Looking now (no longer on my phone) it's a bit more complex than that: while MySQL has supported FULLTEXT indexes since 3.23.23 (2000-09-01) [1] if you wanted to use InnoDB (and you probably did -- it was much better than MyISAM [2]) you initially couldn't use FULLTEXT. That was added in v5.6 [3], and at the time I was developing this software the standard option was to set up Sphinx.
I've edited the post to add some of this history, so future readers understand this was about whether to add a dependency on an external indexing service.
The problem with Mysql fulltext is that you are required to use the MyISAM table type.
If you are doing any writes to this table, you will eventually run into corruption problems. This is because of the way it works underneath. So, I only use it with static data or data that I rarely update.
I wish Innodb had fulltext search capabilities. I don't like the idea of adding yet another 3rd party server in the mix.
This posts neglects to mention a few key points about the FULLTEXT search....
1. You have to use MyISAM tables which dosen't support transactions like InnoDB tables do.
2. You need to make sure you adjust the FT MAX LENGTH parameter which I believe is 4 by default meaning you can search on 3 letter words like say "USB" for example
Here's the manual page from 5.6: https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/innodb-fulltext-inde...
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