For very small datasets, Whoosh is fine. For anything larger than 'site search' on a website that has no UGC, you're much better off with SOLR (or ES, Xapian or Sphinx - whatever your poison).
When document counts get into the hundreds you see orders of magnitude faster queries with SOLR (etc), not to mention much more sophisticated querying options.
When document counts get into the hundreds you see orders of magnitude faster queries with SOLR (etc), not to mention much more sophisticated querying options.