Fess
Enterprise Search Server
Fess is a free, open source enterprise search server that provides a full-text search environment. It includes a crawler, indexer, admin console, and search UI out of the box. Users point it at websites, file shares, databases, or cloud storage, and it crawls and indexes content (including HTML, PDF, and Office documents) into OpenSearch, then serves results through a ready-made search UI with facets, suggestions, and highlighting.
It supports BASIC/DIGEST/NTLM/FORM authentication, single sign-on via Active Directory and SAML, permission-aware results, labeling, drill-down, and responsive design. The admin console lets you configure crawling targets, edit search screens, aggregate search and click logs, and manage user and synonym dictionaries. Integration is available through JSON-formatted results, access tokens, and plugins, with features such as auto-complete, location-based search, cached display, thumbnails, and proxy functionality. It runs on any OS with a Java or Docker runtime.
Fess is available under the Apache License for free, including commercial use, with community support and no guaranteed support. A paid commercial support option covers customization, implementation, setup, performance tuning, deployment, prototyping, and bug fixes.
12 alternatives to Fess
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