Overall rating
4.8
Counts per rating level
  • 93% of ratings are 5 stars
  • 3% of ratings are 4 stars
  • 1% of ratings are 3 stars
  • 0% of ratings are 2 stars
  • 3% of ratings are 1 stars
What merchants think

Feedback submitted

Merchants highly recommend this app for its speedy and accurate search functionality, which enhances customer experience and site navigation. Key features include search suggestions, product recommendations, and customizable options. Many credit it for boosting conversion rates and sales, and improving product visibility. The support team is often described as efficient and helpful. The app's cost-effectiveness is appreciated, especially for stores with a large product range, and its analytics feature provides valuable insights for website optimization.

Edited December 13, 2023

Collections pages give slower scores on google speed insights compared to standard shopify collection pages. Fast Simon team says nothing they will do but just asks us to fix issues on our side. The response by Fast Simon team isn't accurate, the sales increase isn't 60%, it's around 30%. Luckily Shopify now has very similar features in the collections and search they offer plus it's free, i'll slowly move to it.

FredCo International
United States
Almost 2 years using the app
Fast Simon replied November 18, 2023

Dear Fareed,

Thank you for sharing your concerns, and we appreciate your business with theFredCo.com over the past two years. We understand the importance of website performance and its impact on your business.

We want to express our gratitude for the significant role the Fast Simon platform has played, contributing to over 60% of your total revenues. Our goal is to continually enhance your store's conversion and SEO, and we take your feedback seriously.

We acknowledge that certain themes and third-party scripts can affect performance. We have been proactive in offering guidance on these issues and even extended a complementary service to review the liquid in your store. However, we've encountered challenges in addressing the highlighted theme issues, partly due to the limitations in accessing the non-live theme.

It's worth noting that your Google Page Speed Core Web Vitals Assessment for mobile is very close to being in the green zone. The Time To First Byte (TTFB) is the last piece that is still in the orange, and the suggested solutions we sent and wanted to review in the liquid are probably the culprit.

As the Fast Simon team, we take pride in serving a diverse range of D2C brands, and we have not experienced such difficulties in cooperation with our clients before. We remain committed to finding a resolution that meets your expectations and improves your website's performance.

We understand that the upcoming BFCM season is crucial for your business, and we sincerely wish you the best of luck. Our team is here to support you, and we remain open to further collaboration to address any outstanding concerns.

Thank you for your understanding and continued partnership.

Edited July 2, 2021

We used this app for a year at the rate of $49.99/mo without any issues. But at the end of the year, they inform us that they now base their plans on monthly Sessions (not the number of search queries) and that we're now forced into a plan that is $129/mo. That is an unreasonable upsell considering we spend on marketing to increase our traffic (sessions) but that does not necessarily translate into increased use of this search bar app. Why? Because we target our advertising at specific products and pages. In-store Searches are primarily driven by Organic Traffic. So why should we pay more for a search bar because we advertise more? Especially when that does not impact searches by organic users? If we have 72,000 sessions but only 2,000 searches... why are we paying for sessions? These things are unrelated and it's a sneaky way of linking their fees to our marketing spend. Big NOPE. If you want to be penalized for spending more on marketing and increasing your sessions, then this might be the search bar for you! But there are plenty of other highly functional search bar apps that charge based on actual use of the search bar - based on searches. When asked for an explanation about this via their support channel the responses were timely but terse and uninformative. For $129/mo you at least expect very friendly customer support. After the initial 1-star review we posted they reached out to complain about details of the review but not to offer any sort of remedy to the core issue. Seems they are more concerned with review stars than with customer satisfaction.

Mysterious
United States
About 1 year using the app
Edited May 26, 2018

Not Paying $150 A Month For This... That's Crazy

Pix Gifts
United States
9 months using the app
September 29, 2016

Was paying $100/month and had an issue with the way this app was working. Took two times reaching out to customer support to get an answer. When I did, they told me there was a conflicting problem with their app and another. Instead of looking into they told me to contact support for the other app. Needless to say, deleted instant search and installed another.

Retro Active Smoke Shop
United States
8 months using the app
Edited January 18, 2017

Had a nightmare of a time transferring our Instant Search + data over to a new Shopify store. Instant Search + works pretty well once you have it setup, but migrating data to a new store was sure a headache.

Merchology Canada
United States
7 months using the app
Edited October 8, 2015

I do like Instant Search +, dont get me wrong, it's a really really good search index that works absolutely flawless most of the time.

My issue is the pricing, i have a relatively small shop and i HAVE to shell out 20$ per month because i have alot of products listed and i find it heavily overpriced for what i'm getting.

While i was in the trial i could at least Sync the data on demand, now that i'm paying i dont have this option anymore. So whenever i change prices i have to live with the fact that people will see the WRONG prices in search until the next day. They will also not see newly added products until the app decides to sync the next day by itself.
That is unfortunately a huge bummer for any business that changes it's products / prices quite fast.

The solution is simple... spend even more money so i can sync on demand. But i'm not willing to do that, as i already find the price borderline acceptable for what volume we have.

Anyways... the app itself is great, the separation of features for small clients like me is very unfortunate and i cannot recommend it under these circumstances for anyone who works at low margins. Pricingplans that take away core features which are convenient are a thing of the past.

Until sync on demand is in the cheaper plans this app is a 3 / 5 in my book unfortunately. I expect this as a core functionality from a Search App. Otherwise it doesnt work correctly simple as that.

(And i'm not even having the cheapest plan mind you!)

3 / 5

Wellplayed
Switzerland
5 months using the app
August 16, 2016

App has great functions but is very confusing to use and customer support hasn't proven to all that helpful - I have a number of things I'm looking to improve within the autocomplete and results and simply can't figure out how to do them.

Mycharge
United States
About 1 month using the app