Item: Amazon DynamoDB
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use DynamoDB for our low-latency data access for internal web-apps that require quick real-time information. It’s quite flexible for micro services and while it can be used in many different use cases we only use it for internal web apps, but could be recommended for mobile apps as well.

Pros and Cons

Auto-scaling is done almost instantly, it’s magical.
Works really well with serverless apps on AWS Lambdas
It’s surprisingly transactional and support streams processing

It’s not cheap at all. You must be careful with billing
Not for large data
Backup restoration is slow.

Return on Investment

It was quite expensive at first, then we kind of optimized costs.
It’s great for AWS Lambdas.
Do not try to use as relational database, it will cost you more and not be useful.
It’s fully managed, so no need to worry about database management

Scalability

It’s seamless, it doesn’t require a lot of extra steps or anything, it can dynamically scale and scales automatically. You can use for high-load days if you have e-commerce.

Performance

We have never had any issues, it scales or not, performs the same way. It’s very fast and fully managed , everything is almost automatically done. You only worry about your application’s code, and initial configuration. Also pay attention to billing, so that you do not use it for things cheaper alternatives would be just as well at for all your needs.

Alternatives Considered

Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility), Amazon Aurora, MongoDB and PostgreSQL

For our use case, we needed a noSQL that would work with AWS Lambdas of specific parts of the internal web applications. We optimized billing and uses , diversified databases for various parts; so it’s not very expensive.

Key Insights

Do you think Amazon DynamoDB delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Amazon DynamoDB's feature set?

Yes

Did Amazon DynamoDB live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Amazon DynamoDB go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Amazon DynamoDB again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Amazon Redshift, Amazon Aurora, Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility)

Likelihood to Recommend

It’s great for server less and real-time applications. It would be great for gaming and mobile apps. However, if you need relational database and have fixed budget, do not use it. While budget can be managed, you need to be careful. Also this is not a tool for storing big data, there are other wide-column database types you could use for it ins the ad

If you need quick noSQL for serverless applications, DynamoDB is a good option to consider

Overall Satisfaction with Amazon DynamoDB