Empathy.co
Empathy.co · Coding · Business
Empathy.co is an enterprise AI search and discovery platform for online retailers. It runs site search, product discovery and conversational shopping for more than 3,000 brands on AI it hosts itself.
About Empathy.co
What Is Empathy.co
Empathy.co sells search and discovery software to online retailers. A shopper types a query, and the platform decides which products appear, in what order, and what suggestions sit next to them. Catalogs get large and messy. The job is to put the right product on the first screen anyway.
Most retailers arrive because their storefront search leaks revenue. Someone searches for a category, gets a wall of near-misses, and leaves. Empathy.co gathers semantic matching, synonyms, ranking rules and merchandising controls in one console, so a search team can fix that without booking a development sprint.
The limits are real. This is a sales-led product with yearly contracts, and the company puts deal sizes between €10,000 and €200,000. There's no self-serve signup. A launch involves catalog feeds, front-end work and merchandising setup, not a plugin install.
Getting Started
- Book a demo and agree on scope with the sales team. Pricing is quoted per deal, so the conversation starts with catalog size and traffic.
- Connect the product catalog plus first-party data such as search logs, clicks and purchase history.
- Choose a search setup, then tune relevance with synonyms, boosts, pins and business rules.
- Embed the search interface into the storefront with Interface X components or the platform APIs.
- Watch queries and rankings in Playboard, then refine the rules as real shopper data comes in.
Product Information
A quick look at Empathy.co's pricing, supported platforms, and performance.
Best for
The users, tasks, and scenarios where this tool fits best.
Users
- Ecommerce search managers
- Product managers at mid-size and large retailers
- Front-end developers
Tasks
- Rescuing zero-result queries
- Adding a conversational layer to site search
- Testing ranking changes before rollout
- Explaining why a product surfaced
Scenarios
- Peak season merchandising
- Multi-brand retail groups
- Privacy-sensitive markets
Key features
Conversational Search With AI Mode
AI Mode replaces the search box with a dialogue. A shopper asks something like "a rain jacket for a two-week hike", and the platform answers in plain language while keeping product results in view. Retailers configure tone and intent inside the console, so the assistant sounds like the brand instead of a generic chatbot.
AI Overview and Next Queries
The AI Overview sits above the results grid with a short summary of what the shopper seems to want, plus a product carousel that follows the summary. It updates as the query narrows. AI Next Queries adds generated follow-up questions, which gives a shopper somewhere to go when the first results miss.
Semantic Matching Across the Catalog
Keyword matching breaks on typos, plurals and how people actually describe products. Empathy.co layers semantic understanding over the catalog so a search for "something to keep coffee hot" can reach a thermal mug. Machine learning ranking then reorders results using clicks, purchases and the retailer's own rules.
Playboard for Merchandising Control
Playboard is the working console. Search teams set synonyms, pin products to fixed positions, boost categories for a campaign and write business rules that override the model. Results Ranking unifies search and browse management in one workspace, which cuts the time spent hopping between tools during a launch.
Interface X Front-End Components
Interface X gives retailers a set of ready search components: search box, results grid, facets, recommendations. Teams embed the whole interface or inject single components into the page DOM. The point is control without a rebuild. A store can keep its design system and still get the platform's relevance engine underneath.
Analytics With Ranking Explainability
The dashboard covers top queries, zero-result searches, click-through and revenue attribution. Ranking explainability is the part competitors often skip. It shows the reasoning behind a position, so a merchandiser can argue for a change with evidence instead of instinct. Conversational analytics track how shoppers behave inside AI Mode.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Search latency that the vendor quotes at under 50 ms, with no cap on personalized results.
- Conversational search and AI-generated next queries come with the platform rather than as a paid add-on.
- Merchandising controls are deep enough for a dedicated search team, and ranking explainability makes those controls auditable.
- The AI stack is self-hosted and EU-governed, which suits retailers with strict data rules.
- Published support terms include a 99.9% SLA and a four-hour response target.
Cons
- Pricing starts around €10,000 a year and climbs to €200,000, so small stores are priced out and there's no free tier to test.
- A launch takes real work: catalog feeds, front-end integration and rule building. Budget weeks, not an afternoon.
- A/B testing relies on a third-party tool rather than a built-in test engine, which adds a contract and a setup step.
- The product assumes an ecommerce catalog. Content-heavy or marketplace-style sites need custom work before the search layer fits.
Frequently asked questions
Empathy.co provides AI-powered search and discovery for online stores. It handles site search, category browsing, product recommendations and conversational search, then gives merchandisers a console to steer the results.
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