My experience with Solr is that it is much more schema-centric than ES. Which is good and bad, because ES being all "don't worry about it" is fine until you do have to worry about it, and then it's some holy hell trying to square up your version of the world with what ES thinks of the world
The Solr search API is worse, IMHO, also, although it can likely be fine if you just stick to their simple query string (for both versions of "their," ES and Solr). That said, my experience with ES is just like OP's: keeping the piece of junk alive and healthy is a time-and-a-half job. Combined with their recent license tomfoolery, I hope to never touch it again
I haven't used any of the new search upstarts in anger enough to know whether they're prime-time or not
The Solr search API is worse, IMHO, also, although it can likely be fine if you just stick to their simple query string (for both versions of "their," ES and Solr). That said, my experience with ES is just like OP's: keeping the piece of junk alive and healthy is a time-and-a-half job. Combined with their recent license tomfoolery, I hope to never touch it again
I haven't used any of the new search upstarts in anger enough to know whether they're prime-time or not