Search servers
A search server is the engine that indexes and ranks your records. Searchability is a thin gateway — the layer your app talks to — in front of it.
- We run it. Nothing to install, register or scale.
- Which server a list uses follows its subscription: its region, and whether its plan gives you a shared or a per-account index.
- Listed in the console under Search Services. Your app never sees any of it.
Who does what
| Searchability manages | The search server provides |
|---|---|
| The list’s fields and their types | Storing the index |
| API versioning | Breaking text into words, and ranking |
| Public REST endpoints and keys | Running each query |
| Ready-made components | Scaling up, and keeping copies |
Shared vs. per-account index
- Free and Starter share an index with other accounts, filtered so you only ever see your own records.
- Pro and Scale get an index of their own on the same pool — no neighbours in the same index, and capacity sized for the tier.
- Nothing about your API changes between the two. Upgrading moves the records for you.
Regions
- You pick a region when you buy a subscription, and the gateway routes requests by the shortest path from there.
- Put a list near the users it serves. One account can hold lists in more than one region.
Moving a list: your URLs never change
A list can be transferred to another server with no change to your app: the records copy across and the public API is pointed at the new one. Your list’s search and suggest URLs stay exactly the same — which is how a list moves closer to its users, or onto the index a higher tier gives it.
Registering your own backend
No longer offered. Search Stack used to let an account connect its own Azure AI Search, Amazon OpenSearch, Elasticsearch or PostgreSQL. Every feature had to be built four extra times or declared unsupported, which was holding back the engine work that only pays off on our own.
- Services already connected keep working and stay listed — nothing was taken away.
- No new ones can be added, from the console or the API.