Crate doesn't support facets or Elasticsearch aggregations directly. Like you suggested, you can always turn on the Elasticsearch API. However, there are other ways to get these aggregations.
1) Have you considered to issue multiple queries to the cluster? For example, if you load your page dynamically with Javascript, you can first return the search results and load the facets later. This should also decrease the overall response time of the application.
2) In CrateDB 2.1.x, there will be support for subqueries, which allow you to include the facets within your query:
select q1.id, q1.domain, q1.tag, q2.d_count, q3.t_count from websites q1,
(select domain, count(*) as d_count from websites where text like '%query%' group by domain) q2,
(select tag, count(*) as t_count from websites where text like '%query%' group by tag) q3
where q1.domain = q2.domain and q1.tag = q3.tag and q1.text like '%query%'
order by q1.id
limit 5;
This gives you a result table like this where you have the search results alongside with the domain and tag count for the query:
+----+--------------+-----------+---------+-----------+
| id | domain | tag | d_count | t_count |
+----+--------------+-------------+---------+---------+
| 1 | example.com | example | 2 | 3 |
| 14 | crate.io | software | 1 | 4 |
| 17 | google.com | search | 5 | 2 |
| 29 | github.com | open-source | 3 | 3 |
| 47 | linux.org | software | 2 | 4 |
+----+--------------+-------------+---------+---------+
Disclaimer: I'm new to Crate :)