Look ma, no Java!
Bundled Java runtime: The demos and full versions of DocFetcher Pro and DocFetcher Server come bundled with their own internal Java runtimes, so running them does not require installing Java on your system.
Java security misconception: Contrary to popular belief, using an internal or installed Java runtime is no more dangerous than using the .NET framework or any other runtime. The internal Java runtimes of DocFetcher Pro and DocFetcher Server won’t update themselves, and this is perfectly safe too. The only serious security threat you need to worry about when it comes to Java is the Java plugin running in your browser, and that has nothing to do with the internal Java runtimes of DocFetcher Pro and DocFetcher Server.
Free Demos
There are free demos of DocFetcher Pro and DocFetcher Server to help you make up your mind about whether to purchase the full version.
Demo limitations: The demos contain all features of the full versions and can even be used without time limit. However, the following functional limitations apply:
- 5 results per search: DocFetcher Pro and DocFetcher Server won’t display more than 5 results per search. Thus, the demos will give you an accurate idea of what the full versions have to offer, minus the quality of search results. For the latter, check out DocFetcher. The quality of search results in DocFetcher, DocFetcher Pro and DocFetcher Server is mostly the same.
- Client limit: 3 users: The DocFetcher Server demos have a client limit of 3 users, meaning at most 3 users will be able to access the server simultaneously. The client limit is explained further below.
Donations: While you can get the demos for free, if you’re feeling particularly generous today, you can also “buy” them for an arbitrary price greater than zero. This is equivalent to making a donation.
Download: Click the links in the following table to get the free demos. Not sure which one to choose? Then you most likely want DocFetcher Pro 1.x for Windows.
Warnings
Check out the demos first. It is recommended that you check out the demos before buying any of the full versions, as this will ensure that the software will actually run on your system. This applies in particular to old Windows or macOS systems and exotic Linux distros. Also be sure to check out the demos first if you intend to use the software with unusual setups involving network drives, cloud drives, etc.
Create a Gumroad account before purchasing. Gumroad, the distribution platform where DocFetcher Pro and DocFetcher Server can be purchased, is a little weird in that you can purchase stuff there without creating a permanent Gumroad account. Make sure you do create an account before purchasing, as you will need this account to access future bugfixes.
Removed and missing functionality. If you’ve been using the free DocFetcher before, please note that some functionality from DocFetcher is not present in DocFetcher Pro. For details, see this page. Moreover, if you’ve been using DocFetcher Pro before, please note that DocFetcher Server currently lags behind DocFetcher Pro in terms of features. For details, see this page.
Purchasing DocFetcher Pro
To purchase DocFetcher Pro 1.x, choose one of the purchase options in the table below. Clicking the purchase link in the rightmost column will take you to an external purchase page with further instructions. But before you go, please be sure to read the Remarks section further below.
| Package | Runs on | Price | Purchase |
|---|---|---|---|
| DocFetcher Pro 1.x for Windows | Windows 7 SP1 or later, 64-bit only | $40 | Link |
| DocFetcher Pro 1.x for Linux | Linux with GTK 3, 64-bit only | $40 | Link |
| DocFetcher Pro 1.x for macOS | macOS 10.10 or later | $40 | Link |
| DocFetcher Pro 1.x Windows + Linux bundle (Save 25% = $20) | Windows 7 SP1 or later, Linux with GTK 3, 64-bit only | $60 | Link |
| DocFetcher Pro 1.x Windows + macOS bundle (Save 25% = $20) | Windows 7 SP1 or later, macOS 10.10 or later, 64-bit only | $60 | Link |
| DocFetcher Pro 1.x Linux + macOS bundle (Save 25% = $20) | Linux with GTK 3, macOS 10.10 or later, 64-bit only | $60 | Link |
| DocFetcher Pro 1.x Windows + Linux + macOS bundle (Save 25% = $30) | Windows 7 SP1 or later, Linux with GTK 3, macOS 10.10 or later, 64-bit only | $90 | Link |
Purchasing DocFetcher Server
To purchase DocFetcher Server 1.x, choose one of the purchase options in the table below. Clicking the purchase link in the rightmost column will take you to an external purchase page with further instructions. But before you go, please read the info boxes below the table and the Remarks section further below.
| Package | Runs on | Price | Purchase |
|---|---|---|---|
| DocFetcher Server 1.x for Windows | Windows 7 SP1 or later, 64-bit only | $65 per client | Link |
| DocFetcher Server 1.x for Linux | Linux with glibc 2.17 or newer, 64-bit only | $65 per client | Link |
| DocFetcher Server 1.x for macOS | macOS 10.10 or later | $65 per client | Link |
Not sure which version to buy? Then go for the Linux version, and put it on a lightweight Linux distribution. — See RAM requirement notes below.
Target audience
Unlike DocFetcher Pro, which is a piece of software made for average computer users, DocFetcher Server is geared towards system administrators and other tech-savvy folks who are familiar with server-related concepts like HTTP, ports and SSL certificates. Support cannot teach you these things.
If your goal is to integrate a DocFetcher Server instance into an existing website, you will either need a basic understanding of web servers (such as IIS, Apache or Nginx), or you will need the help of a person who possesses that knowledge.
The DocFetcher Server documentation covers the steps needed to set up a local instance of DocFetcher Server, on a single computer, but does not cover integration into a network environment or a website. The steps to do the latter are entirely dependent on the software being used, and there is just way too much diversity there to cover it all.
Before purchasing DocFetcher Server, it is strongly recommended that you try out the free demo, and in particular, try to figure out the integration part (if that is your goal), because that’s probably where most of the difficulty lies. The free demo has no time limit, so you can play with it to your heart’s content until you’ve figured it all out.
Per-client pricing and client limit
The prices listed above are “per client”. This has the following meaning: When making the purchase, you can choose how many users at most will be able to simultaneously connect to the server — this is the server’s so-called client limit.
For example, if you buy DocFetcher Server with a client limit of 10, then at most 10 users will be able to access the server at the same time. Any additional users will see a rejection page instead. And in this example, the total price is the per-client price above multiplied by 10 users.
Note that for technical reasons, client limits beyond 20 are only available in increments of 5, so you can for example buy DocFetcher Server with client limits of 40 or 45, but not 43.
After purchasing DocFetcher Server with a particular client limit, you have the option to upgrade to a higher client limit. How to upgrade is explained on this page.
Clients are identified by browser sessions, not IP addresses
The users that are counted towards the client limit of a DocFetcher Server instance are not identified by IP addresses, but by browser sessions. For instance, this means accessing a DocFetcher Server instance from two different browsers on the same computer counts as two users, not one. For a more detailed explanation of this issue, as well as a workaround called session stealing, please see the FAQ entry “Why does the server count the number of users by browser session rather than IP address?”.
Unlimited clients — not available
DocFetcher Server instances with no client limit (i.e., instances which can handle an unlimited number of simultaneous clients) are currently not available. — They would cost an infinite amount of money according to the above pricing model.
Thus, using DocFetcher Server to make a document repository publicly accessible on the internet, to an unlimited number of visitors, is a use case that’s not supported at the moment. You’d have to decide up front on a limited number of “seats”, and buy more “seats” if needed.
Installation and web hosting
Question: How do I start DocFetcher Server? From the command line or from a UI? Can I integrate it with web hosting service XYZ? Which web hosting service do you recommend?
Answer: DocFetcher Server does not come with integration for any particular web hosting service, it’s a bare-bones server application. All required dependencies are included, so you don’t need to install any additional software (PHP, MySQL, Apache, etc.) to run DocFetcher Server.
On Windows, DocFetcher Server comes with an executable for installing it as a Windows service. On Linux and macOS, DocFetcher Server comes with shell scripts for launching it either as a foreground process or a daemon process, and usually you’d want to configure your system to launch the daemon process at bootup. When DocFetcher Server is up and running, it will occupy one or two ports for HTTP and HTTPS, and it’s up to you to redirect incoming traffic to these ports.
Recommending a web hosting service is hard if not impossible, since the web hosting landscape is vast and ever-changing. However, you probably want a web hosting solution with full root access for performing the installation described above. In addition, you probably also need plenty of RAM, as discussed below.
RAM requirement
DocFetcher Server is a piece of software that typically needs a lot of RAM to work well, so when choosing a server machine for DocFetcher Server to run on, RAM is the one thing you probably shouldn’t skimp on. However, the exact amount of RAM needed is heavily dependent on the use case and can be anywhere between 1 GB and 64 GB.
Specifically, it mainly depends on two factors: how many clients the server is expected to serve, and the size of the biggest file to be indexed. It does not depend on the total size or the total number of the files to be indexed. (E.g., millions of small files can be indexed with very little RAM, but indexing just one or two enormous files can take a huge amount of RAM.) For most data sets observed in the wild, 16 GB of RAM seems like a relatively safe bet.
To get the most out of the available RAM, running the Linux version of DocFetcher Server on a lightweight Linux distribution is recommended. That’s because the less RAM the OS uses, the more RAM is left for DocFetcher Server and other applications.
Finally, DocFetcher Server has a setting to ignore files above a certain file size during indexing, e.g., “don’t index files bigger than 500 MB”. Choosing a lower value for this maximum file size setting will decrease the application’s RAM requirement.
Browser requirements
While DocFetcher Server runs on one of the supported platforms, i.e., Windows, Linux and macOS, the clients connecting to the DocFetcher Server instance don’t require any particular platform, but require an up-to-date (!) version of one of the four officially supported web browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge.
Older versions of these browsers and any version of other browsers may also work, but are not officially supported. Check out the free demo of DocFetcher Server to be sure. The ancient Internet Explorer is definitely not supported.
The web interface of DocFetcher Server was designed for desktop browsers only. In a limited way, it also works on tablets and even smartphones, but especially with smartphones the user experience is just terrible and totally not recommended.
Remarks
General remarks:
- For the time being, the software is English only.
- Each DocFetcher Pro purchase option includes both portable and non-portable versions of the software. Each DocFetcher Server purchase option only comes as a portable application.
- To verify downloaded release files, use these SHA-256 hashes.
- This refund policy applies: link.
Remarks on bugfixes and support:
- What you get: The purchase is a perpetual (i.e., “lifetime”) license for the current major version of the software and 1+ year of bugfixes and support. The addition of new features is not included.
- Version numbers: The current major version is “1.x”, and the specific program versions belonging to this major version are numbered “1.0”, “1.1”, “1.2”, and so on. The next major version will be “2.x”, with specific program versions being “2.0”, “2.1”, “2.2”, etc.
- Bugfixing and support period: “1+ year of bugfixes and support” means the bugfixing and support period will end one year after the release of the next major version, whenever that happens. For example, if you purchase DocFetcher Pro 1.x today and it just so happens that DocFetcher Pro 2.0 gets released today several hours later, then you will get bugfixes and support for DocFetcher Pro 1.x for exactly one year. If DocFetcher Pro 2.0 gets released two weeks after today, you will get bugfixes and support for 2 weeks + 1 year. In any case, you will get at least one year of bugfixes and support.
- Gumroad account: Bugfix releases will be made available through the Gumroad account with which you purchased DocFetcher Pro or DocFetcher Server.
- Best-effort bugfixing: Bugfixes are provided on a best-effort basis. In other words, not all bugs can be fixed. For instance, there’s a known issue with text highlighting in the preview pane in combination with proximity search. This issue was inherited from DocFetcher and is just a limitation of the underlying search engine.
- Support: To get support, please go to the Support page.
Remarks on scope of use:
- DocFetcher Pro: Personal or company license: The purchase of DocFetcher Pro is tied to the owner of the Gumroad account for which the purchase was made. This owner can be either an individual or an organization, and can either have made the purchase, or have received the software as a gift. If the owner is an individual, the purchased copy of the software may be used by that individual on an unlimited number of computers. If the owner is an organization, each purchased copy of the software may be used on a single computer.
- DocFetcher Server: Personal or company license: The purchase of DocFetcher Server is tied to the owner of the Gumroad account for which the purchase was made. This owner can be either an individual or an organization, and can either have made the purchase, or have received the software as a gift. The owner may purchase one or more copies of the software, and each copy may be deployed by the owner on a single computer.
- Redistribution not permitted: In contrast to DocFetcher, DocFetcher Pro and DocFetcher Server cannot be bundled and freely redistributed to other users. Each user would have to purchase their own copy of the software.