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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    IBM Cloudant

    Score7.4 out of 10
    N/ACloudant 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

    Firebase

    Score8.2 out of 10
    N/AGoogle offers the Firebase suite of application development tools, available free or at cost for higher degree of usages, priced flexibly accorded to features needed. The suite includes A/B testing and Crashlytics, Cloud Messaging (FCM) and in-app messaging, cloud storage and NoSQL storage (Cloud Firestore and Firestore Realtime Database), and other features supporting developers with flexible mobile application development.

    $0.01

    Per Verification

    Pricing
    IBM CloudantFirebase
    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
    Phone Authentication
    $0.01
    Per Verification
    Stored Data
    $0.18
    Per GiB
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    IBM CloudantFirebase
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    IBM CloudantFirebase
    Considered Both Products
    IBM
    Chose IBM Cloudant
    It's easier to use than Dynamo, more open than Firebase, and has better documentation that CouchDB... it might not be fair to compare Modulus, Modulus obviously suffers from some scalability issues and might not be in the same class... but its a hosted DB service we had some …
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Cloudant
    The gap that we wanted to cover was to deploy a self-managed CouchDB environment, which would allow us the bidirectional replication of Databases through several physical locations of the same client. IBM Cloudant was the best choice after evaluating some other platforms with …
    Incentivized
    Google
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    86%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    83%
    Would buy again
    19 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    5 Answers
    95%
    Delivers good value for the price
    19 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    91%
    Happy with the feature set
    21 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    7 Answers
    83%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    15 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    90%
    Implementation went as expected
    19 Answers
    Features
    IBM CloudantFirebase
    NoSQL Databases
    Comparison of NoSQL Databases features of IBM Cloudant and Firebase
    Feature
    IBM Cloudant
    9.1
    21 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Firebase
    -
    Ratings
    Performance9.721 Ratings00 Ratings
    Availability8.321 Ratings00 Ratings
    Concurrency9.821 Ratings00 Ratings
    Security8.221 Ratings00 Ratings
    Scalability9.021 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data model flexibility9.821 Ratings00 Ratings
    Deployment model flexibility9.021 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    IBM CloudantFirebase
    Small Businesses
    RavenDB
    Score8.1 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Foundry
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Amazon DynamoDB
    Score7.9 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Private
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Amazon DynamoDB
    Score7.9 out of 10
    AWS Elastic Beanstalk
    Score8.6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    IBM CloudantFirebase
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.0
    (45 ratings)
    7.5
    (31 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    7.7
    (5 ratings)
    7.1
    (6 ratings)
    Availability
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.6
    (4 ratings)
    7.3
    (6 ratings)
    Online Training
    7.3
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.2
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    8.5
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.6
    (23 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    IBM CloudantFirebase
    Likelihood to Recommend
    IBM
    Our organization found Cloudant most suitable if One, a fixed pricing structure would make the most sense, for example in a situation where the project Cloudant is being used in makes its revenue in procurement or fixed retainer — thus the predictability of costs is paramount; Two, where you need to frequently edit the data and/or share access to the query engine to non-engineers — this is where the GUI shines.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    Firebase should be your first choice if your platform is mobile first. Firebase's mobile platform support for client-side applications is second to none, and I cannot think of a comparable cross-platform toolkit. Firebase also integrates well with your server-side solution, meaning that you can plug Firebase into your existing app architecture with minimal effort.
    Firebase lags behind on the desktop, however. Although macOS support is rapidly catching up, full Windows support is a glaring omission for most Firebase features. This means that if your platform targets Windows, you will need to implement the client functionality manually using Firebase's web APIs and wrappers, or look for another solution.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    IBM
    • For us, performance and scalability is the key, and Cloudant DB backed by CouchDB is scalable and performant.
    • IBM Cloudant dB is very easy to provision for sandbox, development, QA as well as production.
    • Support for Java for CouchDB app server analytics enables a greater control for over developers.
    • Schema free oriented very easy to program and build applications on it.
    • We love it!!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    • Analytics wise, retention is extremely important to our app, therefore we take advantage of the cohort analysis to see the impact of our middle funnel (retargeting, push, email) efforts affect the percent of users that come back into the app. Firebase allows us to easily segment these this data and look at a running average based on certain dates.
    • When it comes to any mobile app, a deep linking strategy is essential to any apps success. With Firebase's Dynamic Links, we are able to share dynamic links (recognize user device) that are able to redirect to in-app content. These deep links allow users to share other deep-linked content with friends, that also have link preview assets.
    • Firebase allows users to effectively track events, funnels, and MAUs. With this simple event tracking feature, users can put organize these events into funnels of their main user flows (e.g., checkout flows, onboarding flows, etc.), and subsequently be able to understand where the drop-off is in the funnel and then prioritize areas of the funnel to fix. Also, MAU is important to be able to tell if you are bringing in new users and what's the active volume for each platform (Android, iOS).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    IBM
    • It was only after we went with the cloud-based solution that IBM rolled out an on-premise version.
    • We found that a 3rd-party ODBC driver was required for a few applications that needed to pull data out of Cloudant.
    • The sales process was difficult because the salesperson we used was not as versed on Cloudant as I had hoped.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    • Attribution and specifically multi-touch attribution could be more robust such as Branch or Appsflyer but understand this isn't Firebases bread and butter.
    • More parameters. Firebase allows you to track tons of events (believe it's up to 50 or so) but the parameters of the events it only allows you to track 5 which is so messily and unbelievable. So you're able to get good high-level data but if you want to get granular with the events and actions are taken on your app to get real data insight you either have to go with a paid data analytics platform or bring on someone that's an expert in SQL to go through Big Query.
    • City-specific data instead of just country-specific data would have been a huge plus as well.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    IBM
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    IBM
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    I don't use the Firebase UI much, but rather connect it to GA4. GA4 has a great event model but the GA4 UI and analysis capabilities are limited. It's harder to measure product usage type of engagement but if you have the time and resources to leverage the GA4 to BiqQuery export you'll have all the raw event data you'll need for deep analysis, segmentation, and audience activation.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    IBM
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    IBM
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    IBM
    Very happy by the commitment given by the team which has been really good over the last 7 years of usage.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    Our analytics folks handled the majority of the communication when it came to customer service, but as far as I was aware, the support we got was pretty good. When we had an issue, we were able to reach out and get support in a timely fashion. Firebase was easy to reach and reasonably available to assist when needed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    IBM
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    IBM
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    IBM
    The feature-set, including security, is very comparable. Overall, IBM's services added to the product are mature and stable, although product support and engineers could be a little better. Global availability is improving, and Disaster Recover Capabilities are great. Overall, it's very comparable to MongoDB as a DBaaS offer, available globally and with great documentation.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    Before using Firebase, we exclusively used self hosted database services. Using Firebase has allowed us to reduce reliance on single points of failure and systems that are difficult to scale. Additionally, Firebase is much easier to set up and use than any sort of self hosted database. This simplicity has allowed us to try features that we might not have based on the amount of work they required in the past.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    IBM
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    IBM
    • IBM Cloudant is very secure and we never have to worry about losing data/unauthorized access
    • It is one of the best data backup system and works well
    • Global availability means it is easy to connect to the nearest data center and this reduces load time which is great.
    Read full review
    Google
    • Makes building real-time interfaces easy to do at scale with no backend involvement.
    • Very low pricing for small companies and green-fields projects.
    • Lack of support for more complicated queries needs to be managed by users and often forces strange architecture choices for data to enable it to be easily accessed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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