R
ReviewerVerified
2 months ago
MongoDB is wonderful for flexible, evolving data, and we love how quickly we can build. But for parts of our system that genuinely need complex joins and strict transactional integrity, we found ourselves fighting the document model. It's the right tool for some things and the wrong one for others.
Excellent for flexible data
Awkward for heavily relational workloads
We've run MongoDB in production for a couple of years and it's been dependable and pleasant to develop against. Atlas makes operations easy. My one gripe is that as our data and traffic grew, the managed Atlas bill climbed faster than we'd budgeted for. Still recommend it.
Dependable, easy operations
Managed hosting gets pricey
Once our team learned MongoDB's aggregation framework, we started doing analytics directly in the database that we used to push to a separate system. Horizontal scaling through sharding handled our growth, and the developer ergonomics are excellent. A genuinely powerful, modern data platform.
Powerful aggregation, easy scaling
MongoDB lets you get going incredibly fast, which is both a blessing and a curse. Without discipline around indexing and schema design, we hit performance issues that took real effort to untangle. When modelled well it's great; when rushed, it bites you. Genuinely mixed feelings.
Very fast to get started
Poor data modelling causes pain later
MongoDB's flexible document model let us iterate on our schema as fast as the product changed, without painful migrations. Atlas takes care of backups and scaling so our small team doesn't babysit infrastructure. It's been the ideal database for a startup moving quickly.
Flexible schema, managed Atlas