FiboSearch is the name that comes up first when a WooCommerce owner goes looking for better product search, and it has earned that spot. More than 100,000 active installs, a 4.9-star rating across over 1,800 reviews, and a live autocomplete dropdown that shows product suggestions the moment a shopper starts typing. If what you want is a polished product-search box for your store, FiboSearch is a superb choice.
Fetchie does a different job. It searches your whole site the way your visitors see it: every product, page and post, including whatever your page builder, shortcodes and theme put on the page. It ranks results by relevance, shows the passage that matched, and links straight to that spot. On a WooCommerce store, it finds a product from a variation’s SKU, size or colour, and from the words your customers used in their reviews.
We make Fetchie, so we have a side. Both are self-hosted WordPress plugins with no per-search fees, so this isn’t a hosted-versus-self-hosted story. It’s a product finder and a site search, and the right one depends on what people come to your site looking for.
The Quick Version
What it’s for
- Fetchie: Whole-site relevance search across products, pages and posts, with the matching passage and a link to the spot.
- FiboSearch: Fast product autocomplete for WooCommerce catalogues.
Platform
- Fetchie: Any WordPress site on WordPress 6.0+ and PHP 8.0+, with or without WooCommerce.
- FiboSearch: Requires WooCommerce.
What it searches
- Fetchie: Each page as a visitor sees it, so page-builder and shortcode content is searchable. Posts, pages and products by default, plus any other content type you tick. Approved reviews and comments count toward their page.
- FiboSearch: Product title, description, short description and SKU in the free version. Pro adds variation SKUs, custom fields, attributes, brands, categories and tags, and pages and posts in the dropdown.
WooCommerce variations
- Fetchie: Each variation’s SKU, size, colour and description rolls up into its parent product, so a search for any of them finds the product, and variations never clutter the results.
- FiboSearch: Variation SKU search in Pro.
How results are shown
- Fetchie: A relevance-ranked results page. Each result shows the passage that matched with your words highlighted, plus up to two more passages from the same page, and each one links straight to that spot.
- FiboSearch: A live dropdown as you type, with product image, price and description. This is its signature feature, and it’s excellent.
Typos and synonyms
- Fetchie: No. One strictness setting instead: Exact, Balanced or Broad.
- FiboSearch: Fuzzy search and synonyms in Pro.
Knowing what people search for
- Fetchie: A report of top searches and searches that found nothing, on from the start, kept for 30, 90 or 365 days, with an optional digest email. It records what was searched, never who searched. On a site running Squizzie, the same figures go into your monthly report.
- FiboSearch: FiboSearch Analytics, free in both versions: searches with no results, top searches, a dashboard widget and CSV export. You switch it on in settings, and it keeps 30 days by default.
Languages
- Fetchie: Built for English-language content.
- FiboSearch: Works with WPML and Polylang, and TranslatePress in Pro.
Pricing
- Fetchie: A yearly licence for 2, 5 or 20 sites, with a one-off setup fee in the first year.
- FiboSearch: Free version, then Pro from US$59 for the first year (1 site), US$99 (3 sites) or US$249 (25 sites), with renewals 15% off.
Free version
- Fetchie: No.
- FiboSearch: Yes, a capable one.
That’s the shape. Here’s what it means in practice.
Where FiboSearch Does Well
The autocomplete dropdown is the benchmark. Suggestions appear as the shopper types, with the product image, price and description right there. For a store where shoppers know roughly what they want and need to get to the product page fast, that’s exactly the right experience.
It’s fast and proven. FiboSearch quotes an average server response of 0.15 seconds, even with 50,000+ products. Add six-figure installs, a 4.9-star average and years of steady development, and you get the documentation, reliability and community that only time builds.
Fuzzy search and synonyms (Pro). FiboSearch Pro still finds the product when a shopper misspells it, and lets you map "jumper" to "sweater". Fetchie has neither.
The free version does a lot. The live search bar and FiboSearch Analytics both come free, so a small store can run good product search, and see what shoppers couldn’t find, at no cost.
Where the Approaches Differ
Fetchie searches the page your visitors see
WordPress’s own search reads the fields a page is stored in. Fetchie reads the page itself. When you save, it loads the finished page and indexes the main content, leaving out the menu, header and footer. So whatever your page builder, your shortcodes or your theme put on the page is what gets searched, and an FAQ section or a block of copy in a builder layout is as findable as the post body.
That matters most on sites built with page builders, where a lot of what visitors read never sits in the standard content field.
One search for the whole site
FiboSearch is a WooCommerce plugin: it needs WooCommerce, and its heart is finding products fast. Pro can add pages and posts to the dropdown, but the plugin as a whole assumes a store.
Fetchie runs on any WordPress site, with or without a shop, and searches posts, pages and products, plus any other content type you tick, like docs. On a site that’s part shop and part content, a store with a blog and a help centre, or a service business that sells a few things, it searches the whole lot as one, ranked together. Products get a nudge ahead of pages, and pages ahead of posts, so a product usually ranks above a blog post about it.
Products found by the words shoppers use
On a WooCommerce store, Fetchie folds each variation’s SKU, size, colour and description into its parent product. Search "hoodie red xl" or a variation’s SKU and you get the hoodie, once, not a list of every variation.
Approved reviews count toward their product too. Shoppers describe things in their own words, "runs small", "great for camping", "the blue is darker than the photo", and with Fetchie those words find the product. Reviews never show as separate results; they help the right product rank.
Results that show why they matched
FiboSearch answers "which product do you mean?" while the shopper types. Fetchie answers "where on this site is the thing I’m after?" on a results page, and each result shows the passage that matched, with the search words highlighted. When a page matches in more than one place, up to two more passages appear underneath. Click any of them and you land on that spot on the page, not the top of it.
If your visitors are hunting a specific product, the dropdown is lovely. If they’re asking a question your content answers, like a returns policy, a care guide or a delivery cut-off, a passage that shows the answer and a link that goes straight to it earns its keep.
What people searched for
Both plugins tell you what people searched for, and both flag the searches that found nothing, which is the most useful list a search box produces. FiboSearch’s free analytics tab is good, with a dashboard widget and CSV export.
Fetchie’s report is on from the start, so there’s data waiting when you first look. You choose whether to keep it for 30, 90 or 365 days, or turn it off. It records the search and how many results it found, never who searched, and leaves out your own searches as an admin and known bots. An optional digest email brings the gaps to you weekly, fortnightly or monthly. And if you run Squizzie, your search figures sit in the same monthly report as your sales and traffic.
Pricing and site count
Both are yearly licences with no per-search or per-order fees, which is the sensible way to price search. Fetchie comes in three sizes, 2, 5 or 20 sites, with a one-off setup fee in the first year, so even the smallest covers a live site and a staging copy. FiboSearch Pro starts at US$59 for the first year for one site, US$99 for three and US$249 for twenty-five, with renewals 15% off, which is strong value for an agency running many stores.
FiboSearch’s figures are US dollars and Tracksies prices in Australian dollars, so convert before you compare, because an unconverted side-by-side flatters whichever one is quoted in USD.
When FiboSearch Is Your Answer
You want the dropdown. Shoppers know the pattern, FiboSearch does it as well as anyone, and Fetchie doesn’t do it at all.
Your shoppers mistype, or call things by other names. FiboSearch Pro’s fuzzy search and synonyms catch both. Fetchie will show you those searches in its report, but it won’t fix them on the fly.
Your content isn’t in English. Fetchie is built for English-language content. Accented letters aren’t matched well, and words in non-Latin scripts, such as Chinese, Arabic or Cyrillic, can’t be searched at all.
You need to start at zero, or want the long track record. FiboSearch has a capable free version and years of polish. Fetchie is newer, and has no free version.
Who Should Choose What
FiboSearch is likely the better fit if you:
- Run a WooCommerce store and want a fast, polished product dropdown.
- Need typo tolerance, synonyms or non-English search.
- Want to start free.
Fetchie is likely the better fit if you:
- Want one search across your whole site: products, pages, posts and docs.
- Build with a page builder or shortcodes, and want what’s on the page to be searchable.
- Sell variations and want SKUs, sizes and colours to find the right product.
- Want shoppers’ own words, from reviews, to help them find things.
- Want results that show the matching passage and link straight to it.
- Run a site that isn’t only a shop, or isn’t a shop at all.
Switching to Fetchie
There’s no data to migrate with search, because the index is built from your own content. Fetchie takes over your search results page as soon as it’s active, using the search box, menu icon and widgets your theme already has, and it has blocks for the block editor, Bricks and Divi if you’d rather place its search form and results yourself. It starts with an empty index, so click Rebuild index straight away, before your visitors search. After that, anything you publish is indexed on its own. If you’ve built a custom search-results template in Bricks, Fetchie steps aside for it and hands over its results through a shortcode. If you’re running FiboSearch now, try Fetchie on a staging copy first.
Go Have a Look
The best way to choose is to try both on your own content, because search quality depends on your catalogue and how your shoppers actually search.
Fetchie: take it for a spin on the Have A Go demo, or see the full picture at tracksies.com and in the docs at docs.tracksies.com. Licences for 2, 5 or 20 sites, with a 14-day refund.
FiboSearch: the established leader for WooCommerce product autocomplete, with a strong free version and fuzzy search in Pro.
We built Fetchie for sites that are more than a catalogue: where people search for answers as much as products, where a page builder holds half the content, and where knowing what visitors couldn’t find is worth as much as what they could. If that’s your site, we’d love you to try it.
