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.
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Firebase
Score 8.2 out of 10
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Google 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
MongoDB
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
MongoDB is an open source document-oriented database system. It is part of the NoSQL family of database systems. Instead of storing data in tables as is done in a "classical" relational database, MongoDB stores structured data as JSON-like documents with dynamic schemas (MongoDB calls the format BSON), making the integration of data in certain types of applications easier and faster.
$0.10
million reads
Pricing
Couchbase Server
Firebase
MongoDB
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Phone Authentication
$0.01
Per Verification
Stored Data
$0.18
Per GiB
Shared
$0
per month
Serverless
$0.10million reads
million reads
Dedicated
$57
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Couchbase Server
Firebase
MongoDB
Free Trial
Yes
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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Fully managed, global cloud database on AWS, Azure, and GCP
Couchbase's server is more scalable than MongoDB, as MongoDB degrades its performance if the number of users grows. Also, Couchbase allows us to integrate more third-party applications, Couchbase’s query language extends ANSI SQL.
While considering NoSQL database options, we evaluated MongoDB and Couchbase. We decided to go with Couchbase as our dabatase of choice primarily because we had previous Couchbase experience within the team and we knew that this existing expertise could reduce the time needed …
We have good experiences with MongoDB, Elasticsearch, and today we expect to be able to improve our products with
Couchbase and in the near future replace 2 products with 1, which will simplify our product architecture.
The project we are developing with Couchbase, was very inconsistent for few years of the beginning. We had to change data model multiple times. We knew this before starting the project. So we had to choose a NoSQL solution. We also wanted a syncing solution. After some research …
Easy to deploy and manage. Clustering and replication is fairly simple and straightforward. According to developers, Couchbase scored higher points compared to the other products that we evaluated.
Experience with DataStax Cassandra was seamless, but the cost and effort to support it was not justified. Also commercial process experience with Couchbase was much better. ActiveSpaces is a good technology for big TIBCO shop, but keeping with the lifecycle of it is not easy. I …
I'm not qualified enough to make a meaningful comparison, but 2 years after, I hear regularly about issues on Mongo from the other teams, especially on the SRE side. On our side, not much to say, except that it works. Ram, CPU, disk behave like expected. Same for bandwidth. …
Couchbase takes most of the best features of products such as Amazon Aurora, DynamoDB, Mongo DB, or Realm IO. It by the way might be lacking a good AWS strategy compared to other solutions. Couchbase has a great field for improvements in establishing specific deployment …
We looked at several different SQL and NoSQL systems. Most were either too expensive, didn't provide the needed functionality, or were too hard to use with the size of our team. We ultimately went with Couchbase because of its performance, horizontal scalability, and price.
Supabase seems to have the best of all worlds right now. Followed by MongoDB/Firebase for smaller projects requiring less manpower and resources. Azure and Microsoft are reserved for existing projects and larger corporate clients.
Firebase is easy to manage and scale really well for web application services. It offers better authentication and is easy to implement. For real-time analytics on web applications, it works very well. Firebase offers more features compared to other services especially it can …
Firebase is well suited for projects with simpler database workloads that require its real-time features. For data that is heavily read in real time, it's a great choice and gives developers a lot of features that would have been complicated and time-consuming to build up front …
Your default choice should not be MongoDB in my opinion. Most user-facing systems are relational by nature so a well known and reliable SQL database would be easier to maintain and simpler to develop long term. If you highly value speed of development go with Firebase. If you …
Both Couchbase and MongoDB are document-oriented NoSQL databases, so they have very similar features. While they do have some fundamental differences in terms of how they scale, shard, etc. the one key reason why we went with MongoDB is its availability and support from the …
Cassandra: may be better for bigger use cases, in PB range, due to our use cases being slightly smaller, we did not need this, but we highly rely on efficient indexing, and low latency, which seemed to be better based on our testing in Mongodb. Couchbase Server: Document …
We chose MongoDB because it fit our specific use cases better than the other two NoSQL products that I've identified. There are some use cases where those products would be better. Be sure to use the right tool for the job, for us, it was MongoDB, for you it might not be.
Features
Couchbase Server
Firebase
MongoDB
NoSQL Databases
Comparison of NoSQL Databases features of Product A and Product B
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.
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.
If asked by a colleague I would highly recommend MongoDB. MongoDB provides incredible flexibility and is quick and easy to set up. It also provides extensive documentation which is very useful for someone new to the tool. Though I've used it for years and still referenced the docs often. From my experience and the use cases I've worked on, I'd suggest using it anywhere that needs a fast, efficient storage space for non-relational data. If a relational database is needed then another tool would be more apt.
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).
Being a JSON language optimizes the response time of a query, you can directly build a query logic from the same service
You can install a local, database-based environment rather than the non-relational real-time bases such a firebase does not allow, the local environment is paramount since you can work without relying on the internet.
Forming collections in Mango is relatively simple, you do not need to know of query to work with it, since it has a simple graphic environment that allows you to manage databases for those who are not experts in console management.
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.
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.
An aggregate pipeline can be a bit overwhelming as a newcomer.
There's still no real concept of joins with references/foreign keys, although the aggregate framework has a feature that is close.
Database management/dev ops can still be time-consuming if rolling your own deployments. (Thankfully there are plenty of providers like Compose or even MongoDB's own Atlas that helps take care of the nitty-gritty.
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
I am looking forward to increasing our SaaS subscriptions such that I get to experience global replica sets, working in reads from secondaries, and what not. Can't wait to be able to exploit some of the power that the "Big Boys" use MongoDB for.
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.
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.
NoSQL database systems such as MongoDB lack graphical interfaces by default and therefore to improve usability it is necessary to install third-party applications to see more visually the schemas and stored documents. In addition, these tools also allow us to visualize the commands to be executed for each operation.
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.
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.
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.
Finding support from local companies can be difficult. There were times when the local company could not find a solution and we reached a solution by getting support globally. If a good local company is found, it will overcome all your problems with its global support.
While the setup and configuration of MongoDB is pretty straight forward, having a vendor that performs automatic backups and scales the cluster automatically is very convenient. If you do not have a system administrator or DBA familiar with MongoDB on hand, it's a very good idea to use a 3rd party vendor that specializes in MongoDB hosting. The value is very well worth it over hosting it yourself since the cost is often reasonable among providers.
The Apache Cassandra was one type of product used in our company for a couple of use-cases. The Aerospike is something we [analyzed] not so long time ago as an interesting alternative, due to its performance characteristics. The Oracle Coherence was and is still being used for [the] distributed caching use-case, but it will be replaced eventually by Couchbase. Though each of these products [has] its own strengths and weaknesses, we prefer sticking to Couchbase because of [the] experience we have with this product and because it is cost-effective for our organization.
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.
We have [measured] the speed in reading/write operations in high load and finally select the winner = MongoDBWe have [not] too much data but in case there will be 10 [times] more we need Cassandra. Cassandra's storage engine provides constant-time writes no matter how big your data set grows. For analytics, MongoDB provides a custom map/reduce implementation; Cassandra provides native Hadoop support.
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
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.
Open Source w/ reasonable support costs have a direct, positive impact on the ROI (we moved away from large, monolithic, locked in licensing models)
You do have to balance the necessary level of HA & DR with the number of servers required to scale up and scale out. Servers cost money - so DR & HR doesn't come for free (even though it's built into the architecture of MongoDB
