Choose the right approach

The following graphics and the detailed comparison matrix show that Atomic is typically the best choice if performance, development speed, and customization are equally important for you.

Depending on the needs of your organization, Coveo offers you the option to self-host your search page internally or to have Coveo host your search page for you.

This section will highlight the pros and cons of each approach to help you decide which option best meets your needs.

The following matrix presents an in-depth comparison of the tools Coveo provides.

The stars in this table are score points. The higher, the better. The bottom row shows the total score for each tool.

See the following sections for details on each approach.

Technically, you can use two frameworks simultaneously. For example, this can help you gradually migrate from JS Search Framework to Atomic.

All frameworks either wrap the Coveo REST APIs directly or wrap a framework that does. It’s safe to use a given framework in conjunction with a tool from the same hierarchy, for example, Atomic and Headless or Atomic and REST APIs.

The following diagram shows how frameworks relate to each other:

Coveo’s search interface builder is available via the Search Pages (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page of the Administration Console and works with the Atomic library. You can use the builder to create a basic search interface in a couple of minutes without writing any code.

Search pages created with the builder are hosted by Coveo. Once you’ve created your search page, you can deploy it to your site.

The hosted search pages are also useful tools for testing or demonstration purposes while building out your Coveo search solution. You can share links to these hosted search pages with anyone, even people who don’t have access to the Coveo Administration Console.

To create a custom search interface, however, you should opt for Atomic or another library or framework.

The Coveo Atomic library is a collection of pre-built UI components meant to quickly create product discovery interfaces. You can theme and customize the Atomic components to suit your needs. Under the hood, Atomic relies on the Coveo Headless library to interface with Coveo and handle the application state.

For more information, see Use the Atomic Library and Atomic for commerce.

The Headless library is a Redux-based toolset for developing your own search UI component libraries. It provides the underlying functionality of the Atomic library or of the JavaScript Search Framework without tying that functionality to a specific UI implementation.

See Use the Headless library for details.

The JavaScript Search Framework is a UI component library that you can use to assemble feature-rich search interfaces. It’s both customizable and extendable to suit your individual use cases.

See Use the JavaScript Search Framework (Legacy) for details.

The Atomic and Headless libraries, as well as the JavaScript Search Framework, are built on top of the Coveo REST APIs. Those APIs are publicly documented, and you can develop directly against them to integrate Coveo search features in an environment that can’t run JavaScript.

See Use the REST APIs to build a search UI for details.

Continue with the implementation path that matches your selected approach: