worst queries at both. Then decide.

Your dataa catalog export, real or fake — no access to your systems needed
Your infrastructureruns on your server; the data never leaves your network
2 daysfrom export to a working search box you can torture
$0no contract, no card, no strings attached
Got it. We’ll get back to you within a day to arrange the pilot.
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Coveo alternative — questions people actually ask.

Is Dartfind as good as Coveo for catalog search?+
For the catalog workload — finding products from what customers actually type, including typos, partial part numbers and glued words — same quality and speed as the incumbents, with the tolerance built into the matching math rather than configured. What Dartfind doesn't do is Coveo's wider suite: service search, knowledge bases, ML personalization. Catalog search is the whole job, done deeply.
Can it run where cloud search isn't allowed?+
Yes — that's a primary reason teams switch. The engine runs entirely inside your network, works with the internet cut off, and makes zero outbound connections. No license server, no activation, nothing that phones home. Defense suppliers, government contractors and companies with strict data-residency rules can run it where a cloud index simply isn't an option.
What does migrating off Coveo involve?+
Two connections. A sync script feeds your catalog into the engine and keeps it updated on schedule; a query endpoint answers searches, and your storefront calls it instead of the Coveo API. For most platforms this is days of work. The free pilot skips integration entirely: you send an export, we hand you a working search to compare side by side.
How does the pricing compare?+
Coveo is an enterprise subscription that renews yearly and scales with usage and modules. Dartfind is one payment: the full deployment typically comes in below what companies spend on their search stack in a single year, and from then on there is no renewal to negotiate — the license already covers growth.
Does it integrate with Sitecore or Salesforce Commerce?+
It sits behind an API rather than inside any platform, so the storefront — Sitecore, Salesforce, Adobe Commerce, SAP, custom — calls a query endpoint instead of the previous search client. There is no plugin dependency to maintain across platform upgrades.
What happens to relevance tuning our team built in Coveo?+
Business rules — pinned products, category boosts, cross-references from your ERP — load into Dartfind as data and ranking settings your team controls. The linguistic layer (typo tolerance, partial matches, word splitting) doesn't need to be rebuilt at all, because it's a property of the engine's matching math.