| Queries are on list of keywords. freeWAIS does not allow complex query formulation, but commercial WAIS product is Z39.50 compliant and does allow Boolean and other complex query formulation |
| freeWAIS is entirely based on free-text search. It has no ability to recognize special data fields in documents. This can be a problem if documents do not have meaningful filenames, as no title can be returned by the search process |
| search results are scored according to a matching criterion and can be ordered by search score |
| all these deficiencies are addressed by the commercial WAIS product |