Couchbase Server vs. PostgreSQL

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Couchbase Server
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Couchbase Server is a cloud-native, distributed database that fuses the strengths of relational databases such as SQL and ACID transactions with JSON flexibility and scale that defines NoSQL. It is available as a service in commercial clouds and supports hybrid and private cloud deployments.N/A
PostgreSQL
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
PostgreSQL (alternately Postgres) is a free and open source object-relational database system boasting over 30 years of active development, reliability, feature robustness, and performance. It supports SQL and is designed to support various workloads flexibly.N/A
Pricing
Couchbase ServerPostgreSQL
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Couchbase ServerPostgreSQL
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Couchbase ServerPostgreSQL
Features
Couchbase ServerPostgreSQL
NoSQL Databases
Comparison of NoSQL Databases features of Product A and Product B
Couchbase Server
8.9
Ratings
1% above category average
PostgreSQL
-
Ratings
Performance8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Availability9.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Concurrency8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Security9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability9.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Data model flexibility9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Deployment model flexibility8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Couchbase ServerPostgreSQL
Small Businesses
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
InfluxDB
InfluxDB
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
SQLite
SQLite
Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
SQLite
SQLite
Score 9.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Couchbase ServerPostgreSQL
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
2.1
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.3
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(0 ratings)
9.3
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Couchbase ServerPostgreSQL
Likelihood to Recommend
Best suited when edge devices have interrupted internet connection. And Couchbase provides reliable data transfer. If used for attachment Couchbase has a very poor offering. A hard limit of 20 MB is not okay. They have the best conflict resolution but not so great query language on Couchbase lite.
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PostgreSQL is ideal for handling databases that contain large volumes of information due to its efficiency, speed and above all because of the good management it makes of our resources, it also behaves very well in distributed environments of high demand, if you want a database of stable data and excellent performance PostgreSQL is one of the best.
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Pros
  • Easy to store unstructured data and has great performance
  • Managing security is super easy which can be managed across different levels
  • UI is pretty simple to use and manage the cluster
  • Backup of the data is very easy and the restoration/recovery is fairly easy as well with the in-built tools.
  • Easy integration with elasticsearch for replication
  • It is fairly easy to scale up or scale down the cluster
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  • Advanced spatial capabilities by using PostGIS extension
  • Very fast data processing and support of native ANSI SQL language syntax allows maintaining capability and scalability of database
  • Fast data aggregation, even by SQL or stored routines/functions
  • Well documented, free for use, great community. A lot of examples, and for this reason - lesser threshold for junior developers to start with
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Cons
  • Cluster sizing during the design phase can be improved, especially if the client lacks prior experience. Vendor consultants are very meticulous in order to provide best of class performance and response time, although some more real-world pragmatic approach is often needed.
  • Couchbase Lite 2 went thru a major revamp, which broke the compatibility of the applications with some features removed and other changed. That needed development teams working to refactor the applications.
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  • The performance of PostgreSQL has been enhanced through the years, but always is better to have as much performance as we can.
  • The replication services could be done directly within the database, and more easily.
  • The Object Orientation of the Database could be extended, and albeit it manages inheritance of tables, and accepts XML and JSON as primary types, it would be wonderful if one could attach methods more easily to tables (to make them more like classes), and instances (rows for example).
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Likelihood to Renew
I rarely actually use Couchbase Server, I just stay up-to-date with the features that it provides. However, when the need arises for a NoSQL datastore, then I will strongly consider it as an option
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As a needed software for day to day development activities
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Usability
Couchbase has been quite a usable for our implementation. We had similar experience with our previous "trial" implementation, however it was short lived.
Couchbase has so far exceeded expectation. Our implementation team is more confident than ever before.
When we are Live for more than 6 months, I'm hoping to enhance this rating.
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Postgresql is the best tool out there for relational data so I have to give it a high rating when it comes to analytics, data availability and consistency, so on and so forth. SQL is also a relatively consistent language so when it comes to building new tables and loading data in from the OLTP database, there are enough tools where we can perform ETL on a scalable basis.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
PostgreSQL's availability is top notch. Apart from connection time-out for an idle user, the database is super reliable.
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Performance
One of Couchbase’s greatest assets is its performance with large datasets. Properly set up with well-sized clusters, it is also highly reliable and scalable. User management could be better though, and security often feels like an afterthought. Couchbase has improved tremendously since we started using it, so I am sure that these issues will be ironed out.
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The data queries are relatively quick for a small to medium sized table. With complex joins, and a wide and deep table however, the performance of the query has room for improvement.
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Support Rating
I haven't had many opportunities to request support, I will look forward to better the rating. We have technical development and integration team who reach out directly to TAM at Couchbase.
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AWS, Heroku, and Digital Ocean all provide Postgres-as-a-service, where you pretty much never need to administrate it yourself but they do it for you. The Postgres community also has developed awesome and reasonably priced extensions, such as Citus DB and CockroachDB in case you need additional support for running it. If you need documentation, Postgres's docs are super thorough and their official forms are active.
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
The online training is request based. Had there been recorded videos available online for potential users to benefit from, I could have rated it higher. The online documentation however is very helpful. The online documentation PDF is downloadable and allows users to pace their own learning. With examples and code snippets, the documentation is great starting point.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
The online documentation of the PostgreSQL product is elaborate and takes users step by step.
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Alternatives Considered
Couchbase could outperform it's competition considerably for database reads and writes. Full text searches were still faster in Elasticsearch but this is more of a feature than a base platform requirement for us.
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In this case, Postgres is preferred because it handles large data sets and requires fewer hardware resources than its competitor, MySQL. Compared to PostgreSQL, Microsoft products are excellent, but the installation process for MS SQL is lengthy. PostgreSQL has an advantage over its competitors in that it can adapt or configure third-party programs, applications, or settings.
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Scalability
So far, the way that we mange and upgrade our clusters has be very smooth. It works like a dream when we use it in concert with AWS and their EC2 machines. Having access to powerful instances along side the Couchbase interface is amazing and allows us to do rebalances or maintenance without a worry
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The DB is reliable, scalable, easy to use and resolves most DB needs
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Return on Investment
  • There have been several areas of our application [that] really needed an ACID compliant database (e.g. strong transactional guarantees) that we thought we could work around while using Couchbase. [In my opinion] that turned out to be a poor bet. You need to be certain that the specific characteristics of a NoSQL database fit your problem.
  • Couchbase does eliminate the need for schema upgrades completely. I.e no downtime or conversion windows as you migrate your data model, adding attributes, etc. This helped with the deployment timeframe associated with DB changes.
  • The database is (apparently) a bit more of a space/memory consumer than originally anticipated. During deployments, we received constant pressure from Couchbase consulting teams to eliminate/reduce the number of indexes, and this was because any mutations to docs in a bucket must check for impact against all indexes. More recent years have started to address this with their "collections" features, which helps isolate indexes to specific sub-groupings of documents.
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  • Easy to administer so our DevOps team has only ever used minimal time to setup, tune, and maintain.
  • Easy to interface with so our Engineering team has only ever used minimal time to query or modify the database. Getting the data is straightforward, what we do with it is the bigger concern.
  • It's free. You can't beat that.
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