I am about to launch a beta site, and heroku looks like a great option. The only think that is getting me down is that the only search option is $20/mth for the Websolr
My gem pg_search does full-text search against PostgreSQL, and works directly on Heroku.
Check it out and let me know if it works for you!
Looks like IndexTank was purchased by LinkedIn and will be discontinuing support (although some portions might be open-sourced in the future). See this post for more info: https://indextank.com/documentation/faq2
No, I was looking for that too a week ago, and didn't find anything...
And I don't think there is any work in progress on another add-ons like this as they already have one, so they won't put another that is free... :/
Anyway, heroku is amazing, so try to make it work with code or just spend $20 :)
This post seems to have good options:
Leveraging the full text search of postgrSQL:
http://tenderlovemaking.com/2009/10/17/full-text-search-on-heroku.html
Also explains the options of Ferret and Solr.
acts_as_tsearch works great. No configuration needed if you have postgresql > 8.3. Have to experiment with multiple tables though. Will use it on heroku till i can afford the WebSolr Add-on. I found it a better option compared to the texticle method as explained in the article link above (tendermaking).
acts_as_tsearch: http://github.com/pka/acts_as_tsearch
acts_as_ferret won't work as Heroku cleans up the /tmp directory regularly. Even i am in need of a full-text solution. Thinking of trying out the acts_as_tsearch plugin.