Hello Lisa,
#1. AWS OpenSearch:
AWS now uses OpenSearch replace for ElasticSearch.
But OpenSearch is the fork version of ElasticSearch 7.10, and our component fully support it.
So you can use Geek ElasticSearch component with AWS OpenSearch.
About AWS price, you can check its plans for more details.
#2. Searchly
If you are looking for reasonable price service, I always suggest users to use Searchly.
Searchly supports a free starter plan (totally free, no monthly cost) that enables you to create up to 10 search spaces.
Each search space can create two indices with 20MB of storage that can index up to 10K documents.
That’s enough for small and medium websites.
Our demo website is also using free starter plan of Searchly.
Many our customers are also using this service.
You can free create account here
www.searchly.com/
It only takes less than 10 minutes to create search space + index.
You can find detailed guide for how to configure Searchly service here
www.joomlageek.com/documentation/compone...ure-searchly-service
Once done, you can configure the Geek ElasticSearch Component to connect with the Searchly service, then indexing data.
All steps are listed on the Quickstart guide here
www.joomlageek.com/forum/component-geek-...572-quickstart-guide
#3. Install self-managed Elasticsearch service
If you have dedicated server, you can download Elasticsearch free from its website and install it to your server.
So you don't need to pay for Elasticsearch monthly.
Please let me know if you have any further questions.
