White Hex icon
Introducing: A search & relevancy assessment from engineers, not theorists. Learn more
hex icon

Comparison

Amazon OpenSearch Service vs Bonsai

Bonsai is the Amazon OpenSearch Service alternative that puts customers first. We’re the only managed OpenSearch platform that provides the support of a search engineering team, but at a fraction of the cost.

hex with checkmark icon

No credit card required

hex with checkmark icon

Expert engineering support

AWS OpenSearch vs. Bonsai illustration

Trusted by thousands

Acquia logo
Afterpay logo
AT&T logo
bigger pockets logo
Blackbaud logo
checkout.com logo
click funnels logo
match.com logo
Muck Rack logo
Myfitnesspal logo
Napster logo
OfferUp logo
Opendoor logo
Red Bull logo
Salesforce logo
Tradesy logo
Acquia logo
Afterpay logo
AT&T logo
bigger pockets logo
Blackbaud logo
checkout.com logo
click funnels logo
match.com logo
Muck Rack logo
Myfitnesspal logo
Napster logo
OfferUp logo
Opendoor logo
Red Bull logo
Salesforce logo
Tradesy logo

“Nobody gets fired for buying IBM”

We get it. Amazon OpenSearch Service is the safe choice. The easy choice. The choice that no one can blame you for if it all falls apart.

I mean, after all… they are the company behind OpenSearch. They created the tech — they’ve earned the right as the de facto choice.

But there’s no denying that Amazon is an opportunist looking to leverage OpenSearch to create as much stockholder value as it possibly can.

We have customers who migrate from Amazon OpenSearch Service for various reasons — layers of bureaucracy, hard-to-reach knowledgeable support staff, and opaque and unpredictable pricing — to name a few.

We’re not just some startup that’s all bark and no bite. Launched in 2012, Bonsai was the first hosted Elasticsearch-as-a-service on the market and the first OpenSearch-as-a-service provider to launch in 2021.

Why choose Amazon OpenSearch Service vs Bonsai?

Hex empty icon

Consolidated billing via AWS

We all know AWS provides a seamless billing experience that rolls up all services into one combined bill. However, remember that Bonsai also allows you to deploy into your own AWS account with enterprise plans.

Hex empty icon

Consistency of service at scale

Go to McDonald’s anywhere in the world and you can expect the same food and same service. Amazon has the manpower and processes to do the same for hosting. But does that mean it’s good? That’s up to you.

Hex empty icon

ELK stack support

The vast majority of Amazon OpenSearch Service’s customers are using it to support an ELK stack use case. Since Bonsai is exclusively focused on search, Amazon OpenSearch Service is a better provider to support ELK.

Hex empty icon

More comprehensive support of all OpenSearch features

AWS OpenSearch Services will always be ahead of the pack on support for OpenSearch features since they’re developing those features in-house.

checkmark icon

Specialize in search use cases

Bonsai is all-in on search. We live and breathe search infrastructure, relevancy, and bring decades of expertise to the table.

checkmark icon

In-house OpenSearch expertise always available

With playbooks and best practices tailored to your specific use cases and goals, you benefit from the lessons we’ve learned from managing hundreds of thousands of clusters for companies across all industries.

checkmark icon

Cost savings due to multi-tenancy resource architecture

Our proprietary multi-tenant platform architecture makes efficient use of resources so we can pass down savings to customers.

checkmark icon

Start at $20/mo up to custom enterprise contracts

Get started with a free account and then upgrade your cluster anytime at a price a fraction of what Amazon OpenSearch Service charges. No hidden fees. No expensive overages.

illustration showing Bonsai + AWS

Save up to 30% on hardware infrastructure costs by deploying to your own AWS, Google Cloud Platform, or Azure account

Yep, seriously. We work with you to understand the best instances to deploy on and help you take advantage of preferential billing and Reserved Instances. You pay us to run search; you pay your cloud provider to run the computers. It’s that simple. Plus, make changes quickly without worrying about slowing down deployments.

Imagine what you could do if you never had to worry about red and yellow response codes

There’s a reason companies at every scale switch to Bonsai for their search engines.

Before Bonsai:

hex with x icon

Poor search performance & latency

hex with x icon

Treading water fixing bugs

hex with x icon

Growing technical debt

hex with x icon

Major downtime

After Bonsai:

hex with checkmark icon

Build innovative search features

hex with checkmark icon

Fast & relevant search results

hex with checkmark icon

On-demand expert support

hex with checkmark icon

Peace of mind

response codes graph
hex icon

Fully managed
Elasticsearchfor mission-critical search engines

hex with checkmark icon

Make changes and improvements to search without being afraid to break something or have to rewrite from scratch.

scale icon

Performant and reliable search clusters at any scale

Never deal with a yellow or red state again, because we fix it for you. Sleep easy at night knowing your end users enjoy superior search experience. Make changes and improvements to search without being afraid to break something or have to rewrite from scratch.

Save your team hundreds or even thousands of engineering hours.

upgrades icon

Let us handle delicate upgrades for you

You shouldn’t have to waste time on version upgrades, security and patch upgrades, or other upgrades that would otherwise cause breaking changes.

Separate clusters for production, staging, and development ensure zero downtime version upgrades

search icon

Best-in-class search experience for your users

You can trust that your users will receive relevant results, reduced latency, and your search will never face an interruption. Less errors, less lost revenue, less customer support.

Increase search performance by up to 9x

insights icon

Instant insights into search performance

Get closer to the actual search experience of end users with analytics to measure how successful searches were. Understand the full picture of how search is performing with direct integrations into your tech stack so you can improve hardware use, search upgrades, and query and index optimizations.

Debug minor search issues in half the time

cloud icon

Deploy in your own AWS or GCP account

Yep, seriously. We work with you to understand the best instances to deploy on and help you take advantage of preferential billing and Reserved Instances. You pay us to run search; you pay Amazon to run the computers. It’s that simple. Plus, make changes quickly without worrying about slowing down deployments.

Save up to 30% on hardware infrastructure costs

on-demand support icon

On-demand support from expert engineers

With over a decade of experience having built one of the first cloud search extensions, there’s nothing we haven’t seen. Instead of reading yet another blog post hoping to answer an urgent question, ask us instead and we’ll get right back to you with a thorough, personalized solution.

Our senior engineers have been working in search for a decade+

trust icon

An advisory partner you can trust

With playbooks and best practices tailored to your specific use cases and goals, our advisory solutions equip you to create value from search. You benefit from the lessons we’ve learned from managing hundreds of thousands of clusters for companies across all industries.

Advisory solutions are included at no extra cost with Enterprise plans

message icon

Instant access to our team

With our one-of-a-kind, fully managed service, you’ll have regular, consistent contact with us via multiple channels. When Bonsai is in your corner, it’s like adding a whole team of search experts to your staff — imagine a fractional Site Reliability Engineer, DevOps Engineer, Search Engineer, and Data Scientist at your fingertips.

Search works seamlessly through team turnover (even when the original engineer who set it up leaves)

circle with x icon

Friends don’t let friends run clusters in yellow or red

Unlike the other guys, we take responsibility for every one of your clusters. Our team is constantly monitoring, optimizing, and enhancing your search experience, solving problems before you know they exist.

Neither Elastic Cloud or Amazon OpenSearch Service will proactively fix cluster issues for you

lock icon

Secured, encrypted, and compliant

Search highly sensitive data without compromising security or performance. Bonsai partners with Titaniam to provide the industry’s most sophisticated encryption-at-work capabilities. And with the option to deploy to your own cloud, you can meet even the most rigorous compliance standards.

Everyone: SOC-2 + GDPR

Enterprise: FIPS-140-2 + HIPAA + PCI + CCPA

hex icon

In-house search expertise at your service

hex with checkmark icon

Search works seamlessly through team turnover, even when the original engineer who set it up leaves.

Security and privacy are our highest priorities

access controls icon

access controls

All Bonsai clusters are provisioned with a unique, randomized URL and have HTTP Basic Authentication enabled by default, using a randomly generated set of credentials. Under this scheme, it would take the world’s fastest super computer around 23.5 quadrillion years to guess.

Encrypted communications icons

Encrypted communications

All Bonsai clusters support SSL/TLS for encryption in transit. We use industry standard strength encryption to ensure your data is safe over the wire.

Encrypted at rest icon

Encrypted at rest

Bonsai clusters are provisioned on hardware that is encrypted at rest by default. In addition to Amazon’s physical security controls, this means your data is safe from physical theft.

Regular Snapshots icon

Regular Snapshots

All paid Bonsai clusters receive regular snapshots, which are stored in an offsite, encrypted S3 bucket in the same region as the cluster.

Firewalled icon

Firewalled

All Bonsai clusters are accessed via a custom-built, high-performance layer 7 routing proxy, and sit behind a tightly controlled firewall. This helps to ensure that the cluster and data are protected from port scans and unauthorized persons.

Advanced Networking icon

Advanced Networking

Bonsai can support IP whitelisting, and VPC Peering to users on single tenant clusters.

Scaling search engines since 2009

“We switched to Bonsai as our ES vendor...and have not had one moment of regret or issue with your excellent service. Both the technical platform and your support team have been a delight to work with. We are very happy customers.”

— Jason Taylor, TextUs

TextUs logo
“We got more value from a discovery call with Bonsai than we did with a paid consultation with Elastic.”

— Engineer, Under Armour

Under Armour logo
“No one knows Elasticsearch better than Bonsai. We’ve been able to avoid hiring that expertise in-house because of the support that we’re getting with Bonsai.”

— Nathan Sprout, Head of Product

Action Sprout logo

Join tens of thousands of 
happy customers

You shouldn’t have to waste valuable time and resources on costly maintenance, bugs, 
and downtime. With Bonsai, you can finally focus on what matters most: making meaningful improvements to the search experience of your users.

hex with checkmark icon

No credit card required

hex with checkmark icon

Expert engineering support

99.999%

last month’s uptime

1B+

daily requests served

20,000+

active clusters managed

By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information.