Hi guys,
Thank you for your questions.
The main thing to note here is that CloudSearch is a service. Not a module. It just can't be created as a standalone module for X-Cart written in php. One can create a similar module but the significant amount of features (not to mention performance) was created solely due to the service architecture of CloudSearch.
As for the actual pricing numbers, I would like to stress that nowadays a realtime search system is a must-have feature for any serious store owner not willing to give up his conversion rates due to customers not able to find what they need. You don't buy yet another bells-and-whistles feature, instead you pay to increase your conversion and improve your customers experience. This blog post may be interesting
http://www.finestshops.com/cloudsearch-extention-helps-retailers-boost-online-sales-conversions.html
I understand your concern about having the fair pricing system taking into account all the resources/bandwidth/etc used. But from the inside it appeared that the amount of products have a good correlation with the actual resources we spend for a particular client. Last but not least, it is simple and straightforward. And answering to your question: we won't factor categories, manufacturers nor static pages when counting the number of products in store. So if you have for example 90 products and a couple of dozens of categories you can stay just fine on the bronze plan.