Couchbase Server Reviews & Insights

Score8.7 out of 10

204 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Couchbase Server are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Scalability: Couchbase is highly scalable, allowing users to handle large amounts of data and serve numerous transactions simultaneously. Reviewers have praised the ability to scale the database based on performance requests and the ease of expanding the cluster size.

Performance: Users appreciate Couchbase's strong performance, specifically highlighting its memory caching as a significant advantage over other NoSQL databases they evaluated. This indicates that Couchbase is efficient and fast in processing and retrieving data.

Flexibility: The schema-less architecture of Couchbase provides flexibility for users. They value the ability to support system points backwardly and make changes easily. It demonstrates that Couchbase can adapt to changes in the database structure effectively.

Couchbase Server Reviews

32 Reviews

Engineering

high availability

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

December 14, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Fraud detection and identity authentication
We have used to store user information for fraud detection and authentication.
We have large user base where we are detecting pattern based on device and other user information to detect fraudulent behaviour of the user.
Couchbase was faster solution to store this information and we are able to fetch whenever we need.

Pros

Data Management
Data Availability
Less latency and fast lookup

Cons

Dashboard
Sorting of data

Likelihood to Recommend

We used this for fraud detection as state earlier section.
This work best for all the noSQL usecases, we tried few of the usecase and did the POC.
This work well and we never stuck with the scaling part,
We are able to run this over the large amount of user records.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (Information Technology & Services company, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Couchbase to the Rescue!

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

December 12, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using Couchbase for web application development. Our main focus is public safety and disaster management. We have web and mobile platform presence. We had to solve the syncing issue between mobile and web and Couchbase sync gateway was a great help in this scenario. Also, creating custom document id was another big help for filtering data. Using SDK we perform micro data manipulation processes which is faster comparatively.

Pros

Synchronization between web and mobile platform using sync gateway
Custom document id to reduce data filter
SDK to update specified document or document fragments

Cons

Documentation was quite hard for me to understand at the beginning. I think that needs to be improved for newbies.
Updating multiple document keys were possible before v6.5, but now not anymore. For me that was a great help. I think that needs to be back.

Likelihood to Recommend

Couchbase sync gateway was a great help in syncing data between different platforms. It resolves conflicts automatically in most cases. Creating custom document id is really a big help for filtering data without making any N1QL queries. Using SDK we perform micro data manipulation processes which is very fast comparing to other DBs.

Faozul Azim

Senior Software Engineer in Engineering at UgoRound Pty Ltd (Public Safety, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

Couchbase - best NoSql solution in the market.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

October 19, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Couchbase to save user data - user's PII data like email, first name, last name, etc., and user's behavioral data like click history, segmentation data, etc. PII data is permanent and behavioral data is temporary. There is a limited TTL on the behavioral data bucket. We are currently working on expanding it to save users' authentication data (session-id etc.) and authorization data (entitlement) as well.

Pros

Retrieves the data very fast.
Don't have to use predefined schema.
I can still query on the Json.

Cons

Takes too long to build index. Could be faster.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you need fast data, Couchbase is the solution. Also, when data is coming from different sources, and the schema is not always the same, Couchbase is a very good solution. Just define a document and save the data as a JSON doc.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (Media Production company, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

A good tool for the right problem

Rating: 2 out of 10

Incentivized

August 19, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Couchbase was originally selected to be the OLTP database to be used with "the experience engine" to hold the guest information, messaging, activity records, tags/classifications and related information pertaining to the guest experience. We initially used Couchbase prior to the creation of N1QL, and have used its core data services, views (now deprecated), N1QL, and XDCR and SyncGateway functionality. (Our use of couch-base included multi-instance replication). More recently, we've also worked with its event functionality and transactional support (a relatively new addition to its SDK).

Pros

As a sharded key/value store for json documents, its both performant and scalable.

Cons

The N1QL engine performs poorly compared to SQL engines due to the number of interactions needed, so if your use case involves the need for a lot of SQL-like query activity as opposed to the direct fetch of data in the form of a key/value map you may want to consider a RDBMS that has support for json data types so that you can more easily mix the use of relational and non-relational approaches to data access.
You have to be careful when using multiple capabilities (e.g. transactions with Sync Gateway) as you will typically run into problems where one technology may not operate correctly in combination with another.
There are quality problems with some newly released features, so be careful with being an early adopter unless you really need the capability. We somewhat desperately adopted the use of transactions, but went through multiple bughunt cycles with Couchbase working the kinks out.

Likelihood to Recommend

Couchbase will work well if what you need is a high scale, highly available distributed map. This is what it started out as, and like many products it has sought to grow outward from that area of core competency, but many of those additions (e.g. N1QL) don't really perform as well as other database products that specifically fit that niche. If you're application can work well with a distributed map, its a good tool for that job, but beware the "it can do anything that other databases can do" angle.

Bob Walters

Sr. Technical Architect in Engineering at The Experience Engine (Leisure, Travel & Tourism, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

View profile

Great product, but there is still room for improvement

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

August 5, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Over the years, Couchbase has helped us build challenging projects. Thanks to its characteristics it fits perfectly with our needs to create scalable, stable, and performing software.

Pros

Sync data between server and mobile devices
Scaling based on performance requests
Query data with power of relational database

Cons

Query functionalities on Couchbase Mobile
More intuitive index creation on Couchbase Mobile
Couchbase Cloud functionalities

Likelihood to Recommend

Easy to use and integrate on mobile apps. Easy to configure on the server side. Time saver.

Verified User

Technician in Engineering (Computer Software company, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Great NoSQL product - Couchbase

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

March 15, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Currently, it is being used by many departments, in various product areas.

There is a mix of deployments being used in multiple clusters:
- enterprise
- community
with various types of topologies: single cluster, multi-cluster (using cross DC replication).

The most important use-cases are:
- Transactional [datastore]
- Distributed cache
- Reporting and analytical storage
- Session storage and other user details.

The addressed business problems are:
- Performance improvements in various applications by using Couchbase as a distributed cache, capable of serving an intensive workload with low and predictable latency.
- Promotional platform: as storage of promotional campaigns, including tracking of customer activity in order to provide real-time feedback regarding customer journey. The main feature is to increase customer engagement by offering targeted promotions.
- Distributed scheduled workload execution: allows execution of a huge volume of transactions (millions) very quickly (minutes), by leveraging the low latency reads/writes & indexes.
- Internal console storage: hold various types of data related to console user journey (ex: session).

Pros

Low latency for read/write operations.
High throughput can be achieved using reactive support of the client.
Cross Data Center Replication - useful for multi-cluster topology.
Great management console, including various metrics useful for monitoring.
Great support for enterprise licences.

Cons

Community edition has various limitations, like [the] inability to view/edit documents over a certain threshold or inability to use various types of [optimized] indexes.
The indexes performance degrades when a certain number of mutations is reached.
The views creation can be quite slow and impacts the deployment speed for large buckets.

Likelihood to Recommend

Well suited:
- Distributed cache
- storage of data by customer, where the get/set operations are very frequently used.
- Simple reporting, when non-complex reports are required with aggregations like count/sum.

Not well suited:
- Complex reporting (data warehouse): there are other relational DB [that] are more appropriate for this use-case.
- Applications using complex relational schema, requiring various joins between tables...
Any use-case where the most common type of operation is storing data based on some sort of identifier.
Virtually any use-case is appropriate for Couchbase usage, with exception of application. Though this kind of use-case is partially covered by n1ql support (similar to SQL)

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (Gambling & Casinos company, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

9 years of experience

Promotional platform powered by Couchbase

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

August 12, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Couchbase powers our promotional platform. It allows us to deliver real-time updates to our customers, while enabling us to keep a flexible schema. We are able to deliver quickly new business requirements as a result. It has enabled our teams to take control over the entire tech stack, front-end, middle tier and storage, which has led to better results.

Pros

Performance.
Schema flexibility.
Cross data center replication.

Cons

N1ql maturity.

Likelihood to Recommend

Document retrieval works excellent, this is where Couchbase excels.

Rares Rusu

Principal developer in Engineering at Paddypower Betfair (Entertainment, 5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Great at caching & raw performance, earlier versions have some gotchas, newer versions look pretty good (no longer a Couchbase user)

Rating: 5 out of 10

Incentivized

June 25, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Couchbase & SyncGatway were used to allow for rapid prototyping of our backend systems. However in the desire for rapid iteration we implemented things incorrectly that ultimately ended up hurting our ability to scale resiliently using the Couchbase view engine.

Couchbase would make a fine caching layer and the potential for N1QL looks interesting. However as we were using older versions of the product the effort to migrate to newer libraries resulted in us ultimately migrating off Couchbase.

Pros

Horizontal scalability.
Caching.

Cons

View Engine locking during node failover.

Likelihood to Recommend

If I needed to implement a horizontal scaling caching layer, Couchbase would be something I would look closely at.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (Computer Software company, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

Couchbase works well, but isn't the only option

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

June 20, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Couchbase was chosen initially to solve the problem of global distribution of data for our authentication services. We wanted our auth data to replicate globally, be flexible, and easy to query. It also had to be fast so that we could quickly direct users to the correct data center where their data existed. Couchbase solved all those problems for us. It also included simple management consoles and automatics recovery when nodes became corrupt or went missing. It was used for this and several other products.

Pros

Management of nodes is simple and requires minimal maintenance.
The ability to query is flexible and the N1QL language is convenient, though it can have pitfalls.
Replication provides great data resiliency, as well as speed and performance on a global scale.

Cons

At large query volume, it can be difficult to scale. This is mostly due to user error, but the flexibility afforded makes these issues easy to slip through.
The N1QL language, while convenient, obscures powerful features and hinders in-depth learning of the NoSQL principles.
Couchbase is self-hosted, and as such, it required internal DevOps resources to maintain.

Likelihood to Recommend

Couchbase is well suited for global deployments. It also works well in a variety of cloud or on-premise environments. This flexibility makes it a great product that can be used almost anywhere. If you only use a single cloud provider or don't have any capacity to maintain a database, then choosing the NoSQL flavor of your provider might provide a better experience.

Daniel Olfelt

Founder & CTO in Engineering at When I Work (Information Technology & Services, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

Couchbase, the right tool for the job.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

May 27, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Couchbase is being used as a backend datastore for our document management SaaS system. We originally brought it in to replace aging technologies, such as E-Directory. As our experience with it has grown so has its use inside of our product. We are now actively migrating our systems that rely on SQL Server to it as well.
The biggest issues that Couchbase solved for us were scaling and data elasticity. As our user base grew we knew we needed a system that could scale horizontally so that we had more predictable capital expenditures that could be planned for. We also wanted to be able to update data models without having to perform difficult schema definition changes or table alterations. Couchbase met both of these objectives.

Pros

Single and multi-record lookups are extremely fast.
N!QL lets SQL programmers get up and running quickly without having to learn a new way of thinking.
Full-text search, still basic but becoming more useful.
Management UI is awesome providing a useful dashboard for determining the health of your cluster.
Rolling updates just work.

Cons

Full text search is very basic and fairly limited throwing errors at times that are difficult to understand or resolve.
.NET SDK has not always been compatible with the latest server version.

Likelihood to Recommend

Couchbase is ideal for situations where you store JSON objects that you usually retrieve using a unique key, speed and reliability in this area is supreme. With N!QL it is also a great replacement for situations where you would use SQL. With that said however, it is not a good fit for situations where you need strong ACID properties. It is an eventually consistent system and with a lot of transactions happening it can take it awhile for an index to catch up. You can usually work around those issues but it does require extra work.

Nathan Ekstrom

Manager, Principle Architect - Technology in Engineering at NetDocuments Software, Inc. (Computer Software, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

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Great NoSQL product - Couchbase

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

March 15, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Low latency for read/write operations.
High throughput can be achieved using reactive support of the client.
Cross Data Center Replication - useful for multi-cluster topology.
Great management console, including various metrics useful for monitoring.
Great support for enterprise licences.

Cons

Community edition has various limitations, like [the] inability to view/edit documents over a certain threshold or inability to use various types of [optimized] indexes.
The indexes performance degrades when a certain number of mutations is reached.
The views creation can be quite slow and impacts the deployment speed for large buckets.

Likelihood to Recommend

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (Gambling & Casinos company, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

9 years of experience