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.

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 question “Why does the server count the number of users by browser session rather than IP address?” on the FAQ page.

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.

What does “1+ year of bugfixes and support” mean?

Examples:

1. Suppose you buy DocFetcher Server 1.x today, and several hours later, DocFetcher Server 2.0 is released. Then you will get bugfixes and support for DocFetcher Server 1.x for exactly 1 year, starting from today.
2. Suppose you buy DocFetcher Server 1.x today, and two weeks later, DocFetcher Server 2.0 is released. Then you will get bugfixes and support for DocFetcher Server 1.x for 2 weeks + 1 year, starting from today.

General rule: The general rule is that the bugfixing and support period lasts until 1 year after the release of the next major version. Currently, that would be version 2.0. In any case, you will get at least 1 year of bugfixes and support.

Gumroad account: Bugfix releases will be made available through the Gumroad account with which you purchased 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.