IBM Cloudant vs. Microsoft SQL Server

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.4 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
Microsoft SQL Server
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database.
$1,418
Per License
Pricing
IBM CloudantMicrosoft SQL Server
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
Subscription
$1,418.00
Per License
Enterprise
$13,748.00
Per License
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM CloudantMicrosoft SQL Server
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 CloudantMicrosoft SQL Server
Considered Both Products
IBM Cloudant
Chose IBM Cloudant
MS SQl is more specific to relational data. Overall, it is more mature with a more feature-filled interface, user access management, and tools to manage data.
Chose IBM Cloudant
Infinitely better in every part. Except handling SQL
Chose IBM Cloudant
We chose Cloudant because it was fully managed and used in the marketplace, unlike MongoDB was at the time, and it supported JSON which SQL Server 2016 didn't.
Chose IBM Cloudant
All other NoSQL document-centric DB must be installed on premise on in the cloud as complicated clusters. The "as a service" formula and the open source origin were the same reasons for Cloudant choice, freeing us of all system and administration tasks!
Microsoft SQL Server

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
IBM CloudantMicrosoft SQL Server
NoSQL Databases
Comparison of NoSQL Databases features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cloudant
9.4
21 Ratings
7% above category average
Microsoft SQL Server
-
Ratings
Performance9.821 Ratings00 Ratings
Availability8.121 Ratings00 Ratings
Concurrency9.921 Ratings00 Ratings
Security9.821 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability9.121 Ratings00 Ratings
Data model flexibility9.921 Ratings00 Ratings
Deployment model flexibility9.121 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM CloudantMicrosoft SQL Server
Small Businesses
Redis™*
Redis™*
Score 9.0 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Redis™*
Redis™*
Score 9.0 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Redis™*
Redis™*
Score 9.0 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM CloudantMicrosoft SQL Server
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(45 ratings)
9.6
(96 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.3
(1 ratings)
9.0
(6 ratings)
Usability
7.7
(5 ratings)
9.9
(10 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
8.2
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(4 ratings)
7.9
(25 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
7.3
(2 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.2
(4 ratings)
9.0
(5 ratings)
Configurability
8.5
(3 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.6
(23 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM CloudantMicrosoft SQL Server
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
Microsoft SQL Server is a great RDBMS and meets all of our requirements. If you need a stable DB platform to support your line of a business application you'll be well served. Licensing costs are far cheaper, more portable and a lot more user friendly than Oracle. Product support and security patches from Microsoft are strong.
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!!
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Easy to configure and use with Visual Studio and Dot Net
  • Easy integration with MSBI to perform data analysis
  • Data Security
  • Easy to understand and use
  • Very easy to export database and tables in the form of SQL query or a script
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • The import/export process can be tricky to follow with lots of steps and could be better for importing flat files
  • Obtaining help from Microsoft is cumbersome and often other internet sources are better and quicker
  • The documentation is not great and again it's generally better to obtain help elsewhere if needed
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
Read full review
Microsoft
We understand that the Microsoft SQL Server will continue to advance, offering the same robust and reliable platform while adding new features that enable us, as a software center, to create a superior product. That provides excellent performance while reducing the hardware requirements and the total cost of ownership of our solution.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
SQL Server mostly 'just works' or generates error messages to help you sort out the trouble. You can usually count on the product to get the job done and keep an eye on your potential mistakes. Interaction with other Microsoft products makes operating as a Windows user pretty straight forward. Digging through the multitude of dialogs and wizards can be a pain, but the answer is usually there somewhere.
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
Its does not have outages.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
SSAS data cubes may some time slow down your Excel reports.
Read full review
Support Rating
IBM
Very happy by the commitment given by the team which has been really good over the last 7 years of usage.
Read full review
Microsoft
We managed to handle most of our problems by looking into Microsoft's official documentation that has everything explained and almost every function has an example that illustrates in detail how a particular functionality works. Just like PowerShell has the ability to show you an example of how some cmdlet works, that is the case also here, and in my opinion, it is a very good practice and I like it.
Read full review
In-Person Training
IBM
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
It was good
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
Read full review
Microsoft
very hands on and detailed training
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
Other than SQL taking quite a bit of time to actually install there are no problems with installation. Even on hardware that has good performance SQL can still take close to an hour to install a typical server with management and reporting services.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
[Microsoft] SQL Server has a much better community and professional support and is overall just a more reliable system with Microsoft behind it. I've used MySQL in the past and SQL Server has just become more comfortable for me and is my go to RDBMS.
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
SQL server does handle growing demands of a mid sized company.
Read full review
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
Microsoft
  • Increased accuracy - We went from multiple users having different versions of an Excel spreadsheet to a single source of truth for our reporting.
  • Increased Efficiency - We can now generate reports at any time from a single source rather than multiple users spending their time collating data and generating reports.
  • Improved Security - Enterprise level security on a dedicated server rather than financial files on multiple laptop hard drives.
Read full review
ScreenShots