IBM Cloudant vs. MongoDB

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.3 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
MongoDB
Score 8.0 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
IBM CloudantMongoDB
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
Shared
$0
per month
Serverless
$0.10million reads
million reads
Dedicated
$57
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM CloudantMongoDB
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsFully managed, global cloud database on AWS, Azure, and GCP
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM CloudantMongoDB
Considered Both Products
IBM Cloudant
Chose IBM Cloudant
I have used MongoDB prior to using Cloudant. For me Cloudant is a winner because the learning curve is not as steep as MongoDB. I also looked into using DynamoDB (AWS) but the set up was quite complicated so I gave up and tried to use Cloudant.
Chose IBM Cloudant
Cloudant extends features of CouchDB, but you don't have to host it for yourself. IBM does this for you. Also Cloudant is free if you are under $50 per month. And there is integration with other IBM products, like dashDB (for analytics).Cloudant has CouchApps and it's a feature …
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
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, …
Chose IBM Cloudant
The documentation of Cloudant alone has made it my database service of choice. With MongoDB you have to manage hardware, sharding, networking... Cloudant takes all the hassle out of storage allowing you to focus on more important tasks.
Chose IBM Cloudant
MongoDB Atlas and Azure Cosmos DB are the closest competitors we found with Cloudant, especially in terms of fixed pricing and having a GUI for easy viewing and quick edits of data. Cloudant's pricing model flat out beats MongoDB Atlas' in terms of how easy it would be to …
Chose IBM Cloudant
IBM cloudant documentation is very easy to understand and because of that the implementation is also very easy. We found some difficulties in case of aws documents implementation. Performance of the cloudant database is also high as compare to the other databases. Indexing and …
Chose IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant is great for quick deployment and configs of a database service, especially when it comes to rapid prototyping. In a research capacity, we need to spin up web services and run experiments quickly. IBM Cloudant is a fuss-free database service [that] aids in this …
Chose IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant wins in all aspects, from cost, ease of deployment, features, global availability and much more.
Chose IBM Cloudant
As its documentation and help are always available, it's easier to manage than any other database mentioned.
Chose IBM Cloudant
I have mainly used Cloudant as I work with IBM Cloud in my role and therefore it was easiest (and cheapest) to set up for the small scale prototypes we are building. (Which do however sometimes lead to scaled implementation)
Chose IBM Cloudant
In our case it was a no-brainer since we were using IBM Cloud. In comparison to DB2 the ease of use and JSON support was the key.
Chose IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant DB is backed by CouchDB and that too hosted on IBM Cloud is the key. Concurrency and durability is the key here. In-memory capabilities are non-existent on the IBM Cloudant DB.
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 …
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!
Chose IBM Cloudant
Cloudant is a database as a service with a strong support team. The feature set is comparable to other solutions but not all are managed services, or have easy scalability, or can demonstrate production level reliability and performance.
Chose IBM Cloudant
The technology behind Cloudant (BigCouch) is no better or worse than any of these. They are all good for different reasons. What makes Cloudant my choice against them is the hosted portion. These are all just databases that I would have to manage. Cloudant is managed for me, …
Chose IBM Cloudant
I've even worked with Cassandra, but I found Cloudant to be much simpler, easier, neat and efficient. Cassandra was not highly scalable but Cloudant was much efficient in it. Even the Monitoring and other scripts were pre-built which made it much time efficient for us.
MongoDB

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
IBM CloudantMongoDB
NoSQL Databases
Comparison of NoSQL Databases features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cloudant
9.4
21 Ratings
7% above category average
MongoDB
9.1
38 Ratings
4% above category average
Performance9.821 Ratings9.038 Ratings
Availability8.121 Ratings9.738 Ratings
Concurrency9.921 Ratings8.638 Ratings
Security9.821 Ratings8.638 Ratings
Scalability9.121 Ratings9.438 Ratings
Data model flexibility9.921 Ratings9.138 Ratings
Deployment model flexibility9.121 Ratings9.137 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM CloudantMongoDB
Small Businesses
Redis™*
Redis™*
Score 9.0 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Redis™*
Redis™*
Score 9.0 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Redis™*
Redis™*
Score 9.0 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM CloudantMongoDB
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(45 ratings)
9.4
(78 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.3
(1 ratings)
10.0
(67 ratings)
Usability
7.7
(5 ratings)
9.0
(14 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(4 ratings)
9.6
(13 ratings)
Online Training
7.3
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.2
(4 ratings)
8.4
(2 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 CloudantMongoDB
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.
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MongoDB
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.
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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
MongoDB
  • 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.
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
MongoDB
  • 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.
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
MongoDB
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.
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
MongoDB
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.
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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.
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MongoDB
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.
Read full review
MongoDB
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.
Read full review
MongoDB
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.
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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
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MongoDB
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.
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MongoDB
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.
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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
MongoDB
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.
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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.
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MongoDB
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
MongoDB
  • 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
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ScreenShots

MongoDB Screenshots

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