IBM Cloudant vs. MongoDB

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
N/A
Cloudant is an open source non-relational, distributed database service that requires zero-configuration. It's based on the Apache-backed CouchDB project and the creator of the open source BigCouch project. Cloudant's service provides integrated data management, search, and analytics engine designed for web applications. Cloudant scales your database on the CouchDB framework and provides hosting, administrative tools, analytics and commercial support for CouchDB and BigCouch. Cloudant is often…
$1
per month per GB of storage above the included 20 GB
MongoDB
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
MongoDB is an open source document-oriented database system. It is part of the NoSQL family of database systems. Instead of storing data in tables as is done in a "classical" relational database, MongoDB stores structured data as JSON-like documents with dynamic schemas (MongoDB calls the format BSON), making the integration of data in certain types of applications easier and faster.
$0
per month
Pricing
IBM CloudantMongoDB
Editions & Modules
Standard
$1
per month per GB of storage above the included 20 GB
Standard
$75
per month 100 reads/second ; 50 writes/second ; 5 global queries/second
Lite
Free
20 reads/second ; 10 writes/second ; 5 global queries / second ; 1 GB of storage capacity
Standard
Included
per month 20 GB of storage
Shared
$0
per month
Serverless
$0.10million reads
million reads
Dedicated
$57
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM CloudantMongoDB
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsFully managed, global cloud database on AWS, Azure, and GCP
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM CloudantMongoDB
Features
IBM CloudantMongoDB
NoSQL Databases
Comparison of NoSQL Databases features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cloudant
9.1
Ratings
3% above category average
MongoDB
10.0
Ratings
12% above category average
Performance9.70 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Availability8.30 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Concurrency9.80 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Security8.20 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Scalability9.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Data model flexibility9.80 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Deployment model flexibility9.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM CloudantMongoDB
Small Businesses
Redis Software
Redis Software
Score 8.4 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Redis Software
Redis Software
Score 8.4 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
Enterprises
Redis Software
Redis Software
Score 8.4 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM CloudantMongoDB
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.3
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.7
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(0 ratings)
9.6
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.2
(0 ratings)
8.4
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.6
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM CloudantMongoDB
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Cloudant is the best implementation of CouchDB, or any NoSQL database that you could use if you are looking for a database that can handle extremely rapid writes to a database without having to worry about transactional integrity. IBM Cloudant also abstracts out CouchDB's replication/multi-node requirements and ensures high availability on its own. It also allows map-reduce based indexing which will allow massive databases to be aggregated and queried very quickly. It should not be used in cases where you require structured data which is organized according to a schema, or if you want to maintain ACID database properties.
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MongoDB [is] great at storing JSON data grouped into "collections". In this format, you can store any JSON documents and conveniently categorize them by collections. The JSON document contained in MongoDB is called binary JSON or BSON and, like any other document in this format, is unstructured. Therefore, unlike traditional DBMS, any kind of data can be stored in collections, and this flexibility is combined with the horizontal scalability of the database. It should be noted that MongoDB does not have links between documents and “collections” (this is partially compensated by the Database Reference - links in the DBMS, but this does not completely solve the problem). As a result, a situation arises in which there is a certain set of data that is not related to other information in the database, and there is no way to combine data from different documents. In SQL systems, this would be an elementary task.
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Pros
  • We had a small data mart project that required the storage of some rather highly connected data that also had a relatively small footprint. This made IBM Cloudant an obvious choice because we could store the data in a data structure that met our project need al while using a platform that our web development team understood and was comfortable with.
  • We had a bunch of geospatial data that we needed for analysis. Having GeoJSON being natively supported by Cloudant made it an easy choice.
  • Cloudant was cloud-based and didn't require a DBA support it, this allowed the project to move ahead without pushback from the infrastructure team.
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  • Easy to learn. When I picked up MongoDB for the first time, I had little background in database management or modeling. If you have a background in javascript (and JSON)... then you can figure out how to use MongoDB pretty fast.
  • Fast performance.
  • It's relatively easy to set up in certain environments because there are lots of ready-made solutions out there.
  • There's a lot of support in the existing ecosystem for it —, especially in the node.js realm.
  • Query syntax is pretty simple to grasp and utilize.
  • Aggregate functions are powerful.
  • Scaling options.
  • Documentation is quite good and versioned for each release.
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Cons
  • To have a sort of LUW - Logical Unit Work when many documents are involved into a single update process. The changing of one document is related to its status information but it must be synchronized with all the other documents involved in the process.
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  • I love the idea of Map-Reduce native support in MongoDB. Admittedly I have not used it as much as I would like -- it always seems to trip me up.
  • Recent additions to the aggregation queries have helped reduce (no pun intended) my need to better wield the weapon that is Map-Reduce.
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Likelihood to Renew
the flexibility of NoSQL allow us to modify and upgrade our apps very fast and in a convenient way. Having the solution hosted by IBM is also giving us the chance to focus on features and the improvement of our apps. It's one thing less to be worried about
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MongoDB is one of the most famous non-relational databases in the world, there are famous active projects that use this database. I think that the same company that develops the database gives you the online induction totally free is something that really is very positive. Accounts with a first-class support to be able to relate the correct implementation of the database, in addition to teaching you the best practices to optimize your projects, I believe that with this decision it is more than obvious which is the best decision at the time of seeing with which database to work.
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Usability
It's mostly just a straight forward API to a data store. I knock one off for the full text search thing, but I don't need it much anyways. Also, the dashboard UI they give is pretty nice to use. It provides syntax-highlighting for writing views and queries are easy to test. I wish other DBs had a UI like this.
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It is one of the reasons why we prefer it to store documents in a JSON-style format, to access the desired document very quickly regardless of its size, to be readable by human eyes, and to be easily scalable and manageable.
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Reliability and Availability
it is a highly available solution in the IBM cloud portfolio and hence we have never had any issues with the data base being available - we also do continuous replication to be on the safer side just in case some thing goes awry. We also perform twice a year disaster recovery tests.
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No answers on this topic
Performance
very easy to get started and is very developer friendly given that it uses couchDB analytics. It is a cloud based solution and hence there is no hardware investment in a server and staging the server to get started and the associated delays/bureaucracy involved to get started. Good documentation is also available.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Very happy by the commitment given by the team which has been really good over the last 7 years of usage.
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I have reached multiple times to the MongoDB community for the help and they have provided each and easy solution for every problem. Over the internet and on stack overflow many people responds over the challenges. Now this tool is very much used in every company and projects so internally many people are there to give a support.
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Online Training
online resources are good enough to understand but there is nothing like testing. In our case, we discovered some not documented behavior that we take in count now. Also, the experience in NodeJs is critical. Also, take in count that most of the "good practices" with cloudant are not in online courses but in blogs and pages from independent developers
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
  • Test the architecture on CouchDB helped us to address initial design flaws.
  • The migration to Cloudant as such was very painless.
  • We have migrate our replication system to Cloudant Android Sync for mobile devices.
  • We have regular informal contact with the Cloudant leadership to discuss our use cases and implementation strategies.
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While the setup and configuration of MongoDB is pretty straight forward, having a vendor that performs automatic backups and scales the cluster automatically is very convenient. If you do not have a system administrator or DBA familiar with MongoDB on hand, it's a very good idea to use a 3rd party vendor that specializes in MongoDB hosting. The value is very well worth it over hosting it yourself since the cost is often reasonable among providers.
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Alternatives Considered
MongoDB Atlas and Azure Cosmos DB are the closest competitors we found with Cloudant, especially in terms of fixed pricing and having a GUI for easy viewing and quick edits of data. Cloudant's pricing model flat out beats MongoDB Atlas' in terms of how easy it would be to predict costs. Cosmos DB is a much closer competitor, as it integrates well with Azure's stack similarly to Cloudant and the rest of the IBM Cloud stack; similar [throughout]-based pricing and replication options; and even the GUI and ease of query using SQL, which my team and I were more familiar with. Where Cloudant beats out Cosmos DB is again having a more simple pricing model (ops/sec vs Cosmos' "request units" voodoo) and being based on open-source software assuaging fears of vendor lock-in.
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The environment I work in is somewhat unique in that we use both MySQL and MongoDB. However, each is used for specific purposes that the other is not well suited for. MongoDB is not a relational database like MySQL, so it serves as the perfect place to dump key bits of data for quick retrieval later. This is something we can't easily do with MySQL. On this smaller database, MongoDB also lets us retrieve data more quickly with its fast and efficient querying.
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Scalability
The service scales incredibly well. As you would expect from CloudDB and IBM combination. The only reason I wouldn't score it a 10 is the fact that document trees can get nested and nested very quickly if you are attempting to do very complex datasets. Which makes your code that much more complex to deal. Its very possible we could find a solution to this problem with better database planning to begin with, but one of the reasons we chose a service over a self-hosted solution was so we could set it up quick and forget about it. So we weren't going to dedicate a team to architecture optimization.
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • Saving in-terms of cost of procuring and maintaining hardware, which will be realized over the next 5 years.
  • Positive ROI in terms of the number of FTEs involved in maintaining our databases; our DBAs can now focus on other important and business critical applications.
  • Best ROI in terms of our organization's vision - they are no longer anxious / nervous to move to the cloud. We are already on the CLOUD.
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  • We can make more open and flexible systems due to its easy adaptation to new evolutions in web applications.
  • In the latest versions it offers support for different transactions and we could carry out real tests related to the concurrency of the application.
  • MongoDB allows you to have distributed clusters, which improves the speed of the queries by reducing the latency that exists between the database cluster and the service that executes the query.
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ScreenShots

MongoDB Screenshots

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