Apache CouchDB vs. IBM Cloud Databases

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
CouchDB
Score 6.0 out of 10
N/A
Apache CouchDB is an HTTP + JSON document database with Map Reduce views and bi-directional replication. The Couch Replication Protocol is implemented in a variety of projects and products that span computing environments from globally distributed server-clusters, over mobile phones to web browsers.N/A
IBM Cloud Databases
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
IBM Cloud Databases are open source data stores for enterprise application development. Built on a Kubernetes foundation, they offer a database platform for serverless applications. They are designed to scale storage and compute resources seamlessly without being constrained by the limits of a single server. Natively integrated and available in the IBM Cloud console, these databases are now available through a consistent consumption, pricing, and interaction model. They aim to provide a cohesive…N/A
Pricing
Apache CouchDBIBM Cloud Databases
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CouchDBIBM Cloud Databases
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache CouchDBIBM Cloud Databases
Considered Both Products
CouchDB
Chose CouchDB
Open Source, and freely able to install it on any OS you desire (the big 3, anyways) CouchDB was selected for that, it's early-adoption of JSON and its mobile-friendly environment. Also, I have used it off and on in various non-professional projects, and it was really one of …
Chose CouchDB
Compared to MongoDB, CouchDB's Map-Reduce paradigm poses a steeper learning curve for SQL users. However, CouchDB's master-master replication is an advantage of implementing a load-balanced solution.
Even though, currently, CouchDB has strong community support, as an open …
Chose CouchDB
MongoDB and CouchDB are both document stores, but their concurrency models and ability to scale are very different. MongoDB cannot replicate / shard over unreliable links and network partitions have been the cause of data loss in the past. MongoDB has an easier query language …
Chose CouchDB
It has been 5+ years since we chose CouchDB. We looked an MongoDB, Cassandra, and probably some others. At the end of the day, the performance, power potential, and simplicity of CouchDB made it a simple choice for our needs. No one should use just because we did. As I said …
Chose CouchDB
S3 blew this out of the water, we can get over 30 files a second, almost no failures, auto backed up, don't need our own server, and a much simpler interface with PHP Laravel.
Chose CouchDB
We looked at MongoDB and Firebase. MongoDB gives us the best working db engine with a very intuitive design. However, it does not work as well offline. Firebase was extremely hard to create searching and indexing. Using a third-party to search didn't work for us or at least it …
Chose CouchDB
Developing spring boot apps with Couchbase using Spring Data JPA really solves complexity of programming.
Chose CouchDB
I have briefly used MongoDB in other products, and it proved that it had better integration capabilities with Ruby on Rails and node.js software platforms, more than CouchDB. But I never had the chance to actually replace CouchDB with MongoDB in the current product to see what …
Chose CouchDB
It stacks up well against Mongo DB. Mongo DB definitely has more marketing and developer and customer mindshare because it is so widely known.
Chose CouchDB
CouchbaseDB is essentially faster with more options but of course with a cost. Cloudant is the hosted option with a better security schema.
IBM Cloud Databases
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
When launching the system, using multiple services would have been inefficient, so we consolidated it on IBM Cloud Databases. We regularly compared the services provided by IBM Cloud Databases' PaaS with those of other cloud services, but decided that there was no need to go to …
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
N/A for other services, but used IBM because of reputation as it is an industry giant who has been a big player in the IT industry for years.
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
a powerful storm disrupted power supplies and network connections to the data center hosting our critical databases. Despite the external factors causing widespread service disruptions, IBM Cloud Databases demonstrated its exceptional reliability. The auto-failover feature …
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
UI is easier to use and flexible. AWS EBS is very simple to use and do upgrades and monitor the upgrades easily. I also recommend IBM to implement these.
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
The reason why I choose IBM Cloud Databases is that the IBM cloud toolset is already being used in other functions of the company and by using IBM Cloud Databases, the other cloud tools are better embedded and integrated. If the company is set to use amazon tools, I would go …
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
IBM cloud database has a lot of features than amazon dynamodb. This is my personal opinion. But I can't say amazon dynamodb is a bad one. But IBM cloud database has a lot of securities and file storage and backup features than amazon dynamodb. But both are good in their own …
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
I have used Amazon DynamoDm and compared to IBM Compose, I would say IBM Compose is affordable, easy to use and very fast as well. I would opt IBM Cloud Databases given the two choices
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
No I haven't yet used other ones more so can't make a judgement
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
We started with IBM Compose, which later got merged into and became IBM Cloud Databases.
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
they do a great job at handling our business needs. we like what they offer and how they respond to questions we provide. they do a lot of great things that help our business thrive and stay ahead. we are grateful for how this compnay has responded to our unique requests and …
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
We already had existing contracts with IBM and Microsoft, so those made the most sense to verify. Both are good options for data storage. Since much of our existing Dbs are IBM related, we stuck with IBM cloud dbs, just so that the SQL code would port well. Additionally, we …
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
The kubernete service is the front end for the transactions of our core systems and our cloud databases (Postgres and DB2) are the persistence storage.

It is very similar to the way on which we operated before except that we don't have to worry about high availability, backups …
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
AWS RDS & Oracle OCI. AWS RDS has a wider range of databases but at a higher cost.
IBM Compose has fewer databases but is perfect for data related solutions like data warehousing (IBM Db2 AI enabled Warehouse is a GREAT product!)
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
Cloudant is HIPAA compliant and replicated out of the box. We recommend use of Cloudant vs Mongodb for that purpose. We use Redis only as a session cache.
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
We are still evaluating the differences between IBM Cloud Databases and AWS Postgres instances.
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
We have Cassandra database that is currently not available as part of IBM Cloud Databases. We ended up using classic infrastructure IaaS to host our Cassandra server.
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
I did compare IBM Compose for PostgreSQL with PostgreSQL offerings available from Amazon and Google. IBM Compose was judged easier to provision and maintain.

I'm pleased with the additional more granular provisioning flexibility and more favorable cost structure that has come …
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
Solr was not available on Compose and had to be hosted internally
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
While at the time, Amazon RDS did/does not create Mongo databases, I was able to set up many with PostgreSQL databases with the same ease as IBM Compose. However, IBM compose does seem to offer a more intuitive application control panel. Amazon RDS costs run on a server …
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
We selected Compose because we initially thought that they would provide great support, and that they would bring encryption at rest within months. That has not materialized yet.

We also thought that the cost, while far from being the lowest, was reasonable.
Chose IBM Cloud Databases
I've tried Amazon DynamoDB and Heroku Postgres, but Compose was much much easier and faster to set up, and also has more DB alternatives.
Features
Apache CouchDBIBM Cloud Databases
NoSQL Databases
Comparison of NoSQL Databases features of Product A and Product B
Apache CouchDB
7.9
Ratings
8% below category average
IBM Cloud Databases
-
Ratings
Performance8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Availability8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Concurrency8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Security6.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Data model flexibility7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Deployment model flexibility9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Database-as-a-Service
Comparison of Database-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Apache CouchDB
-
Ratings
IBM Cloud Databases
7.3
Ratings
14% below category average
Automatic software patching00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Database scalability00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Automated backups00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Database security provisions00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Monitoring and metrics00 Ratings4.00 Ratings
Automatic host deployment00 Ratings5.20 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apache CouchDBIBM Cloud Databases
Small Businesses
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache CouchDBIBM Cloud Databases
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache CouchDBIBM Cloud Databases
Likelihood to Recommend
It's good as a general JSON document store and basic map/reduce system. For more specialized tasks like message queuing, graph traversal, streaming metrics aggregation, or arbitrary table joins, I'd recommend another database.
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Less Appropriate Scenario: 1) Small Scale or Low Budget Projects 2) Organizations with limited expertise in cloud technologies may find the learning curve steep, especially if they are not familiar with the IBM Cloud platform 3) If database requirements are highly dynamic and change frequently, the comprehensive features and management provided by IBM Cloud Databases might be overkill. A more flexible, self-managed solution could be preferable for adapting to rapid changes.
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Pros
  • Ease of install and setup.
  • Ease of syncing with another database. This was truly set it and forget it.
  • The REST API to read data. No additional drivers are needed to work with CouchDB.
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  • The ease of setup was effortless. For anyone with development experience, a few simple questions such as name and login data will get you set up.
  • The web application to manage cluster settings, billing settings and even introspect the data was simple and most importantly worked all the time. This can not always be said for web interfaces of other products.
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Cons
  • SUPER SLOW. We do tons of data and S3 and just using the file system were both way faster
  • Using views is too complex
  • Stores entire DB as 1 file, good luck when it becomes many TB
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  • Better cost reports, before just increasing to another tier, thus increasing the price. This is critical for early stage startups, where budget is tight.
  • Add more data center options. As a comparison, a similar service, Aiven.io has dozen more options than Compose (basically all big cloud providers). We moved from AWS to Digital Ocean, which made us stop using Compose, since Compose forces us to be either on IBM or AWS.
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Likelihood to Renew
As a highly distributed database system, CouchDB naturally has strong high availability with traffic load-balancing capability. It is also easy to scale and replicate data in a cluster for redundancy. However, there is still some room for query performance improvement in the future.
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I am very fond of the features and reliability of the compose DaaS, however I could switch if I find same qualities for lower price.
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Usability
Couchdb is very simple to use and the features are also reduced but well implemented. In order to use it the way its designed, the ui is adequate and easy. Of course, there are some other task that can't be performed through the admin ui but the minimalistic design allows you to use external libraries to develop custom scripts
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IBM Cloud Databases' pricing structure is easy to understand, and if you choose the right product, you can operate your system at minimal cost. Although there is ample documentation available, there doesn't seem to be a user community running on it, so specific usage know-how and troubleshooting can sometimes take longer than expected.
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
Support is helpful enough, but we haven't always had questions answered in a satisfactory manner. At one time we realized that Compose had stopped taking database snapshots on its two-per-day schedule, and had in fact not taken one for many days. Support recognized the problem and it was fixed, but the lack of proactive checks and the inability to share exactly what happened has caused us to look elsewhere for production work loads
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Implementation Rating
it support is minimal also hw requirements. Also for development, we can have databases replicated everywhere and the replication is automagical. once you set up the security and the rules for replication, you are ready to go. The absence of a model let you build your app the way you want it
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Open Source, and freely able to install it on any OS you desire (the big 3, anyways) CouchDB was selected for that, it's early-adoption of JSON and its mobile-friendly environment. Also, I have used it off and on in various non-professional projects, and it was really one of the first exposure to databases in my career
Read full review
The reason why I choose IBM Cloud Databases is that the IBM cloud toolset is already being used in other functions of the company and by using IBM Cloud Databases, the other cloud tools are better embedded and integrated. If the company is set to use amazon tools, I would go for rds.
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • Biggest impact on our business has been that CouchDB has been pretty invisible from a cost or issues perspective. It just works.
  • We use the Apache releases, so it's free. Of course there is a cost to "free" - we have invested time to become fluent in using and understanding CouchDB. But we feel the investment was well worth the effort and we have a solid, fundamental technology to our products that "just works".
  • There are some things we do - SaaS vs self-hosting - that have probably been kept simple by using CouchDB. Overall, we are extremely happy with CouchDB.
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  • Prove use cases prior to administering entire platform, obtain ROI faster
  • Able to achieve the technological components of our advanced analytics team without full scale purchase of AI platform
  • Developed several studies to prove out cloud Db value, speed to deploy
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ScreenShots