When it comes to choosing a search plugin for your WordPress site, you’ll find multiple options in the market.
Among them will be SearchWP and Better Search. Both of these plugins help improve the default search and provide a better user experience for your visitors.
However, there are a lot of differences between the two in terms of features, ease of use, pricing, and more.
In this article, we’ll compare the features, ease of use, customer support, and pricing of these 2 plugins.
Based on this comparison, you can choose the best option for your WordPress site that fits your needs. Here’s a quick overview of the two plugins:
| SearchWP | Better Search | |
| Overview | Comprehensive, beginner-friendly, premium | Free, simpler, fewer features compared to SearchWP |
| Features | Seamless theme integration Enrich search results Multiple search engines support On-site search activity tracking PDFs and documents indexing Show promoted ads Change search results order Add live search | Seamless integration with WordPress theme Search everything (excerpts, categories, tags) Inbuilt cache Search tracking (limited) |
| Ease of Use | User-friendly interface, setup wizard, highly customizable | Standard WordPress UI, less intuitive |
| Customer Support | Highly responsive support team AI assistant Ticketing system Extensive documentation | WordPress support forum Email support in paid plan Basic documentation |
| Pricing | Premium plans starting from $99/year | Free + premium plans starting at $49/year |
How We Tested SearchWP vs Better Search
To give you an honest comparison, we tested both SearchWP and Better Search on identical WordPress test sites over several weeks.
We wanted to see how they performed in real-world conditions, not just read about their features.
We evaluated each plugin across five key areas that matter most to WordPress site owners:
- Overview – We looked at the overall functionality and what each plugin actually delivers compared to their promises.
- Features – We tested different features offered by the plugin, how they help improve the default search, and how well each plugin worked with popular WordPress themes and other plugins.
- Ease of Use – Another factor we checked is how easy it is to set up and use each plugin from scratch.
- Customer Support – While testing, we reached out to customer support and how helpful their answers were for solving actual problems.
- Pricing – We compared pricing structures to see which plugin offers better value for different types of websites and budgets.
That said, let’s look at the comparison.
SearchWP vs Better Search: Overview
Before we get into a detailed comparison of these 2 WordPress search plugins, let’s look at their brief overview.
SearchWP
SearchWP is the most comprehensive solution on the market that has over 50,000 active installs.
It’s a premium plugin that comes with tons of helpful features you can use to completely customize how search works on your site.
For example, you can limit your search to certain types of content, make PDFs and documents searchable, include custom fields and taxonomies in search, and more.
In addition to being a powerful plugin, SearchWP is also beginner-friendly. It has a modern and user-friendly interface that you can easily navigate through.
Plus, you can set it up to meet your needs in a few minutes, even if you’re not tech-savvy.
SearchWP also has an outstanding support team that’s always ready to help you with any question you have related to the plugin.
Better Search
Better Search is another WordPress plugin that helps you deliver more relevant search results to your visitors.
It’s free to use and doesn’t have a premium version. Trusted by over 6,000 website owners, this plugin has an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars.
Like SearchWP, Better Search allows you to include multiple post types in the search process, make additional data searchable, include or exclude posts, and more.
While testing, we found that it offers fewer features compared to SearchWP but still gets the job done. This plugin is a good choice if you want simplicity and making your site search smarter.
SearchWP vs Better Search: Features
After getting a quick look at both plugins, let’s see what features they have.
SearchWP – Features
SearchWP comes with a whole range of features that makes it one of the most powerful tools on the market.
Seamless Integration
To begin with, SearchWP has automatic theme integration. After installing it, the plugin integrates with the default search form on your site and also lets you create your own custom search forms.
It saves time and allows you to instantly improve your site search without writing a single line of code.
The best part is that it doesn’t matter which WordPress theme you use on your site. SearchWP is fully compatible with any of them, including custom themes.
It also works with the most popular WordPress page builders, such as Elementor, Divi, Oxygen, Beaver Builder and more. This shows that you can be 100% sure that SearchWP will work on your site without any issues.
Other than that, you can also integrate SearchWP with popular eCommerce plugins like WooCommerce, custom fields plugins like Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), form plugins like WPForms, knowledge base plugins, and more.
Enrich Your Search Results
One of the standout features of SearchWP we found while testing was that you can make a lot of valuable data searchable.
For instance, you can make custom fields, categories, shortcodes, tags, product details, and more searchable.
It allows your visitors to find what they’re looking for faster, improving their user experience and encouraging them to explore your site further and view more of your content.
To enrich your search results more, you can enable SearchWP’s partial matches and closest match options.
This feature makes WordPress look for partial matches if there are no exact ones when enabled.
It also lets your visitors find the right content, even if they made a typo in a search query.
Multiple Search Engines Support
SearchWP has a multiple search engine support feature, which makes it more powerful than the Better Search plugin.
With this feature, you can add supplemental search engines and link them to individual search fields.
As a result, you can create custom search fields with a unique set of settings and place them across your site.
For example, you can limit a search field to specific categories or post types. It allows you to narrow your search and deliver more relevant search results.
On-site Search Activity Tracking
Do you want to know what visitors are searching for on your site? That’s valuable information that you can use in a lot of different ways.
For example, you can develop new content ideas, find out what’s missing from your site, collect unique keywords, and more.
While comparing SearchWP with Better Search, we uncovered that it offers a Metrics extension. You can see your visitors’ search queries without leaving your dashboard.
Plus, you can see which pages are the most popular for a particular search query.
This information allows you to look at your content from a different angle, so it’s easier for you to learn from search insights to grow your business even more.
PDFs and Documents Indexing
The default WordPress search completely ignores uploaded PDF files and office documents. It’s inconvenient and leaves your visitors with no other options but manually look for them.
With SearchWP, you can fix this WordPress issue and make PDFs and documents searchable in a few clicks.
Including documents and PDFs in search results helps your visitors find them much faster. It allows you to ensure a better user experience for your audience.
Show Promoted Ads on Search Results Page
Another feature that sets apart SearchWP from Better Search is its ability to show promoted ads on the search results page.
When visitors use your internal search, they’re actively looking for specific information or products. This makes them highly engaged and ready to take action.
With SearchWP, you can promote affiliate products, highlight your services, or feature sponsored content that genuinely helps visitors while boosting your revenue.
Change Search Results Order
Would you like to control the order of search results for particular search terms in WordPress?
SearchWP lets you change the search results order and lets you promote a specific page or product on your site.
The SearchWP Custom Results Order extension allows you to affect the order of the search results and customize it to fit your needs.
To start, you can enter a search term to change the results order.
Next, you will see a list of results for that particular keyword.
From here, you can simply select which post to display at the top by clicking the ‘Promote to Top’ button.
Add Live Search
While testing and comparing SearchWP with Better Search, we found that SearchWP offers a live search feature.
You can use the free SearchWP Live Ajax Search plugin and allow users to view search results as they type in the search form.
This allows users to see results instantly as they type, significantly speeding up the search process.
Plus, live search is particularly beneficial for users who may not remember the exact terms or correct spellings of what they are looking for without the full query.
To learn more, please see our guide on how to add live search to WordPress for free.
Better Search – Features
Once you learn the main features of SearchWP, let’s see what Better Search has to offer.
Seamless Integration with WordPress Theme
We found that Better Search also has seamless integration with your WordPress theme.
Once you activate the plugin, it automatically replaces all existing default search fields on your site with smarter ones.
This way, you can start delivering more relevant search results to your visitors right after installation.
However, one downside we found while comparing Better Search with SearchWP was that it doesn’t support popular page builders.
This means that you don’t get the flexibility and customization options in Better Search as you’d get in SearchWP.
Besides that, we also didn’t find any integrations with other WordPress plugins and tools.
Search Everything
With Better Search, you can make it consider excerpts, categories, tags, and other attributes of posts and pages.
It’s helpful as it allows your visitors to get more relevant search results.
But, in comparison with SearchWP, this plugin has a couple of significant drawbacks.
First, Better Search doesn’t allow you to specify what particular taxonomies you want to make searchable. For instance, you cannot select which categories or tags to include in the search process.
You can only enable search by each of them in general, which gives you less control over the search results.
Secondly, using Better Search, you cannot make custom fields searchable.
That’s a huge disadvantage since many WordPress plugins tend to store valuable information inside them.
For example, WooCommerce uses custom fields to store data about product attributes. This means that you can’t make this data searchable using Better Search.
Inbuilt Cache
During testing, we uncovered that Better Search comes with the inbuilt cache feature to reduce the number of calls to your database.
Caching means storing data in a cache so that visitors can access it faster.
Once you enable the caching feature, the plugin will start caching search results for an hour. It ensures the stable performance of your site without slowing it down.
In addition, Better Search has integration with popular WordPress caching plugins. This list includes WP-Super-Cache and W3 Total Cache.
Search Tracking
Like SearchWP, Better Search allows you to collect data on the search activity of your visitors.
You can even display a list of popular search queries on your site as a heatmap using a widget.
Sadly, Better Search only shows a list of collected search queries and nothing else.
On the other hand, using the SearchWP metrics extension, you get a complete picture of what your visitors are searching for on your site.
For example, beyond the list of searches, you can also see the number of clicks per search, searches per user, and more.
SearchWP vs Better Search: Ease of Use
Before choosing a search plugin, you should ask: how quickly you can install a plugin, how easy it is to use, and does it directly affect your site’s performance.
Ease of use is one of the most important factors you should consider when choosing a plugin.
With that, let’s compare the ease of use of SearchWP and Better Search.
SearchWP – Ease of Use
Setting up and configuring SearchWP is user-friendly and easy for beginners.
When you first install and activate the plugin, you’ll see a setup wizard. By simply following the onscreen instructions, you’ll be able to start using SearchWP in no time.
SearchWP comes with a clean and modern user interface. You can easily navigate it, even if you’re launching your first WordPress site.
For instance, you can easily customize your search engine and add new ones.
You can choose which sources to select and configure the search engine according to your requirements.
Besides that, SearchWP also lets you exclude from search results specific categories by adding advanced search rules.
Another feature we really liked while testing SearchWP was that you can add stopwords and synonyms to help it better understand your content.
A stopword is a word that WordPress ignores when performing a search to improve the relevance of search results.
There are a bunch of popular stopwords that SearchWP adds by default, so you don’t have to worry about adding them yourself.
SearchWP also lets you set up a synonym rule and help users find relevant content using words with the same meaning.
SearchWP also has a blog with plenty of helpful how-to guides. You can check if you need any help in your search engine configuration.
Plus, there is an extensive knowledge base for more experienced users. It’s excellent for those who want to dive even deeper into customizing search on their site.
Better Search – Ease of Use
Better Search is more suited for users that want basic controls for changing how search works on their site.
That said, it has a couple of major drawbacks regarding its ease of use.
First, it has the standard WordPress plugin user interface, which looks outdated and may scare off some users.
Secondly, if you’re a beginner, then you might not know which setting to enable. Many settings can be complicated for non-technical users to understand.
For example, you can only guess what “Boolean” and “mySQL fulltext search” modes are, as there is no explanation.
Better Search vs SearchWP: Customer Support
Customer support is one of the core things to consider when choosing a WordPress plugin.
The quality of support directly affects your user experience, that’s why you shouldn’t underestimate its importance.
With that, let’s compare what support options SearchWP and Better Search have to offer.
SearchWP – Customer Support
SearchWP has a responsive support team that’s always ready to come to the rescue.
You can start with the AI assistant inside your account dashboard in SearchWP. Simply ask a question and get quick and accurate answers.
Besides that, you can also ask for help using the ticket system that you can find in your WordPress dashboard.
It’s convenient and doesn’t require you to mess around with sending emails.
Also, if you prefer to do everything yourself, you can check out the helpful, clear, and usable SearchWP documentation.
Better Search – Customer Support
When it comes to Better Search, you’ll notice that there is no dedicated customer support, like a live chat or email ticket, for the free version.
However, you can use the support forum on WordPress plugin page and leave your query.
On the other hand, if you upgrade to a paid plan, then you can unlock direct email support.
Besides that, Better Search also offers a knowledge base that has basic documentation.
From our comparison, SearchWP offers a more extensive and detailed knowledge base and support options.
SearchWP vs Better Search: Pricing
The price of a plugin plays a crucial role when selecting a solution for your business. You’d want value for your money, so it’s important to choose the right plugin.
Let’s compare the pricing options that SearchWP and Better Search offer.
SearchWP – Pricing
SearchWP is a premium WordPress plugin that has 3 pricing plans varying in price and features.
Let’s examine them more closely:
- Standard plan – $99/year. License for 1 site, comes with all standard features, extensions, and support.
- Pro plan – $199/year. License for 3 sites, comes with everything in the Standard plan along with advanced features, integrations, and priority support.
- Agency plan – $399/year. License for an unlimited number of sites and comes with everything in the Pro plan. Plus, you get Client Management feature and premium support.
If you decide to change the plan or cancel your account, you can do that at any time.
SearchWP also offers a 14-day money-back guarantee if you feel that the plugin isn’t the right fit.
Better Search – Pricing
The base Better Search plugin is free to use, and is excellent for new website owners who want to save some money.
However, it also offers 3 premium plans, starting from $49 per year with the Pro plan. The price goes up to $299/year with its Agency plan.
When compared to SearchWP, the premium plans offered by Better Search don’t offer a comprehensive set of features.
That said, Better Search also offers a 14-day refund policy. So you can cancel the subscription if you feel the plugin is not the right fit for your business.
Better Search vs SearchWP: Our Verdict
Now that we’ve compared SearchWP with Better Search, let’s choose the best among these plugins.
Given the number of features, ease of use, and support quality, the winner is SearchWP.
Using this plugin, you can easily customize search on your site to suit your needs without being a tech-savvy person. The number of features SearchWP offers sets it apart from other search plugins.
As the cherry on the cake comes a professional support team that’s always ready to help you with any requests.
Even though Better Search has fewer features than SearchWP and isn’t so easy to use, it’s also a great plugin for new website owners who are looking for a free solution.
But if you’re looking for the ultimate solution, then we highly recommend SearchWP.
We hope this article helped you learn which WordPress search tool is better: SearchWP or Better Search. You may also want to see our guide on how to create a custom search form in WordPress and how to fix WordPress tags not searchable.
Are you ready to become one of them and boost search on your site with the best WordPress search plugin? You can go and get started with SearchWP here.
