4 ms·

How does MongoDB still have that much available to spend? Everyone I know moved off it years ago.

geodel 2y ago
Everyone you know put a dollar in donation basket while moving off. Mongo collected all and brought Voyage AI
porridgeraisin 2y ago
There are a lot of people still on it, including the place I worked at last. It was starting to get expensive though, so we were experimenting with other document stores (dynamodb was being trialled, since we were already AWS for most things, just around the time I left)
bithavoc 2y ago
that’s what I thought, but every single candidate I interviewed mentioned MongoDB as their recent reference document database, I asked the last candidate if they were self-hosting, the answer is no, they used MongoDB cloud.
- winrid 2y ago
  I self host a handful of mongodb deployments for personal projects and manage self hosted mongo deployments of almost a hundred nodes for some companies. Atlas can get very expensive if you need good IO.
- slt2021 2y ago
  if you a developer you wanna use MongoDB as database, not be MongoDB SRE and DBA thats the reason for using Atlas
  - skatanski 2y ago
    Precisely, and if you are enterprise, you want to have an option to request priority support and have a lot of features out of the box. Also some of the search features are only available in Atlas unfortunately.
- rpep 2y ago
  You cant use the embeddings/vector search stuff this refers to in self hosted anyway, it’s only implemented in their Atlas Cloud product. It makes it a real PITA to test locally. The Atlas Dev local container didn’t work the same when I tried it earlier in the year.
- tiltowait 2y ago
  Atlas has a generous free tier that is great for hobby projects.
isoprophlex 2y ago
Pretty sure they achieved fiscal nirvana by exploiting enterprise brain rot. You hook em, they accumulate tech debt for years, all their devs leave, now they can't move away & you can start increasing prices. Eventually the empty husk will topple over but that's still years away.
- dimgl 2y ago
  Is it possible that they simply have a good product?
  - isoprophlex 2y ago
    Impossible! It's not based on sqlite, postgres or written in rust, so it must be terrible!
    - flessner 2y ago
      I never understood this argument, there are many great products running on Java, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript... All of these languages have a "crowd" that hates them for historic and/or esoteric reasons. Great products are in my opinion a function of skill and care. The only benefit a "popular" tool or language gets you is a greater developer pool for hiring.
  - vosper 2y ago
    They do have a good product, but "they accumulate tech debt for years, all their devs leave, now they can't move away" is the story of the place I worked at a few years ago. The database was such a disorganized, inconsistent mess that no-one had the stomach (or budget) to try and get off it.
    - codr7 2y ago
      Basically every MongoDB I've come across; same story, different faces.
    - dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
DarmokJalad1701 2y ago
Because they are web-scale obviously.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Cshelton 2y ago
We use it a lot for a specific use-case and it works great. Mongo has come a long long way since the release over a decade ago, and if you keep it in Majority Read and Write, it's very reliable. Also, on some things, it allows us to pivot much faster. And now with the help of LLMs, writing "Aggregation Pipelines" are very fast.
- burningion 2y ago
  I've been using Mongo while developing some analysis / retrieval systems around video, and this is the correct answer. Aggregation pipelines allow me to do really powerful search around amorphous / changing data. Adding a way to automatically update / recalculate embeddings to your database makes even more sense.
  - magarnicle 2y ago
    Do you have any tricks for writing and debugging pipelines? I feel like there are so many little hiccups that I spend ages figuring out if that one field name needs a $ or not.
- codr7 2y ago
  Pretending a pile of json is a database is great for pivoting, not so great for anything else. Maintaining apps built on MongoDB is soul killing.
  - rudolph9 2y ago
    This
SilasX 2y ago
Well, it's referred to as a cash-and-stock deal but I can't find any more detail about how much is stock: https://seekingalpha.com/news/4412466-mongodb-acquires-voyage-ai-for-220m-to-boost-ai-search https://seekingalpha.com/news/4412466-mongodb-acquires-voyag...
mgfist 2y ago
$2.3B in cash as of last quarter
yfontana 2y ago
This may be a shock to many HN readers, but MongoDB's revenue has been growing quite fast in the last few years (from 400M in 2020 to 1.7B in 2024). They've been pushing Atlas pretty hard in the Enterprise world. Have no experience with it myself, but I've heard some decently positive things about it (ease of set up and maintenance, reliability).
yla92 2y ago
Mongo Atlas (their cloud offering) is really solid (and expensive)!
paxys 2y ago
MongoDB is a public company. Its quarterly financial reports will give you a much more accurate picture of the company's health than "everyone you know".
aitchnyu 2y ago
Are they profitable, and at which point in time? How good of an investment was it? Sorry, my eyes were swimming in their financial report hosted in their domain.

Everyone you know put a dollar in donation basket while moving off. Mongo collected all and brought Voyage AI

There are a lot of people still on it, including the place I worked at last. It was starting to get expensive though, so we were experimenting with other document stores (dynamodb was being trialled, since we were already AWS for most things, just around the time I left)

bithavoc 2y ago

that’s what I thought, but every single candidate I interviewed mentioned MongoDB as their recent reference document database, I asked the last candidate if they were self-hosting, the answer is no, they used MongoDB cloud.

winrid 2y ago
I self host a handful of mongodb deployments for personal projects and manage self hosted mongo deployments of almost a hundred nodes for some companies. Atlas can get very expensive if you need good IO.
slt2021 2y ago
if you a developer you wanna use MongoDB as database, not be MongoDB SRE and DBA thats the reason for using Atlas
- skatanski 2y ago
  Precisely, and if you are enterprise, you want to have an option to request priority support and have a lot of features out of the box. Also some of the search features are only available in Atlas unfortunately.
rpep 2y ago
You cant use the embeddings/vector search stuff this refers to in self hosted anyway, it’s only implemented in their Atlas Cloud product. It makes it a real PITA to test locally. The Atlas Dev local container didn’t work the same when I tried it earlier in the year.
tiltowait 2y ago
Atlas has a generous free tier that is great for hobby projects.

isoprophlex 2y ago

Pretty sure they achieved fiscal nirvana by exploiting enterprise brain rot. You hook em, they accumulate tech debt for years, all their devs leave, now they can't move away & you can start increasing prices. Eventually the empty husk will topple over but that's still years away.

dimgl 2y ago
Is it possible that they simply have a good product?
- isoprophlex 2y ago
  Impossible! It's not based on sqlite, postgres or written in rust, so it must be terrible!
  - flessner 2y ago
    I never understood this argument, there are many great products running on Java, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript... All of these languages have a "crowd" that hates them for historic and/or esoteric reasons. Great products are in my opinion a function of skill and care. The only benefit a "popular" tool or language gets you is a greater developer pool for hiring.
- vosper 2y ago
  They do have a good product, but "they accumulate tech debt for years, all their devs leave, now they can't move away" is the story of the place I worked at a few years ago. The database was such a disorganized, inconsistent mess that no-one had the stomach (or budget) to try and get off it.
  - codr7 2y ago
    Basically every MongoDB I've come across; same story, different faces.
  - dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago

DarmokJalad1701 2y ago

Because they are web-scale obviously.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Cshelton 2y ago

We use it a lot for a specific use-case and it works great. Mongo has come a long long way since the release over a decade ago, and if you keep it in Majority Read and Write, it's very reliable. Also, on some things, it allows us to pivot much faster. And now with the help of LLMs, writing "Aggregation Pipelines" are very fast.

burningion 2y ago
I've been using Mongo while developing some analysis / retrieval systems around video, and this is the correct answer. Aggregation pipelines allow me to do really powerful search around amorphous / changing data. Adding a way to automatically update / recalculate embeddings to your database makes even more sense.
- magarnicle 2y ago
  Do you have any tricks for writing and debugging pipelines? I feel like there are so many little hiccups that I spend ages figuring out if that one field name needs a $ or not.
codr7 2y ago
Pretending a pile of json is a database is great for pivoting, not so great for anything else. Maintaining apps built on MongoDB is soul killing.
- rudolph9 2y ago
  This

SilasX 2y ago

Well, it's referred to as a cash-and-stock deal but I can't find any more detail about how much is stock: https://seekingalpha.com/news/4412466-mongodb-acquires-voyage-ai-for-220m-to-boost-ai-search https://seekingalpha.com/news/4412466-mongodb-acquires-voyag...

mgfist 2y ago

$2.3B in cash as of last quarter

yfontana 2y ago

This may be a shock to many HN readers, but MongoDB's revenue has been growing quite fast in the last few years (from 400M in 2020 to 1.7B in 2024). They've been pushing Atlas pretty hard in the Enterprise world. Have no experience with it myself, but I've heard some decently positive things about it (ease of set up and maintenance, reliability).

yla92 2y ago

Mongo Atlas (their cloud offering) is really solid (and expensive)!

paxys 2y ago

MongoDB is a public company. Its quarterly financial reports will give you a much more accurate picture of the company's health than "everyone you know".

aitchnyu 2y ago

Are they profitable, and at which point in time? How good of an investment was it? Sorry, my eyes were swimming in their financial report hosted in their domain.